In 1870 there was a war between Germany and France called the Franco-Prussian war.
The Germans defeated the French and captured Alsace-Lorraine. France wanted Alsace-Lorraine back and thought that Germany attacking again was inevitable. France had a fairly small army but this soon changed. France built a stronger army and made forts around the border between them and Germany.
In 1908 Kaiser Willhelm, king of Germany and ruler of the German army announced that he would build a German navy. This worried Britain, so Britain too started to build more battleships. In 1906 Britain launched the HMS dreadnought that made other ships look out of date. Germany copied Britain and started to build dreadnoughts of their own, trying to match that of the British navy. Although Britain had 29 dreadnoughts and Germany only had 17, Britain was not able to fund any more ships. This worried Britain because they knew that Germany would carry on to build more dreadnoughts and would threaten Britain’s naval supremacy.
In 1904 Britain made an alliance with France due to the fact that they were worried about Germany becoming stronger. Russia was also worried about Germanys growth so they too made an alliance with France in 1907. This alliance between France, Britain and Russia became known as the Triple Entente.
Russia was a very poor country and had almost no industry. Britain and France knew this so they started to fund Russia’s army and funded the transport lines for the country. This meant their troops could move around quicker and import and export was better. Russia became a more industrial country.
Three very strong countries now surrounded Germany. Germany was worried but there was one country that wasn’t against Germany this was Austria. Germany had previously had an alliance with Austria. This was because Austria felt threatened by Russians and by nationalism in the Balkans (an area of land in the southeast Europe).
The Russians wanted the Austrian empire to fall because the Russians wanted a chance to expand in Europe. Austria was worried by Serbia because Austria owned the land to the west of Serbia called Bosnia. Bosnia mainly consisted of Serbs and this threatened Austria. Austria wanted to keep Serbia from expanding but Serbia wanted a coastline. Russia was friends with Serbia because they thought this would increase their influence in the Balkans. This meant Russian was in conflict with Austria. Serbia was mainly made up of Slavs and wanted to come together into one country. Austria didn’t like this idea of Slavs becoming united because this meant that the Slavs in Austria would move to Serbia making Serbia stronger and a bigger concern.
In 1910 there was a defensive agreement between the triple entente, which meant if one country were attacked the other two would send help. This left Germany with a solid steel ring around their country.
On June 28th 1914 the heir to the Austrian throne and his wife visited Sarajevo in Bosnia both of which killed by terrorists. The Austrians believed that the Serbs had killed Franz Ferdinand so they waged war on Serbia. Russia was a close ally to Serbia so they sent help and fought against Austria. This meant Germany had to help Austria against Russia so they sent help, they also moved towards France because France was part of the triple entente. France had their hands full with Germany so Britain sent help to France knowing that if France fell Germany would surely attack them next. This is how Britain became involved in the war, why British soldiers fought in the war and why the war started.
