While Europe was enjoying a time period of peace and progression, there were many underlying forces at work that eventually brought in the first “Great War”. It was no doubt that it was one of the bloodiest wars that mankind has ever lived to see. While no one truly knows the main cause of WWI, there are several factors the eventually led up to this event. One of the factors that led up to the first event of the outbreak was nationalism. Nationalism is a “strong belief that the interests of a particular nation-state are of primary importance. Also, the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an independent nation, free of foreign domination”.
Taking pride in one’s own country and culture is great but when you seek to use your culture to have dominance over others then that would be something called nationalism. Nationalism assured that in the time of any
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For instance, Germany was united and formed of 26 German-speaking states and territories. Being a young nation at the time, it becomes very easy to want to gain respect and influence from other nations. Germany’s post-1871 leaders depended on nationalist sentiment to strengthen the nation and to gain public support. So Germany begins to develop peaceful alliances with other powers in order to build stature around Europe. Later in 1890, Germany overcame with greed and pride and wanted to build influence around the globe. The only obstacle to German’s expansion was Britain. The British government’s managed some of the world’s biggest territories but moved against Germany when they wanted to move into Africa and Asia. The British turned into a mainstream focus in the pre-war German press, where Britain was painted as expansionist, childish, ravenous and fixated on cash with, of course, Germany being painted as the good guy even though they wanted to move into these territories with their own selfish