Main Causes Of World War 1 Essay

The main causes of World War 1 were militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Europe, at the time, was in a time of peace, but tensions were slowly growing throughout. Militarism was incorporated because they had been investing money and making their military much stronger, and alliances made it even worse because now everyone was getting involved. Imperialism helped supply the countries in need and nationalism riled up the home country. In the case of Franz Ferdinand, Serbia had sent out an assassin to assassinate the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. This sent Austria-Hungary into an enraged state, and at this point Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia. Militarism is the money and time devoted to the military to make it the best. It can be seen that “Germany was the most militaristic as she increased [expenditure] by 73%” (Task 1). Since Germany had spent so much on their new military it caused their neighbors France and Russia to become very weary which can then cause them to increase their military funds ‘just in case’. Militarism can lead to war because if all the countries are on edge then it only takes a small move to tip one

There were different alliances, but two big ones. One alliance was the Triple Alliance “In 1879 Germany and Austria-Hungary agreed to form a Dual Alliance...it was expanded to include Italy” (Task 3). This means that since Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy were in an alliance while France, Russia and Great Britain were all worried causing them to create an alliance together. An alliance led to war because Austria-Hungary declared war and when they needed help they included Germany and Italy, so when Germany and France declared war on each other Russia and Great Britain got involved. Unfortunately, more people than needed got involved causing the war to last much longer than