World War 1 Dbq Essay

The Great War, or the First World War, was a global fight centered in Europe from 1914 to 1918. This disastrous war was established because of one small, yet direct incident in Austria-Hungary. As well as this, there were indirect incidents leading up to this event that heated the tension between the European countries. The ideas of imperialism, militarism, the Alliance system and nationalism, were the beginning causes; the perfect ingredients to stir up the pressure. The day Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, a chain reaction, or domino effect eventually dragged many major countries into chaos. Quite a while before the war, imperialism had existed, yet was still greatly relevant to the causes of World War I. Imperialism

Militarism was the belief that to be truly magnificent, a nation needed a powerful army and a great supply of weapons. Document 7 shows the growth in armies and navies, whether the growth be a small increase like Austria-Hungary, or a large and rapid increase like Germany. New weapons began to develop, and countries, predominantly Britain, France, Russia and Germany, also known as the Great Powers, strived to get their hands on the finest weapons. They competed to develop their armies and weapon supply, to show off and pose a threat, to prove that their nation was the strongest. This lead to massive armies simply waiting to fight, causing an awkward tension mixed with fear and

Nationalism was the pride and devotion to one’s nation, and is what gave people great confidence in their government and military forces. However, as great as it may seem to represent and support your country, many nationalists believed that the needs of other nations were not as important as their own, and were aggressive and stubborn to forgive if they felt that they had been offended. Document 5 represents this clearly. Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, leader of German delegation, had said in protest to the Versailles Peace Conference, that “We [Germany] are far from declining all responsibility for the fact that this great World War took place or that it was fought in the way that it was… But we energetically deny that Germany and its people, [...] were alone guilty.” This shows that Germany wouldn’t fully take credit for starting the war to begin with, and remained stubborn to their beliefs. Strong feelings towards one’s country developed a stubborn characteristic that led to disagreements and