Why World War I Began Essay

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World War 1 was a global war centered in Europe. This war led to 9 million deaths of soldiers and 7 million deaths of civilians. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in our history, although it led to many revolutions in the countries involved in the war. The direct cause to start World War 1 was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This is just what ignited the war; there are a few main reasons of why the war began. The three main underlying causes where Militarism, Nationalism and Imperialism. The first cause was militarism. Militarism is where the army is the main interest by the people and they should maintain a strong and ready army to be prepared for any attack on their country. Children born in this time where expected to go into the army and fight for their country, it was looked down upon if they chose not to join the army, although that rarely happened. Both the France and German armies doubled in…show more content…
Nationalism means that the people are strong supporters of their country and have much interest in it. Meaning they would like to stick to their countries cultural and economical ways. This arrogance and overconfidence that their way was the right way made nationalism a big cause of World War 1. So when other countries came to imperialize others it made it difficult because the people had such pride and honor in their country and their ways. The third cause is imperialism. This is when a country comes in and claims land as their own and makes everyone living their go by their rule. This strong desire to own more land caused conflict between countries. By 1900 the British controlled land that covered five continents. And France had control over large parts of Africa. Since industrialism was on the rise these countries needed new lands for their marketing to increase. This created a rivalry with Germany who had later come into the competition of land owning but where behind and only owned small parts of

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