The Cause of World War One The Great War or more widely known as World War 1 was ultimately

caused by imperialistic beliefs such as nationalism, and militarism, the alliance system, and the failure of each European country to resolve the matter without the use of military force (Document 6). Between 1870 and 1914 the imperialistic belief of militarism was promoted greatly because Scotland, France and Germany greatly increased the amount of money in which they spent on military weapons greatly. This caused fear and provoked countries to ally with other countries thus giving rise to the Alliance System (document 7). There were two alliances, one, the Triple Alliance, which consisted of Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary (Document 2). The second of the two, the triple Entente, was composed of Russia, France and Great Britain (Document 2). If a member of an alliance declared war or was attacked the allies of that country would rally together and declare war against the attacker. On June 28th 1914 murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand took place in Bosnia. Ferdinand was attending a meeting in Bosnia in an opened top car when he was targeted. The first assassin missed and fled. When Ferdinand reached his destination a young man by the name of Gavrilo Princip shot him at point blank range. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the boiling point for the dispute between Serbia and Austria-Hungary and caused an out roar. About one month later Austria-Hungary demanded that Serbia would punish all terrorist groups, prevent negative media from the press and to allow Austria-Hungary to eliminate all of those in Serbia that opposed (document 3). If they refused the ultimatum Austria-Hungary would take military action and cause a war between almost all of Europe. Serbia agreed to all but one demand, that AustriaHungary could take part in the judicial matters of Serbia. Five days later Austria-Hungary broke

off political relations with Serbia due to their strong sense of nationalism. Three days later declared war with Serbia. The triple entente sided with Serbia. Because Austria-Hungary was part of the triple alliance they were aided by Italy and Germany. This escalated into a war between most of Europe. In response to the heinous events that occurred involving the assassination of AustrianHungarian officials and negative light from Serbian media they declared war and refused compromise because of their sense of nationalism (paragraph 5). Even so due to AustriaHungary a war escalated to be even greater. World War One was caused by each party that participated in the war originally between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. Because of all the participants the war escalated until it became a world war.