World War 1 was considered to be a very brutal and most destructive war ever in human history that begun in Europe in August 1914. It was the very first war that included nations in it. According to a historian Sydney Bradshaw Fay; who says “it was a complex assortment of causes, notably imperialism, militarism, and alliances that pushed Europe into a war”. Where historians like Fritz Fischer and Niall Ferguson blamed one country particularly.
According to a historian Eric Hobsbawm; who dint find the causes of war in any one specific country or person, but according to him it was in the system of industrial capitalism that had dominated the economies of Western Europe. World War 1 itself had many causes but I think it started due to the Allied powers when Gavrilo Princip who was a Serb student killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife as he was going to be given the Austria-Hungarian throne, where Princip belonged to a group called the Black Hand (formed on 6th September 1901 by the army of Serbia).
The main aim of the Black Hand group was to free Serbia from Austria-Hungary. Infact, the emperor of Austria was relieved when Franz Ferdinand was killed because he anyways disliked him and he also said “God will not be mocked. A higher power had put back the order I couldn’t maintain. ” This event hardly made any impression to the Austrian people “indeed it took the government full 3 weeks for to react” as said in an article by Daven Hiskey. The Alliance System
Europe was divided into two: Triple Alliance that is also known as Central Powers and Triple Entente that is also known as Allied Powers, where triple alliance was made up of Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary, Triple Entente consisted of France, Britain and Russia. The central powers where blamed responsible for causing the World War 1. Militarism Militarism was amongst one of the indirect causes that led to war. Due to the widespread of militarism it had become the second most important cause of World War 1.
Militarism meant investing on the political party and strengthening the country’s army, navy and the air force. According to the historian Sydney Bradshaw Fay believed that militarism was one of the causes that pushed Europe into the war. According to militarists a nation’s military had the rights to decide the issues and according to them the only way to bring peace was to declare a war. The only problem with militarism was that they strongly believed that a country with strong military could not be attacked and if they were attacked then could easily defend them.
One more problem with militarism was it led it arms race, creating tension among other nations and instilling the temptation between countries to “flex their muscles” and mainly to show off their military power. Britain had a very strong royal navy and in terms of the amount of personnel, ships and the carrying capacity was comparatively more than Germany and Austria Hungary. The aristocrats knew that Germany and Austria Hungary was losing, so they thought the best way they could catch up with Britain’s Royal Navy was to declare a War. Some Facts of World War 1
It was also heard during Christmas soldiers stopped fighting for a day where they exchanged gifts and sang carols together. The number of soldiers that died during the World War 1 were 7,996,888 compared to the Iraq war that took place recently around 4,159 coalition soldiers were dead.
http://www. writersbeat. com/showthread. php? t=10412
http://www. todayifoundout. com/index. php/2010/12/what-started-world-war-i/
http://www. kidzworld. com/article/5701-overview-of-world-war-i
