Economic Rivalry
For about 10 years before World War 1 broke out, Germany was seriously challenging Britain for the industrial leadership of Europe. The German manufacturing industries was becoming more efficient than Britain's and their goods were beginning to outsell British ones in the European market.
This rivalry extended into the Balkans and the Middle East. So the Germans planned to build a railway from Berlin to Baghdad, in the Persian gulf region and branch lines in Egypt and Africa to gain more raw materials and markets. Britain looked upon this German competition as a political threat and a economic threat, especially in India.
Naval Competition
When the 1900 came around Britain had the world's most dominant navy and military experts believed that a strong and productive navy was necessary not only to complement a nation's army but also to protect colonial trade and commerce. In 1906, British shipyards had produced the most sophisticated warship to date, the dreadnought, but in 1908 Germany began a massive expansion of there navy, themselves. British then began to fear that she would fall behind and so the British government decided to build 4 new dreadnoughts but the people disagreed to make 4 but 8. By the 1914 the British navy had maintained their lead with 29 battle-ready dreadnoughts to the German navy's 17 and 7 dreadnoughts.
Nationalism
( Meaning unity, exclusiveness, and common interests of all people). Naturalism is unfortunately not always a healthy force but it leads to violence and power struggles. In the 1900 naturalism was weakening the families which had joined the ruling of Europe for 100's of years.France still smarting form her losses to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, sought revenge. She wanted not only to regain the coal-rich area of Alsace-Lorraine, but also to reestablish her pride.
Germany felt that the other European nations were denying her a rightful postions as a larger and major power. Since Germany was a relative newcomer to the European power system, she had a colonial empire much smaller than that of Britain or Frances.
Alliances
When 1914, Europe was divided into The triple Alliance that included Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy and The Triple Entente formed that was formed by Britain, France and Russia.
Austria-Hungary had entered into a alliance with Germany Dating back to 1882 and each nation would help the other in the event of a Russian attack. Austria-Hungary understood this agreement also to mean that Germany would assist her in a attack on Russia.
Russia and France formed as alliances in 1895, agreeing to wage a joint war if attacked by Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Assassination
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| Assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand |
The final straw that broke the line between peace and war was the assassination of Archduke
Franz-Ferdinand. The heir to the throne, Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was killed with his wife Sophie on
June 28th 1914 while on the way to visit to Sarajevo. They where killed by a gun at point blank by a man named Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary took this assassination as a threat and declared war on Serbia.
