The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not the cause of WWI, even though it is often seen as if it is. There were a lot of factors and already existing background tensions between countries that in the end resulted in WWI. Five main factors contributing to the beginning of WWI, are militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism, and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the last straw to WWI, but without the other factors, there would not have been a war in the same way as WWI. The first factor was militarism. Militarism is the glorification of the military and the build-up of armies and materials needed for war. In the years before WWI, this was a very common thing in Europe. …show more content…
The always-increasing paranoia of the nations (for fear of being attacked by a neighboring country) also added to the growing distrust between nations. The military build-up also increased the feeling of competition between the countries and easily led to deathly escalations in the production of materials. Finally, this also easily led to war, since all the countries were over-equipped for their armies, even small-scale fights or disagreements could easily lead to large-scale wars. While militarism certainly wasn’t the cause of WWI, it made it significantly easier to start the world …show more content…
Nationalistic pride led to the race for colonies and the build-up of armies to show that their country was better than the other ones, which led to alliances, to protect the country from other countries with strong armies and many colonies. The last factor and technically the start of WWI was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Serbia. They were visiting the country on a considerably bad day, since that day was a Serbian nationalist holiday, and there had already been threats against the Austrian royalty. Austria was outraged and demanded compensation, in the form of three demands. The suppression of all anti-Austrian activities, the dismissing of all anti-Austrian officials, and allowing exclusively Austrian officials to investigate the assassination. Serbia agreed with the first two but denied the third one. Austria didn’t like that and then declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized its army to protect its ally Serbia, to which Germany reacted by declaring war on Russia and their ally: France. France had no other choice but to declare war on Germany and