in 1882 germany signed an agreement with italy and austria-hungary declaring they would all defend each other from other countries by 1901 germany's ruler kaiser wilhelm ii was openly sharing his desire to expand the nation at the time the united kingdom and france had huge empires and had fought each other for centuries to try and expand their empires further in 1904 they put aside their differences and signed the anton cordial followed by the triple anton to include russia the six countries now believe their pact made them so strong that no one would dare attack them but germany was already drawing up plans to overcome the triple anton nations the schlieffen plan recognized germany would not be able to fight france and russia on opposite sides of its borders at the same time but they believed if they attacked france by passing through belgium they could defeat them before russia could mobilize troops meanwhile in 1908 austria-hungary annexed bosnia to the anger of serbia who had hoped to join with the nation as their populations were both slavic following the annexation a secret serbian military group known as the black hand planned to assassinate the austrian air archduke franz ferdinand on the 28th of june 1914 a bomb was thrown at his car but didn't kill him however later that day he was shot and killed by a member of the black hand gavrilo princip the archduke's uncle was the emperor of austria and on the 28th of july 1914 he declared war on serbia effectively marking the start of world war one in accordance with their pact germany supported austria-hungary russia supported serbia and so finding themselves on the brink of war with russia germany put the schlieffen plan into action germany invaded belgium but encountered stronger resistance than expected the uk defended belgium in accordance with an earlier treaty russia mobilized troops quicker than predicted and germany found themselves surrounded intense fighting lasted four years and around 40 million people were killed