The German Emperor's Best Friend, Eulenberg, Was Out of the Picture

When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian partisan in the summer of 1914, it made Austria's war against Serbia inevitable. The German general staff had this fabulous plan cooked up by Schlieffen to win a two-front war in Europe. And they'd calculated that 1914 was basically the best year possible for them to have a war like this if it was inevitable.