America and the Great War Essay,

America and the Great War Essay,

I will be discussing America and the great war which is also known as World War I. A key cause of World War I was due to the assassination of Austrian ruler, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. A Serbian by the name of Gavrilo Princip was responsible for the assassination, as a result Austria declared war on Serbia. During this time, they were several alliances between countries in Asia and Europe. This assassination then caused a ripple even which started the war. Countries like Germany was forced to enter the war because they were allies of Austria. Russia and Serbia were in alliance, so they joined the war also, and because of all other alliances, Japan, France, Britain and Belgium soon followed.
I believe that nationalism played a key role for Princip to commit the murder. He was part of a Serbian nationalist group called Black Hand. The Black Hand’s goal was to cause a war with Austria. They had a movement called Pan-Slavism, the purpose of this movement was to unite the Slavic states together, this was now underway.
Another factor that caused the war was Imperialism, because many countries were expanding at the time to build their territories across different continents. Austria had recently annexed Bosnia into their empire. Due to the annexation of Bosnia to Austria, many Serbian nationalists did not take this lightly, because they wanted Bosnia, which was a Slavic state, for themselves.
Militarism was also one of the core reasons for the War. In the early 1900’s there was a growth in the military influence on policy making. This was seen mainly in Russia and Germany. At this time the German Army was called a "State within the State". Germany was building up their navy proficiencies, so the British strived to stay a step ahead. Due to the increase of nationalistic sentiment, their where more people that were willing to sacrifice and fight for their country.
As a result, the size of the military forces had increased because most of the European countries...

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