Causes of World War I Essay

Submitted By chingling1998
Words: 675
Pages: 3

“How many times in the last two years have we heard people repeat “Better war than this perpetual waiting!” In this wish there is no bitterness, but a secret hope.” Although people were deceived to believe the good in war, millions of people died .In the 1800’s all of European countries were on the same level till they started to get competitive with each other. All the smaller countries tried to join alliances with other countries in fear that a bigger country would conquer culture and mange religious views. The fear mostly came from Great Britain being the country that conquers lands. The underlying causes of World War I were caused by nationalism, the betrayal and distrust between allied countries, and also the increase in expansion of military.
Leading up to World War I Great Britain and Germany was the strongest competitors. Britain was believed to be the strongest because of their control over showing nationalism. British natives they believed they were better than everyone, and still do to this day. It was like Britain fell off the pride and joy shown by their natives. In a poem written by James Thomson in the late 1700’s, Thomson says “Britain shall flourish great and free, but every other country would dread and envy Britain”. This was known as the unofficial national anthem in Britain. Eventually Britain provoked Germany to make a more creating chain reaction with the rest of Europe having an all-out war. All of the countries had the will to fight, but no one wanted to make the first move. With this ten million people gave up their lives as a result of war to protect their nation and stand up to what they believe in. Every solider believed in protecting their king and their country. Nationalism had a big role in World War I. Without defendants of a country none of these wars would have happened.
The Alliances were formed to create balance of power and maintain peace in Europe. The strongest alliance included Great Britain, France and Russia and was known as The Triple Entente. They were form as a result of the formation of The Triple Alliance which included Austria/Hungry, Italy and Germany. These alliances were not necessarily based on their geographic location. For example Germany lies between Russia and France but could not come to an agreement therefore they joined forces in The Triple Alliance. As the countries formed their alliance in hope of preserving the peace, they secretly were building up their military, which we now can see escalated to a bloody long war. “The alliances created an excessively rigid diplomatic framework, within relatively small detonators