Germany Expansionism Leading Towards World War I

‘German aggression was responsible for the outbreak of a general European war in August 1914’. How far do you agree with this judgement?

to be more like them so that's the more the reason why they would want

In 1905 Germany developed the Schlieffen Plan which meant that they would be prepared to fight two fronts in a war, the plan established the fact that France was weak and likewise Belgium and could fall easily, giving Germany secure control over the west. Upon AustriaHungary's declaration of war on Russia committed Germany to two fronts potentially too early. With a war looming and a large military presence, nationalist views and a war-ravenous leader, Wilhelm led Germany to a world of

The Second Reich lasted from 1871 until 1918. The first era was known as The Era of Bismarck where Germany started to become a powerful economic and political force in Europe. However, due to Bismarck’s authoritarian rule causing political and social tensions, he was removed from office. William I reined as emperor since the founding of the Second Reich but died in 1888. His son Frederick III then took over only to die of throat cancer months later. This string of events led to William II taking office in 1890. William had his own ideas about both the domestic and foreign policy that

Some historians argue that blame for WW1 is with Germany, through her aggressive foreign policy, whilst others believe it to be with Austria-Hungary for instigating the clash in the Balkans, which eventually, it is argued, created war. Many believe it was the effect of colonial imperialism, and greed that compelled the world leaders to launch an attack enhancing their individual status in the balance of European and World-power. The issue of blame is one which has caused vast controversy throughout history, and was controversially re-opened in the 1960’s by Fischer. Other theories include, the impact of trade rivalry on tension between powers and in launching the arms race thus reinforcing the competition for power and deterioration of

The unifier of the German Empire, Otto Von Bismarck once said,“ A government must not waiver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.” In 1914, Germany and the rest of the world chose a path that few had predicted; a course of a prolonged, intense war that featured unparalleled suffering. In the end, there would be more than thirty-five million military and civilian casualties, with Germany suffering the most military deaths (2.1 million.)1 When the trenches cleared, Germany was left in ruins by the Treaty of Versailles. In 2017, I undertook the mission to change Germany’s fate in “Diplomacy”, the 1954 game by Allan Calhamer. I began the game with the similar pride and nationalistic spirit that

The emergence of the nation has been understood in very different ways at different times. Humanist scholars of the early sixteenth century initiated a discourse about the German nation by identifying contemporaneous populations as descendants of ancient Germanic peoples, as they were represented in the writings of Roman authors such as Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.E. ) and Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55–c.116 C.E. ), author of the famous work Germania. From the viewpoint of Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523), among others, Tacitus provided insight into the origins and character of a virtuous nation that was in many ways equal or superior to Rome. The German humanists found their hero in Armin, or Hermann, who defeated the Romans

     Although in the Treaty of Versailles Germany was to accept full responsibility for World War 1 this in not necessarily the case. Many factors have to be taken into account when considering the cause of World War 1. Germany may have been primarily responsible for the war but the other major powers must accept some of the blame for failing to prevent it. The conflict resulting from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinard should have been local and confined but due to a series of factors, militarism, the alliance system, nationalism, this one incident led to the greatest war Europe had ever seen. As a result of underlying hostilities the assassination led to a chain of

The question is, was it the right decision? To enter the war? Well what else could we have done, be attacked at random, ships constantly destroyed and alliances forming around us, that even a promise that the President of the United States disobeyed. If you don’t get what i’m saying here, i’m saying that there was no way we couldn’t fight the war.

In the Early 1900s Germany was in a Predicament. There was only one country in which they could seek to be an ally with, Austria. Since Germany was currently in a conflict with Russia and France this opened up the opportunity which there was a chance that a two-front war could start and that would be very bad for Germany. Alfred Von Schlieffen came up with what was known as the Schlieffen Plan to combat this problem.

In 1914, the war to end all wars began; it would later become known as World War 1. Every major power in Europe became involved in it at some point. What all these powers had were individual war plans which stated how they would rise above their enemies and claim victory. Unfortunately for some, not all of these plans were created equally. Unlike the other powers of Europe, Germany had created only one plan known as the Schlieffen Plan. The Schlieffen Plan had been created to be used as the perfect tool to winning a war, unfortunately the plan had been born from the arrogance of Alfred von Schlieffen and later altered by Helmuth von Moltke. Due to how the Schlieffen Plan was both created and altered, both von Schlieffen and von Moltke were

How did Hitler use the territories occupied by the Wehrmacht and S.S. to lay the foundations for his expansion of Germany?

The great depression had a lot to do with the second war. The crash caused the Americans to withdraw their investments in Germany. “This caused their production to fall by half.” (Bethel University, n.d)

Once World War 1 was over and a few years later world war two was starting the European countries took a different approach to this war. During the beginning of World war 2 from September 1939 to November 1941 Germany had many victories against other European countries and successfully conquered them. This affected other countries around Germany because they were worried Germany had a great amount of power and strength. Germanys approach to the war was to dominate all of Europe and creating Lebensraum. While Germany was on the Offensive France and the British were conservative and more on the defensive side of things. One of the main lessons the French and British hadn’t learned from World war 1 was, it was offensive power that eventually won

World War I was one of the bloodiest and hardest fought wars ever, with new technology and fighting techniques paired with new massive national armies and a conflict involving countries from all over the world, resulted in over 38 million civilian and military casualties. Germany was a major player in this conflict, and had two countries on the enemy side on its eastern and western borders. Russia to the east and France to the west, Russia of course being the bigger threat. Germany did not want to end up fighting a two front war of attrition that they would probably lose, so they decided to make a plan to prevent that. This plan was called “The Schlieffen Plan.” It stated that