Causes of The First World War Germany's economy, after defeating France in the Franco- Prussian war in 1870/1871, was growing really fast, particularly in the industrialization sector and the construction of railways and together with unification of the nation, lead Germany to became one of the most powerful nation in Europe and it was one of the causes of the First World War. The Nationalism, which grew bigger in Europe, was also one of the long-term causes of the First World War." The Nationalism took place after the French Revolution in 1792 and the idea of Nationalism was that people speaking the same language, of the same ethnic origin and with the same customs should have an independent state."# Nationalism took place in Germany and Italy and it lead to the unification of it states.
Another of the long-term causes of The First World War, were the Imperialism, the Welpolitic policy and the Colonial Rivalry. The Welpolitic was a policy first used by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1896, who believed that Germany had to become a global imperial power and " he summed up a statement saying that ‘nothing must henceforth be settled in the world without the intervention of Germany and German Emperor‘."# Kaiser's policy created tensions between other nations and its policy lead Germany to increase and train its army and build a bigger and stronger Navy which threatened the economic interests of Britain as Germany started to claim colonies in Africa and Asia causing both empires to come into a conflict.
The Growing Armed Forces was another of the long-term causes of the First World War. The growth of the Armed Forces which started "in the early twentieth century as the European powers were terrified of being caught unawares. If one country increased the size of it armed forces, as Germany did in 1912, its rivals immediately did the same: Russia responded to Germany's 1700,000 increases by swelling its army by half a...