World War I and Versailles

Abstract

Serbian nation-state nationalism, under the guise of a reoriented “Yugoslavism,” ultimately struck the spark that ignited the Bismarckian alliance system powder keg, which exploded as World War I. What began as a Habsburg punitive action against Serbia for supposed complicity in a political assassination rapidly spread into a global cataclysm, the consequences of which—finalized in the Versailles Peace Conference (1919–20)—profoundly influenced the course of Balkan, European, and world history into the present.