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Causes of World War I

In the summer of 1914 a massive war was started between the great powers. In this essay I will investigate the causes of World War 1 and try to work out which country or countries were to blame for starting it.

In the 1800's, Britain was by far the leading nation. It had an enormous world-wide empire and powerful navy to protect the large amount of land overseas that it owned. Britain was by far the leading European power, but it feared other countries building up a larger navy and catching it up, especially Germany. Britain knew that Germany had caught up with it in industrial production and that Germany's leaders also had strong ambitions to build up a world-wide empire, like Britain already had. In 1914 Britain had an empire of 27 million km and Germany only had 2.5 million km, but Britain was still worried.

In 1870 there was a war between Germany and France called the Franco-Prussian war. The Germans captured a piece of French land called Alsace-Lorraine. The French wanted the Alsace-Lorraine back and were still worried that the Germans may attack again. Previously the French had had a fairly small army, but they expanded it and built strong fortresses on their border with Germany.
In 1908 Kaiser Willhelm, the king of Germany and the ruler of the German army announced that he intended to develop the German navy. Germany started to build more battleships. Because Britain was worried about Germany catching it up and having a larger navy, Britain also started to build more battleships. In 1906 Britain launched HMS Dreadnaught, a new battleship, which could get up to speeds of 21 knots. It was faster and more powerful than any other warship. The Germans copied the British and started to build their own Dreadnaughts. In 1914 Germany had 17 Dreadnaughts and Britain had 29. Even though Britain was well ahead in the Naval Race, it was worried that it could not fund many more of these ships to be built and that Germany would continue to build more of these battleships and threaten Britain's naval supremacy.

In the 1800's the very large country, Russia, had a large population. It also had a large army, but it was badly equipped and poorly led. Russia was quite a poor country which hardly had any industry at all. Russia, along with France and Britain, was worried about Germany's growing strength. In 1904 France and Britain became allies. Because Russia was also worried about Germany's growth, France and Russia made a similar defensive agreement and became allies in 1907. This alliance between Britain, France and Russia was known as the Triple Entente.

Because Russia was a very backward country the other two countries in the Triple Entente planned to help Russia become more powerful. Some ways that they planned to do this were by funding its army to help it improve, by funding it's transport network to improve communications and to help the army get from one place to another more quickly and also by helping it to become more industrial.Germany was surrounded by the three countries in the Triple Entente. Germany's leaders were worried by this and they started to make military plans, in case France and Russia jointly declared war on them. The countries in the Triple Entente knew that they were in a good position. They desperately wanted to weaken Germany and stop it becoming a very powerful country. Another country that surrounded Germany, but was not against it was Austria-Hungary.

The Austrian-Hungarian government strongly opposed the Serbs ideas about Panslavism. Some Serbs began to carry out acts of terrorism in Austria-Hungary because they disagreed with the government. Several secret societies were formed in Serbia and were dedicated to throwing the Austrians out of the Balkans. One of the well-known terrorist group was called the Black Hand.
On June 28th 1914 the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne and his wife visited Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The Black Hand saw this as an opportunity to protest about the Austrians taking over Bosnia to stop Serbian expansion. Several members of the Black Hand were waiting for the archduke when he visited Sarajevo. Firstly a bomb was thrown at his car, which miraculously did not hit him. After this incident Franz Ferdinand was going to leave Sarajevo. His driver turned the car around and as he was doing so, one of the members of the Black Hand, Gavrillo Princip fired two shots at the car. The first killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the second killed his wife, Countess Sophia.

After this event Austria-Hungary was very annoyed with Serbia and blamed them for the killing of the archduke. They accused the Serbian government of helping Princip. This then annoyed Serbia because it was not actually their country, but a small group of Bosnian Serbs. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Before doing so they checked that their German allies would stand by them. The Austrian-Hungarians attacked Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.

On the 29th July the Russian army got ready to help Serbia defend itself against the Austrians. The next day Germany, being in the Triple alliance with Austria-Hungary, sent a threatening message to the Russians ordering them not to help Serbia. Because Austria-Hungary didn't like Serbia this caused Germany to declare war on Russia. Germany also began to move its army towards France and Belgium, because France was a member of the Triple Entente along with Russia. The French army was aware of this and was put on war alert, ready to fight a German invasion.

On the 3rd and 4th of August Germany invaded France through neutral Belgium. Britain, being on France's side, ordered Germany to leave Belgium. When Germany refused, Britain declared war. On the 6th August Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia, because Russia was friendly with Serbia, whom Austria-Hungary had already declared war on and Russia had tried to defend. Also Austria-Hungary had had previous conflicts with Russia about the Balkans.

The German's meticulously planned Schlieffen Plan actually failed. It was a lot weaker in practice than the German's had expected because they were slowed down by fierce resistance in Belgium. The British succeeded at the Battle of Mons and pushed the Germans to the east of Paris. The French had sent the Russians money to develop the army, who mobilized more quickly than the Germans had expected. The Germans had to send two divisions of the army to try to stop them on the Eastern front.

The most important and relevant causes of the war, which country or countries actually caused World War 1 and whether the long term or the short term causes were more important. Because many of the countries declared war on each other, one country can not be to blame. War was always hovering around the countries, rivalries where every where, war was bound to begin, the trigger cause was the assassination on the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, this was just an excuse I think.

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