World War 1 - the main cause

Nationalism in the Balkans was a problem for the Austro-Hungarian Empire who wanted to colonize the area along with Russia and Germany. The evidence of problem was that there were 17 nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian empire who all wanted independence which caused the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to free Serbia and that led to the outbreak of world war one due to the system of alliances. But what caused nationalism was the imperialism from other countries and that leads on to the next reason, imperialism.

Imperialism is an important factor because countries wanted to have a bigger empire so they needed to colonize and therefore meant more money and power and that caused tension between the countries who wanted to rival that. The evidence was that many European empires were colonizing many parts of Africa. Another example is Alsace Lorraine, both German and French empires fought over this piece of land that was great tension between the two empires. And for a country to be imperialist it needs military force to do this and that is my third reason militarism.

Militarism is a dangerous reason for a war because it is needed to colonize and become imperial but can cause lots of tension and that leads to war and that was what happened between Germany and Britain. Britain at the time had a great navy and it needed to have one to protect its large empire, but Germany didn’t want Britain to be more powerful than it’s self in terms of military force so it decided to rival Britain’s navy and an arms race began but it caused mistrust and tension  between the two countries and set up a war stage and all it needed was a trigger and when the trigger was set off other countries were brought in because of the system of alliances and that is my last and most important reason of the start of world war one.

The system of alliances was the most important reason because of its power to draw many countries into war. At the time there were two alliances the triple entente and the triple alliance. Germany, Italy and Austria were part of the latter and Britain, France and Russia were part of the triple entente which was created because they were worried about the threat Germany posed to them (this links with my previous reason nationalism and imperialism). When an alliance between countries is formed there are many reasons mainly for protection from the other country and vice versa, for example that’s what happened in WWII when the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand took place Austria declared war on Serbia which was protected by Russia so Russia declared war on Austria and one by one all the empires were drawn in so in under 10 days everyone was at war. That indicates that this was the most important argument and I will explain why in my conclusion.   

Conclusion

The most important reason was the system of alliances because if it was not there then only 2 or 3 countries would have gone to war but we have to remember that if there was no militarism or imperialism in the empires there would have been no alliances made because there was no tension because of military force or colonization, and that if there was no colonization then there would have been no nationalism that would have caused the assassination of the archduke which triggered WWII. But the fact is that even if one reason existed then it would have drawn in the others so all reasons have played a great part in the cause of WWII but the main one was the system of alliances because it added the word great to war because it drew other empires in. but if none of those reasons exsited would have WWI

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