Causes for Germanies entry to WW1
World War One was caused solely by the aggression of one country and its allies. It was made possible by the political, military and economical environments inside the aggressor country. These all contributed to the initiation of the First World War by the then mayor European power, Germany. To the credit of the Prussians, Germany had the largest (except for Russia), best equipped and best-trained army of Europe. With their innovative use of the heavy machine gun (the Maxim gun) in protected pillboxes the German quickly had an edge in over the other European armies. To use this military might in an effective way the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alfred Von Schlieffen devised an attack plan appropriately named the Schlieffen plan. According to this plan the bulk of the German army had to march through Belgium and Luxembourg attack France out flanking its armies in the process and after a six-week campaign France would be defeated and the whole German Army could then attack Russia. "The Schlieffen Plan rested on two critical assumptions. The first was the preservation of overwhelming German numerical superiority against France. The second was the inability of the R
However, the influence of the economic pressure on the government and therefore the military coupled with an unstable belligerent ruling class were the main reasons for Germany's planed, unilateral and devastating First World War. The only democratically elected organ of the German government was the Lower House of parliament or Reichstag its only power consisted in denying the government funds for "operating the state". " The political structure of the German Reich, as defined by the Federal constitution of 1871, may best be described as a facade of a parliamentary monarchy superimposed upon the edifice of an authoritarian state dominated by the reactionary, militarist, landowning aristocracy of Prussia"(Kelroy pg. This happened because the German Government had, under Bismarck, created separate peace agreements with each of the political parties. With no inner political opposition the ruling class of the German Empire was free to pursue its agenda of dominance over Europe and with it the World. At the end of the 1800īs and the beginnings of the 1900's Germany had become the largest producer of industrial manufactured goods in Europe. This way Germany did prosper in the late 1800's however, during the 1900's a few things changed. An army, however, does not order itself into war this is done by the state, and the German Government's political structure in the early 1900īs proved especially prone to war. During 1914 this created the feeling in that if the war were not started soon then the military advantage over its neighboring adversaries would be lost. So, Germany was found itself with a great need to export products, the capacity to export an even greater amount of products but nowhere to export them to. the undeniable fact that the German Empire was loosing its margin of strategic superiority in Europe over the combined armed forces of France and Russia"(Kelroy pg. For any small war with any of her neighbors would have, and did, activate the alliance systems initiating the First World War; Which the Germans, or more specifically the Kaiser and the Prussians, though they were perfectly capable of winning.
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Acceptance Essays
