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Causes Of World War 1 Dbq

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When asked who started it, many people will turn and point to someone else in the room. But when asked what started World War I people point to many different causes and countries. Little bit of background, World War I started in 1914 and ended in 1918. Many countries in Europe were involved and there were many casualties throughout the war. The one remaining question is what exactly was the underlying cause of World War I? There are three things that could have possibly been the cause of the war: militarism, imperialism, or alliances. These next three paragraphs will discuss, in order from least to most accusable, how they caused the war. Militarism is considered a cause of the war because in the years leading up to the war the Triple Entente …show more content…

On the map in Doc E a map of the world is shown showing how much of the world’s oceans Britain had under control. Then in Doc F we’re shown imperialism in the size of colonial empires. Once again, Britain had the most square miles of empire. Due to this, many countries felt threatened by Britain (as well as Russia) and promptly made Austria-Hungary and Germany worried about their trade. Nonetheless, this is not the underlying cause of war either. Control over more land doesn’t warrant a war. What actually started the war was the alliances between countries. Countries in Europe formed alliances with each other (e.g., Russia, Britain, and France in the Triple Entente and Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy in the Triple Alliance) (Doc A). The countries in the Entente all blamed Germany for the war and felt the need to intervene (Doc B). Germany was backing up Austria-Hungary and Russia was backing up Serbia whom were in a spat. Which lead to invasions and more friends of these countries joining the war to aide them. World War I was started by alliances with militarism and imperialism as aiding factors. Although, there are many more possible things that could have kept the war between Serbia and Austria-Hungary alliances was most likely the main reason why the war became widespread. This is not to say that having allies is a bad thing, but this goes to show how quickly things can get out of hand when blood is

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