The country also felt threatened as its neighbouring country, Russia was part of the Triple Entente and was itself building up a vast army. Keeping a strong army was important to Germany because it helped to demonstrate to the rest of the world that they were a rising power. In addition, Germany was also in competition with Great Britain. At the time Britain had the largest navy; something Germany envied. Once Britain started introducing their new battleships, named the Dreadnoughts, Germany followed suit.
All these tensions in Europe between very powerful nations led up to WW1. Even though the Build up of alliances and arms was a tremendous factor in the start of ww1 creating a state of total war. The most important underlying cause of WW1 was imperialism. The Triple Entente had the largest amount of colonies, which meant more military support and a larger budget to spend on their military forces
Germany was 30-40 years old and wanted to have a bigger empire and navy than Britain, which had the biggest empire and biggest navy out of all of the countries. When Britain found out about Germanys plans they begun to worry. Germany was lead by Kaiser Wilhelm II. He decided to test the Entente Cordiale in 1905 when Kaiser had caused trouble with France when he attempted to turn the Moroccan people over throw their ruler Sultan. Germany was trying to gain the Moroccan land which France had already taken over as a colony.
archduke franz Ferdinand The Most Important Cause of WWI was the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Do you Agree? World war 1 was a controversial war, which was also said to be the war to stop all wars. Germany, a powerful empire in the early years of the twentieth century, fought the First World War (1914-1918) alongside the Austrian empire and against the Allies (England, France and Russia.). The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was just a prominent cause for the outbreak of the war; yet, there were other causes as well.
There are many similarities between World War One and World War Two, however the nature of warfare dramatically shifted during World War Two. The scale and spread of war had significantly increased as well as the importance of technology, while plane, tanks and military technology had still been used during world war one its proper potential had not been realized till the Second World War. The rise in technology also contributed allowed powerful tactics of rapid and devastating mobility. The rise of new strategies, tactics and technology had lead to an unbelievable number of deaths in which a majority were civilians. Blitzkrieg was a very successful tactic for Germany which initially brought them success.
“The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 was due to an aggressive foreign policy which had been waged since c.1900”. How far do you agree with this opinion? Explain your answer using sources V, W and X and your own knowledge relating to the controversy. The implication that Germany’s use of an aggressive foreign policy led to the outbreak of the First World War is an extremely controversial topic, and has ultimately caused great debates amongst historians. Fischer, the provoker of this controversy, expresses this concept of German aggression by stating that since c.1900 Germany planned, and then was able to execute a war, due to their aggressive weltpolitik; based purely on expansionism.
By 1914 over a third of British exports went to the empire. Empire also untied people with a sense of patriotism and national identity, people saw themselves as members of the greatest nation on Earth. Despite all of this, even before 1914 the empire was beginning to show signs of strain, the Boer War was one of the first significant impacts in Britain's (and the rest of the world’s) view on imperialism and Britain. The Boer War (1899-1902) was fought directly against the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, in which the Boers were defeated first in open warfare and then in a long and bitter guerrilla campaign. During the war controversial methods like concentration camps and scorched earth policy were used to win the war.
The division was so strong, it eventually led to the Civil War. But sectionalism still isn't the top competing force. In my opinion, the force that had the greatest impact on the nation was expansion. Expansion is the process of extending a states territory by claiming new land, which the United States did a lot of. Expansion affected the nation in many ways other than size.
Great Britain sought control of Egypt to safeguard the route to their flourishing empire in India. Russia also sought strategic land in the Balkans to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea. Nations (China, Africa) that were targets of this Imperialistic game suffered heavily. Cultures were destroyed, and civilization destroyed. Some may say it was a “necessary evil”, because Imperialistic powers took control of their lands, which brought about many achievements, both industrial and economical, and modernized the areas they took control of.
Germany had become a powerful nation in Europe. Its army became bigger and mightier. It had been very close to the province of Austria-Hungary and tried to assert itself. It slowly rose to power only to be crushed, this time by the United States of America. This War involved more countries than any war had seen before or after it.