Underlying Causes Of World War 1 Essay

What were the main underlying causes of World War One? By Hunter Cressman

In the end, no one was singing. The Great War lasted 4 long, grueling years 1914 to November 1918. It was triggered by the assassination of the Austrian Hungarian archduke Franz Ferdinand. A month after the assassination war was declared. Soldiers from all around the world went to fight across Europe. By late 1918 10 million soldiers had died of usually slow and painful deaths and 20 million soldiers and other civilians were injured. It is very important that we try to learn about the 3 main causes of this tragedy to prevent it happening again in the future. The three main causes that were responsible are the network of alliances, militarism ( an arms build up) and imperialism

Alliances were one of the main contributors to the war. Europe was split into two alliances. On one side there was the Triple Alliance consisting of Austria-hungary, Germany and Italy (for a short time period ), on the other side there was the Triple Entente which was France, Russia and Great Britain. When the archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist Austria-hungary started very quickly pointing fingers at the Serbian government. Due to ethnic ties, Russia took sides with Serbia and started pointing fingers at Austria-Hungary. Germany is in the triple alliance, sided with Austria-hungary. England and France then sided with Russia because of the triple entente. The result of this was an all-out war. The assassination might have remained a regional incident without alliance obligations. The alliances unfortunately created a local conflict that ended up including the whole nation. A second underlying cause of World War I was militarism. We see this as a main cause of the arms build up in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The total spent on armaments in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Britain, France and Russia in 1890 was 140 million British pounds. In just 24 brief years, the total spending had

By the 20th century, the British empire was the largest imperial power in the world, spanning five continents and ruling about a quarter of all land mass on the planet. Comparatively late to the game of imperialism, Germany started to initiate plans to build their own empire to rival those of Britain and France. Since most of the resource rich nations in Africa and Asia were already colonized by Britain and France, Germany began to meddle in the colonial affairs of their adversaries. For example, in 1905 Germany announced that they would support Moroccan independence from French rule, thus playing a major part in the Moroccan crisis. This declaration by Germany agitated France and Britain, setting the stage for future