Flor Martinez Mr. Coker World History DBQ 19 April 2023 Causes of World War I There are many factors that contributed to the start of World War I in 1914. After having studied them all, I have narrowed it down to Militarism and Imperialism, but I believe that the main cause was Alliances. The term Militarism refers to a country’s belief to have a strong military and be prepared to use it whenever necessary in order to defend their country. The graph in document C is a prime example of how determined a country was to have a strong military through the spending records and what equipment they were spending it on. As we compare the countries between 1890 and 1914 we can see that Austria-Hungary and Germany combined only spent about 40 million British pounds in armaments, but by 1914 …show more content…
Imperialism consists of taking over and extending power using military force. Bernard von Bulow said, “In the coming century the German people will be a hammer or an anvil”(Document D). This speech was given in 1899 before the war had started, he used a metaphor to explain how one country would ultimately need to have power over the other. It stated that Germany had to work hard to become the attacker or would have no choice but to end up being the one attacked. Being part of the Triple Alliance meant that France, Russia, and Britain were in danger, but once you take into consideration their geographical position the country in most danger was France. A few years later we see how unfortunately Germany slowly starts becoming the anvil. This is demonstrated in Document E when a propaganda cartoon is released stating “Freiheit Der Meere, England Der Blutsauger der Welt” (Document E). This cartoon was released in Germany in order to show how Britain was slowly starting to take over the world. Being a country that spends a lot of money on their Navy, Germany had valid reasons to be worried about Britain’s spread of