The Underlying Causes Of World War One

The First World War was often referred to as "The Great War", because world had not seen a war so extesnsive before. The war lasted for four years - 28. July 1914 to 11. November 1918. It has been one of the most deadliest conflicts in human history, over 18 million soldiers and civilians died in it. (Royde-Smith 2017) Many scholars still debate the underlying causes of the war, because there are different aspects that contributed to the war. It was a chain of events that had started this e.g. imperialism, alliances, growth of militarism and nationalism. While there are many reasons, which lead to the war, the three most outstanding aspects are imperialism, militarism and the assasination of Franz Ferdinand.
Imperialism is an action, where country extends its power by the acquisition of territories (Sinha 2014). Countries such as Britain, France, Belgium and Italy had colonies all over the world. In 1900, the British Empire covered a fifth of land-area of the earth and France had enormous colonies in Africa. (Crocker 2014) While France and

spending on Military increased rapidly in the years prior to the war. (Browne 2014) The nations of Europe were militaristic, but the two most outstanding countries were Germany and Great Britain, both of them increased their nayy. Later on the military estabilishment began to have a influence on public policy in Germany and Russia. (Kelly 2017) These attempts gave nations the means to make war. In connection with militarism, historians have developed a dilemma-cult of the offensive. The phenomenon swept through Europe before the beginning of the war. The dilemma can be defined as the militaries’ tendency to glorify the offensive and adopt offensive military strategies, often accompanied by civilian elite assumptions that the offense had the advantage in warfare. (Evera