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The First World War Causes
The First World War Causes
The First World War Causes
Causes
1. Militarism:
a. Militarism means that the army and military forces are given a high profile by the
government.
b. It is based on the idea that war is good for countries.
c. The mistrust between the Great powers caused an arms race. The countries spent
vast amounts of money on manufacturing new weapons, building warships, and
strengthening their armies.
d. The armies of both France and Germany had more than doubled between 1870
and 1914 and there was fierce competition between Britain and Germany for
mastery of the seas. The German, Von Schlieffen drew up a plan of action that
involved attacking France through Belgium if Russia made an attack on Germany.
2. Alliances: An alliance is an agreement made between two or more countries to give
each other help if it is needed. When an alliance is signed, those countries become
known as Allies. The most important were the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-
Hungary and Italy) and the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France and Russia).
3. Imperialism and its colonial conflicts:
The Berlin Conference (1885) had tried to establish rules for the colonisation
of the African continent by European empires. However, the rise of powers such as the
German Empire, one of the last to join the colonial race, reopened conflicts between
European countries.
At the beggining of the 20th century, Morocco was the main scene of
international tensión, as European powers competed to control it.
There were two Moroccan crises in 1905 and 1911 that led to the war.
Treaty of Versailles_Germany
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-
Laye Austria
Treaty of Neuilly-sur-
Seine_Bulgaria
Treaty of Trianon_Hungary
Treaty of Sèvres_Ottoman
Empire
Germany had to pay the costs of the war. It had to reduced its army.
The treaty was considered a diktat.