So, recently while surfing through Reddit I happened to enter a thread discussing the reasons for WW1. I entered it because of my love for the industrial and interwar periods. They are my most favorite historical period's hands down. The decaying corpses of imperial dynasties, the revolutions of this era and their colonializations continue to haunt us today. I see world war one as the one conflict that not only ended centuries of dynastic powers but also allowed us to enter the modern age. It changed our outlook on the concept of war, on nationalism and the world order in general. The reason I asked why WWI occurred, is because I would love to discuss it here. I don't know if there are any history buffs here, but to those people, I would love to hear your answer to this question: Why did the great war happen?
sadly ww I can be said to be an accidents..... a prince of austria got assasinated and got two conties at wars, this then involved countries that have firmed an alliance pact with those two countries....but at that times those pact involved most countries and became a snowball effect.....e.g....austria allied with italy, but italy is allied with germany, and germany where allied with other nations (and you have to consider those nations that where colonies) and ended with half of the world involved in a war....
there were monarchs before and after the war iindustrialization started before ww1 though just like in all wars before, during the war the most progress was made too many reasons, in my opinion everyone wanted it from the far left communists that wanted to start a rebellion to the far right monarchs
While there were several factors overall the beginning spark was the assasination of the crown prince of austria.
Rather than talk about the boring old past, why not discuss the future? Can anyone guess when WW III might come along? And why? I’m hedging my bets on a beef between trump and Kim Jong-Un but then again, I have always had shitty luck with bets..
Things were quite unstable at the time, as shown by the activity of anarchist-aligned terrorism attacks. The old thing about the "haves" and the "have nots", but rocked by the fact that the reason behind the "haves" having had become obsolete, obscure or whatever, with former "have nots" becoming "haves". Progress progressed and had people jumping on the bandwagon without really understanding what "progress" means. In the end, something was done that shouldn't have and it was the last straw, so lots of people started to take advantage of it to vent their frustrations and take what they thought was theirs. In the end, optimism took root too strongly on both sides, so it became some kind of twisted chicken race, and by the time optimism faded, things had escalated so much that no one could afford to be the one to chicken out..
That's a bit like asking "why does the sun rise?" or "will tomorrow come?" isn't it? The answer can be as technical or as simple as you like. A 100 page essay on the political and military reasons it happened could easily be summed up with "it was inevitable". I'm not an expert on the first world war, or on much of anything really, but the underlying reason seems awfully simple. Industrialisation ballooned the power of the military and technology so far beyond what it had been, a military conflict was inevitable. A new era of warfare means no one knows what they're doing, and not knowing what you're doing is unacceptable to wise men. Since Europe was filled with wise men ruling powerful nations, testing weaponry and discovering what the new way of warfare was like was a top priority for everyone. But the political alliances in place, the best interests of a nation in general, and the fact that everyone felt the same way, meant the slightest conflict would result in the entire continent being dragged into war. Although much of this is obvious to us now, back then it would not be. They would believe it could happen, but not neccessarily that it would. The first world war was inevitable, and how its outcome was handled made the second inevitable as well. it's all a curse~
Ah yes, the mind-boggling complexity of pre-war alliances. Well yes, there were monarchs after and before. But the monarchies after WW1 were way weaker. The German, Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires died out after it. So not many monarchies continued to exist. Many of them were constitutional monarchies. The second industrial revolution was the reason for many of the rivalries that caused these imperial empires to enter into secret and not so secret alliances with one another. It was also one of the main reasons for WW1, imo. And yes, the monarchies were in danger of due to indemnic divisions caused by socialism, but not to the degree that it was one of the causes for the war.
No the base causes of ww1 are easy to see 1 nobility was still around after but at this point of time they still had a greater influence. This made the death of one far bigger of a deal then say a prince being killed nowadays in most cases dialogue would take place over something like this before rushing to war again depends on nations. 2 communications sucked information gathering sucked which made people rush with little actual understanding of what even happened. And 3 treatises caused ww1 Europe was a mess up treaties for war once shit hit the fan everyone rushed to honor them regardless weather they should have. Most mutual assistance agreements nations have focus on defense ie the one you are helping was attacked and not the attacker. Which likely cuts down on a lot of conflicts since you cant be the aggressor and still get help in most cases.
There are tons of information about that. There is even a huge channel Great War or something on Youtube.
The causes are many, but the trigger was the assassination of heir apparent Archduke Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist-terrorist. Ironically, Ferdinand actually had been firmly opposed to war with Serbia cuz he had rightly predicted that Russia would join in.
They really didn't. The initial stages of the war were fought on ideas that didn't suit the new era of warfare. You can see that in the uses of cavalry and the various charges on no man's land. Many of the casualties were caused by inexperience in this new type way of war.
WW1 happened because some Archduke got assassinated. The tangled Web of alliances is what made it worse
Yes. His death just provided the Austrian-Hungarian empire a reason to attack Serbia. And since the ones the Serbians were Slavs, the Russians saw fit to provide protection and declare war if the Austrians attacked. The Austrians then entered into an alliance with the Germans, which provided them with the blank cheque, a promise of unconditional support for Austrian retaliation.
In my point of view the assassinated prince is just used as an excuse to start the wars. Would it be that big if nobody want it? Maybe there's some inside story that we don't know. Maybe he got assassinated because he opposed the war? Maybe it just because the other country want to get rid of him, or some conspiracy from his own land who knows, sometimes what written on history books aren't all of it something can be changed for a certain purpose, well it's just what i thought so i don't say what i said is correct feel free to judge it haha
I'd argue by the end they'd still barely moved forward. Almost the entire war was fought in trenches with fixed battle lines. And by the time it was over, what they had learned became useless with the increasing perfection of the tank. They learned how to use their new toys, but when they looked up the board had changed again. Must've been maddening.