Underlying Causes Of World War 1 Essay

As children played war their fathers walked the battle real grounds. World War I had many different events and such that led up to this massive war break out, but there is a specific underlying cause behind it. World War I began in June of 1914 and went on until November of 1918; Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and a few others were all apart of this “War To End All Wars”. There were three underlying causes of the war, Imperialism, Militarism and Alliances. Of these three causes, Alliances were the most significant in starting World War I.
Imperialism provided a cause for WWI, in several cases “the mother country” established control over other countries. Imperialism is when a powerful nation exploits and/or controls one or more colonies, several European nations had imperial empires, the British empire being largest. One of the many countries with significant imperial power was France. France has imperial power over several colonies in the north-west and west Africa and some pacific islands, including other colonies in other areas.

Generals acted as ‘de fecto’ , which means, in fact, government leaders, demanding more be spent on defense and arms for the war. For example, in Richard Overy’s bar graph of the Growth in Armaments you can see clearly how much Germany was willing to spend in 1914 at the beginning of the war. The Entente powers could have filed 2.23 million men and Austria-Hungary along with Germany together had 1.2 million by 1914. Besides the Growth in Armaments militarism also shaped media and culture and public opinions. The press would use propaganda to make rivals look aggressive and cruel and military leaders look like heroes. Militarism was one cause of World War I because it gave countries more