Factors that Led to World War1

• Militarism means that the army and military forces are given a high profile by the government
• The growing European divide had led to an arms race between the main countries.
• The armies of both France and Germany had more than doubled between 1870 and 1914 and there was fierce competition between Britain and Germany for mastery of the seas.
• The British had introduced the 'Dreadnought', an effective battleship, in 1906.
• An alliance is an agreement made between two or more countries to give each other help if it is needed.
• When an alliance is signed, those countries become known as Allies. These were important because they meant that some countries had no option but to declare war if one of their allies declared war first
• Germany began making alliances to keep France isolated and deprive it from allies that will help it regain the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from the Germans.
• Otto von Bismarck, the German Chancellor, made an alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1882, known as the Triple Alliance.
• In 1904, France and Britain formed the Entente Cordiale which means “friendly understanding.”
• Nationalism means being a strong supporter of the rights and interests of one's country.
• Large areas of both Austria-Hungary and Serbia were home to differing nationalist groups, all of whom wanted freedom from the states in which they lived.
• France was angry because the settlement at the end of the Franco-Prussian war had given Alsace-Lorraine to Germany.
• Russian Pan- Slavists wanted Russia to rule over the Slavs of Eastern Europe
• Imperialism is when a country takes over new lands or countries and makes them subject to their rule.
• By 1900 the British Empire extended over five continents and France had control of large areas of Africa.
• The number of lands 'owned' by Britain and France increased the rivalry with Germany who had entered the scramble to acquire colonies late and only had small areas of Africa.
• France had recently been given Morocco by the British. Morocco’s bid for independence was supported by Germany
• European countries competed for colonies in Asia and in Africa
• Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro- Hungarian throne.
• Princip was a 19-year-old member of the Black Hand Movement, a secret organization that aimed to rid Bosnia of Austrian rule.
• The Serbians hoped that the assassination of the archduke and his wife would lead to a Slavic revolution.
• July 23, 1914 - Austria sent Serbia an ultimatum of many demands that if Serbia did not accept, Austria would declare war.
• July 28, 1914 - Austria declared war on Serbia
• July 30, 1914 - Russia ordered full mobilization of its forces.
• August 1, 1914 - Germany declared war on France, Russia’s ally
• August 3, 1914 - Germany invaded Belgium when the latter refused the former’s request for permission to march through Belgian lands to attack France
• August 4, 1914 - Britain joined the war as a fulfillment of its vow to guarantee Belgian neutrality, and as the ally of France and Russia.
• August 6, 1914 - Austria declared war on Russia
• Western Front - the region in northern France where long and bloody stalemates were fought.
• Germany, caught up in two war fronts, devised the Schlieffen Plan which would first attack and defeat France in the west and then rush to the east to battle out with Russia.
• Germany’s plan failed because the Russians moved faster than expected.
• Eastern Front - the battlefield along the German and Russian border
• At the start of the war, Russia made an attack on Austria and Germany. Russian forces won against the Austrians, but towards the end of 1914, the Austrians defeated the Russians.
• Trench warefare - A form of military operations in which opposing armed forces attack, counterattack, and defend from trenches dug into the ground.
• The western front was marked by a vast network of trenches hundreds of miles across France.
• No man’s land,” an unoccupied land located between two trench systems where opposing camps feared to cross because of the danger of being attacked by the enemy.
• 1914: President Woodrow Wilson announced a policy of neutrality for the United States. Americans, however, found it difficult to maintain such neutrality because:

  • their sympathy was with France and Britain, which were democratic countries;
  • they fear the reign of authoritarian government such as that of Germany and Austria;
  • their Anti-German feeling grew when, in May 1915, a German U-boat sank the British ship Lusitania where around a hundred Americans were among the casualties.
• January 1917: Arthur Zimmermann, German foreign secretary, sent a secret telegram code that was trying to make an alliance with Mexico. In the message, he said that if the Germans emerged victorious, Texas and parts of the American southwest will be returned to Mexico. The British were able to decode the message, which angered the Americans.
• April 1917: The United States declared war on Germany