World War I was full of ridiculous ideals and came about through crazy plans. Unlike most other wars, this war had many more indirect causes than ‘direct’ ones. The most obvious direct cause would definitely be the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Black Hand, however, this is looked at as a very insignificant factor when attributed to the true causes of WWI. The true, yet indirect, causes of the war were: militarism, nationalism, and the alliance systems in place.
The first cause of WWI was militarism. The definition of militarism is literally, “the pride in your country’s military and desire to use it” - of course that’s a very basic and simple definition, however, impactful. Before WWI, European nations were extremely prepared - with huge caches of weapons and ‘military supplies’. Not only were these nations prepared, they were itching to go to war; wanting to use these weapons - of course, with a militaristic country, that’s what you’d expect. So, as soon as news spread about the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated, European citizens were ready - eager - to join in the fight throughout this political conflict.
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All of Europe, at the time, had inspired their inhabitants to have an extremely nationalistic point of view. Because of this, the citizens developed an unreasonable and illogical automatic hatred - or at least competitive hatred - towards other European countries. When Ferdinand was assassinated, citizens jumped on their feets ready to prove their country as the best. Both militarism and nationalism are such major causes because of how they twisted the mindset of the citizens. When intense political events arose (such as Ferdinand’s assassination), the people of these European countries were willing to die for their country, with their seeing it as a truly noble and logical cause. (They do say hindsight is