Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
They actually said it was very likely to have not happened if not for the assassination. I don't remember the specifics any more, but they said a lot of things were actually getting better and the assassination started a lot of problems that weren't there before.
Indeed this is not the intent of the thread to do a debate on this, but if you're interested in the matter, I'll point you to this excellent book. It doesn't propose a definitive answer, but it convincingly explains how better leadership could have avoided a conflict even after the assassination, while describing how the events since ~1900 had made a war much more likely in the first place.