Causes of World War I

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Causes of World War I

“Fighting for your country is the greatest honor a man could have”, never before World War I was this statement so widely spoken. World War I changed the way wars were fought. It changed the way wars were in general. Nationalism, the want to fight for your country was truly a heavy cause of World War one, everybody wanted to do the right and upstanding, honorable thing. With that came imperialism, simply taking over other regions and having more power and land was a reason to start a war in itself. The final cause was Alliances; countries that fought with you when you needed them now needed you. Even if your country was not directly in the war you were dragged in with your allies. Everybody had a bone to pick with at least one country; therefore everybody was fighting thus created, a World War.

Everybody fighting in World War I had an enormous amount of nationalism. Every single one of them was ready and trained all their years of schooling to fight in a war for their country. Classes in Germany they were so committed they didn’t learn math and how to form sentences; they learned weaponry and the proper way to fight. Not to mention everybody talked about was as if was glorious and thrilling, as if it wasn’t a bunch of men, friends and family dying every day. There was over 37 million casualties and 16 million of those were deaths, although only 9.7 million of those were cause to the military force that still a huge number. The men knew the consequences, they knew death was a probable possibility yet still goose-bumps came upon their necks when in the presence of a real soldier, something they were to be one day, hopefully. This ties into Militarism, a cause underneath the larger one of nationalism. Militari...

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...h immediately brought them into the war, dragging Britain and France right behind them. France was more than willing though, after all the fighting with Germany and the fact that Germany went through burning their town in the beginning of WWI.

Nationalism, Imperialism, and Alliances were the three main causes of World War I. All three connected and all three played a huge hand in turning the killing of a prince into an enormous war that brought all of Europe and eventually everywhere and everyone else into the war. These three causes did not only exist in the military forces, they started when you walked in to kindergarten and lasted until you died, perhaps in the battlefield which was your destiny and the only honorable place for a young man in an upstanding family to be. Never before was a war so impacting and without any of these key pieces wouldn’t have been.

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