Ww1 Causes

Labeled by British author H.G. Wells as “The War That Will End War” , the First World War was the first global conflict humanity had seen. Spanning from the twenty eighth of July 1914 to the eleventh of November 1918, the ‘Great War’ highlighted the devastating outcomes of intense combat and violence that could be fuelled by the egocentrism of the leaders of individual nations. The war did not arise from the misguided actions of a single country; it arose from a melting pot of tension and naivety in many countries/nations. The war arose out of a combination of factors influenced by the actions of the involved powers: Austria-Hungary, Britain, Germany, France, and the Balkan States to name a few, and therefore did not occur on account of a single

It was the manipulative and deceptive nature of Germany, to attain this power and influence, which ultimately contributed to the beginnings of a world war. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) was a quintessential exhibition of German manipulation to attain power, but at the cost of peace, and is key in understanding the fullness of the causes of WW1. Although a war between France and the North German Confederation, the Franco-Prussian war was really about unifying a number of individual states into a much more powerful single nation; what people know as Germany. In response to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia sought to unify with the southern states of the German Kingdom such as Bavaria and Wurttemberg. The Prussian-dominated Germany would have a much greater military force and with that huge amounts of money; both of which France feared. Under Otto Von Bismarck, a Prussian statesman, the scheme for unification developed. He planned to provoke a French attack which would in turn arouse nationalism in the German states and would therefore prompt unification via the common goal of defending Germany. To instigate this war, Bismarck instituted Prussian Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as a candidate to the Spanish throne after

The French feared encirclement from a Spanish-Prussian alliance and therefore retaliated. As Bismarck suggested, the lower states of the German Kingdom viewed France as the perpetual aggressor and joined with Prussia against France. Nationalistic feelings arose amongst the people and so the states and Prussia came together. The war was ultimately won by the now unified Germany and France was forced to surrender the valuable territories of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany; something that France resented. Upon the conclusion of the war in 1871, the German Empire formed, stronger and more powerful than Prussia had ever been. The Franco-Prussian war highlights the deceptive nature of the Germans and demonstrates how a head figure of the German Empire, Bismarck, was so willing to go to war to simply attain more power, money, and a larger military; actions that can be observed in the latter stages of the war. The war caused the building of a fortified