Explain Why I Was To Blame For The First World War Dbq Essay

World War I, the Great War, took place from June 28, 1914 until November 11, 1918. The Great War began after several countries declared war on each other. There were four fronts: Eastern front, Western front, Atlantic front, and Middle Eastern front. All the actions that took place in each front all led to the armistice being signed on the eleventh of November. World War I started as mainly a European conflict seeing as most allies originated from countries in Europe and Europe had most of the power, but in the end it expanded to beyond Europe as outside countries were brought into the conflict for multiple reasons. By tweaking small things along the way, millions of lives could have been spared, but unfortunately were not.

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An obvious example was, in May 1919, a leader of the Germans wrote a letter protesting the accusations from the Versailles Peace Conference. It read, “But we energetically deny that Germany and its people, who were convinced that they fought a war of defense, were alone guilty” (Doc 4). Article 232, aka the “war guilt” clause, placed full blame for the war on Germany. However, in the letter Germany placed blame on Russia and did not accept the allegations towards them. Even though, the article was written from the point of view of Germans, other sources later mentioned, support that it was not just Germany’s fault. The Treaty of Versailles was written by Great Britain, France, and the US. Basically, European countries took turns placing blame on each other. Similar to Germany, during 1919, a Vietnamese nationalist created a petition for the Paris Peace Conference. One wish was, “Article six: Authorization of [free] movement [of Vietnamese] around the world” (Doc 7). Vietnamese constructed these articles, for the Paris Peace Conference, in hopes to gain independence from France. Britain had used its power to manipulate Vietnam during war and furthered their power by declining their freedom. Clearly, Vietnam did not have as big of an influence because their wish was never granted. In corroboration with document four, according to Sidney Bradshaw Fay, the main idea of why World War I started was, “In

For instance, in July 1915, the Sherif of Mecca wrote a letter declaring the circumstances for them to join war. The goal was, “to accomplish their freedom [from the Ottomans]” (Doc 2). The Arabs were promised, by Great Britain’s manipulation, to aid in the war in return for freedom. When the war was almost to an end, the Ottomans were defeated in the Middle East. Since Britain had gotten what they wanted, they did not follow up with that promise to the Arabs. Equally important, Zimmerman wrote a letter to send to Mexico, but London intercepted it and decoded it for the US. Germans used submarine warfare to counteract the British mines. Zimmerman wrote, “We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral” (Doc 5). This led to, the sinking of the Lusitania, which upset the Americans (Doc 8). These documents corroborated each other to prove why the US had joined war. Zimmerman’s note and the sinking of the Lusitania were the two main reasons that US joined the Allied Powers. While the intention of Zimmerman’s plan was to keep the US neutral, that did not happen. When the Lusitania sunk with Americans on it, that broke the last straw for Americans. In a similar way, a leader of the In Flanders Fields Museum gave an explanation of the lack of respect Asian and Africans received after participating in World War