World War I - "How valid"
"How valid is it to claim that Europe "stumbled into" a world war in 1914" The late 1800's brought upon a growing trend of Imperialism towards Europe and five of her most powerful nations, Russia, France, England, Austria-Hungary, and Germany. Bureaucratic perimeters were being established and once solitary countries, were know becoming great empires. The turn of the century however, brought many modernistic and menacing ideals upon the European State systems including nationalism, socialism, liberalism and militarism. Events that took place before 1914, were all contributors to the outbreak of the Great War. World War I was a war unlike any war the world had witnessed before. Because it was a Total war, opposing forces were brutalizing civilians and economic strategies were changing in order to positively effect the war effort. The claim that the European countries unintentionally stumbled into a war that they could not withdraw from would in some ways be true but others may argue the fact that Europe did not stumble into a war, but that the war was in fact an inevitable situation. To understand the complex origins of the Great War would raise questions such as "
Another factor that may have caused the conclusion of the rivalries to be a world war may have been the arms race. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1912, a power vacuum was associated with the area of the Balkans. These factors made for a very tense setting in Europe, and when the archduke was assassinated, these tensions exploded into war. One must abandon the dictum of the Versailles Treaty that Germany and her allies were solely responsible" Bernadotte E. In this sense, all the European countries, in a greater or less degree, were responsible. Because so many different powers were involved in mutual defense agreements, when the war did happen, it involved nearly every country of Europe. These plans only awaited the go-ahead signal. The great powers sectioned off Africa among them, established spheres in Asia. This may or may not have led to tensions between certain countries resulting in the mistrust of one another, a major mood during this point in time. Nevertheless, the miscalculations and the false assumptions made by political figures resulted in the failure to take a diplomatic approach to the resolution of conflict, but rather, Europe found itself in a total war in what was just a few weeks after the crisis. Due to the alliances, some powers were forced to support policies followed by their partners, which they didn't really condone. This led to the interference of Germany as they were in an alliance with Austria-Hungary (dual alliance) which proclaimed that if either one of them was placed in war with Russia, the other would provide assistance. All of these factors in some way precipitated the war.
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