Causes of world war one
Imperialism
Alliances
Nationalism
Militarism
The belief that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests
Germany wanted to become an imperial power and to do this they had to build their navy and military rapidly.
The German army consisted of 3.5 million more soldiers than the British army and German spies stole British plans for the Dreadnought which was the new warship Britain had developed
Germany wanted to compete with Britain's navy which was the largest in the world at the time so a race to build new battle ships started causing tension between Britain+Germany
A policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonisation, use of military force, or other means
A union or association formed for mutual benefit, especially between countries or organisations
identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations
Germany wanted to expand its empire across the globe to become a European super power
Britain had a 26 bigger population and 11 more land then Germany causing the Germans to be jealous
Austria Hungary came into the equation as they hated Serbia who were backed by Russia and therefore because of their Germanic heritage it made sense to ally with Germany also Germany didn't want to be encircled
The members of the triple alliance were also united in their fear of Germany. With the stage clearly set the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand was the last straw and triggered the alliances into war
Russia, Britain and France all wanted status quo (things to remain the same) whereas Germany and Italy were united in their want for things to change to allow them to build empires which caused tension
Nationalist propaganda which was in newspapers, songs and posters demonised rivals putting them in the wrong along with their methods
German, French and British nationalists were all certain their country held a position of military and economic supremacy and this brought everyone to war as they all thought they were the top dog
Nationalism provided the trigger for world war one as it was the black hand gang who were the Serbian nationalist group who killed Franz Ferdinand to start it all off
Germany was envious of France an Britain's empires and thought it should have empires just like them as Britain had 390 million people overseas in their empire
Examples of Imperialism causing the war
At the conference Kaiser was humiliated, this made him fill with rage because he wanted to be seen as Major power in Africa.
Instead, he was treated as if he had no right in speaking at the conference that was made global news. In 1911 France tried to take over Morocco again
There are two main crisis’s that occurred in Morocco in 1905 and 1911. In 1905, Kaiser visited Morocco in North Africa, where Germany was building up its own Empire. An international conference was held in 1906
In 1880, Germany had a conscripted army of 1.3 million people, and in 1914, she had a conscripted army of 5.0 million people
Nationalism was key to the start of the war as both the triple alliance+entente thought they were superior to the other and therefore failure was not an option
This shows us the increase of militarism leading up to ww1 and how the tension caused from this was a short term cause for the war
Triple entente=Britain/France/Russia
Triple alliance=Germany/Austria Hungary/Italy
Alliances were key to world war as no one was going to start the war if they did not believe that they had other powerful nations supporting them
Alliances meant that some countries had no option but to declare war if one of their allies declared war first
After the Napoleonic both Germany and Italy were divided and it was nationalism that spurred them to re-unify Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871 making them both very nationalistic states
Large areas of both Austria Hungary and Serbia were home to different nationalist groups all of them wanted freedom from the states they lived=increases tension=war inevitable