World War I - Episode II ( AGO vs RuFraBriUJa)

 Causes of World War I: MAIN

• Militarism
• Alliance System
• Imperialism
• Nationalism

Militarism

• Most of the countries were increasing their armies and train them.
• Trying to equip themselves with modern weapons.
• Fighters tanks and machine guns were invented.
• Large and new naval ships were made by most of the countries. 
• Germany and Britain were in higher rank as compared to other countries in this context.
• "Our army is the strongest army and no one can win us", this concept was developed in all countries.

      

Alliance System 

• Different countries made different alliances in the 19th century to balance power.
• Triple alliance: 1882
• Austria - Hungary
• Germany
• Italy

• Triple entente: 1907
• Russia
• France
• Britain

• Different alliances during that period is as shown in the figure below:

Imperialism (साम्राज्यवाद)

• Scramble (हाथापाई) for Africa
• Africa, as a big continent, was not fully discovered
• Existing powerful countries wanted to explore new land
• Britain led towards the journey of exploring Africa.
• Other countries wanted to compete with Britain.
• Imperialism helped countries to collect huge manpower and resources.

Nationalism

• In the 19th century, all countries were developing nationalistic feelings in their citizens.
• War was glorified in countries and people were ready to sacrifice for their country.

Immediate Cause

• Prince of the Austria-Hungary empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was in a place called Sarajevo, located in Bosnia.
• Bosnia was in the territory of the Austria-Hungary empire.
• Gavrilo Princep, a Bosnian Nationalist who was wanting to make Bosnia free from the rule of the Austria-Hungary Empire, shot prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the prince died.
• Serbia was the country which was wanting to make Bosnia free from the rule of the Austria-Hungary Empire. Thus, Austria-Hungary Empire blamed Serbia for the assassination.

• Austria-Hungary Empire presented some terms to Serbia and gave them an ultimatum to make the decision on it.
• But some terms were so much humiliating to Serbia and thus Serbia asked for help from Russia.
• Serbia and Russia were closely related to each other by some ethnic groups which were in common between these two countries. Thus, Russia agreed to help Serbia.

• Austria-Hungary asked for help with Germany by using the clauses of the treaty done in 1879.
• Austria-Hungary and Germany declared war against Serbia.
• Russia declared war on Germany.

• Russia and France were tied with each other via a triple-entente treaty done in 1894. Thus France also declared war on Germany.
• All these events happened in July. Thus this was also known as the July crisis.

• Germany decided to declare war against France because it was hard for Germany to fight against the huge army of Russia. 
• Germany did not directly attack France. Instead of that, they chose the route of Belgium. 
• They first attacked Belgium to get into France. 
• When Germany attacked Belgium, United Kingdom attacked Germany because UK and Belgium were also tied with each other via the treaty of 1839 known as "The Treaty of London".

• Germany initially won France but could not reach Paris because armies of Britain gave support to France.
• After the interfare of Britain, there were many wars in same place but no country could win. Neither Britain was able to push Germany back, nor Germany was able to win Britain and France.

• German also got success in war with Russia. 
• Ottoman Empire and Russia were old enemies. Thus, taking the advantage of the weakness of Russia, Ottoman Empire also declared war against Russia. 
• Ottoman Empire tried to capture Suez Canal, which was the only way to connect India with Britain.
• But Ottoman Empire failed to capture the canal and had to step back.

• War not only started between countries but also started among their respective colonies.

• Britain and Japan were linked with each other via an offensive-defensive alliance. Thus Japan attacked some colonies of Germany to weaken them.

• Ottoman empire started bombarding at black seaports of Russia.

• Germany started an attack on the naval ships of Britain and other allied ships.
• Initially, those boats attacked only on naval ships but later on, they started to attack even on passengers ships.
• German mistakenly bombarded the ship which was having American passengers.
• Thinking about the consequences, Germany thought that the USA will then be involved in war in favor of Allied power. Thus they sent a secret letter to Mexico to be involved in the great war taking the side of Central Powers.
• America knew about the letter and American president Woodrow Wilson proposed the parliament to be participated in the war to stop the Germany. 
• This led to the entry of America into World War I in April, 1917.

World War I - Episode III

References:

Study IQ education. (2016, November 5). History - World War 1 - क्यूँ हुआ प्रथम विश्व युद्ध ? जानिये इतिहास हिंदी में (Part 1)- UPSC/IAS/SSC [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOJcHciNMSc