In this essay, I will show you what had caused World War One, which began after Britain and Germany went to war on August 4^th 1914. This war had not only cost millions of pounds in supply’s, but also millions of lives, but why?

There are many reasons this war broke out, these are but a few short term reasons for this to happen. The first and most important reason for this war was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Arch-Duke of Austria-Hungary, at the 28^th of June 1914. This assassination was planned and carried out by a terrorist group known as ‘The Black Hand’. The members of this organisation were; Gavrillo Princlip; Danilo Ilic; Jovanovic; Cabrinovic ;Popovic ;Cubrilovic ;Grabez and Mehmed Mehmedbasic. This happened as Franz Ferdinand’s driver took a wrong turn on the way to E.R., turning into Franz. Street, and there stood Gavrillo Princlip, who realising his chance, shot Franz Ferdinand in the neck, the reason for this was freedom, the Black Hand believed that Bosnia-Serbs should be freed from Austrian rule. Another short term reason for this war was Austria-Hungary waging war on Serbia, this was exactly a month after the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand, 28^th July 1914, this was linked , no coincidence, as Austria-Hungary wanted revenge on Serbia for the death of Franz Ferdinand. This war was declared by Franz’s brother, Franz Joseph.

There are still many more reasons for the outbreak of World War One, but those were the main short term reasons, now there are a few long term reasons for why this war broke out, such as the arms race. Germany and Britain were rivals of the arms race, each doing anything and everything they could to get equipped and prepared before the other.

Britain had the advantage in the Naval Race ( the race to get the larger and better equipped navy ) as Britain had 388 ships in the navy, which was 107 ships larger than Germanys navy with 281 ships, but when it came to the number of soldiers, Germany dominated Britain with over 5 times the recruits, as they had 4,200,000 soldiers, whereas Britain had 700,000. This was because not only did Germany have a larger population, their soldiers were conscripted (forced into the army) while Britain’s troops had volunteered to fight. Although these advantages appeared to be evened out by the collection of supply’s, as Germany collected 277 million tonnes of coal, with Britain just topping it with 292 million tonnes, Germany still ended up collecting more steel with 14 million tonnes, while Britain were collecting 11 million tonnes. Britain on the other hand had a lot of imperialism (desire to build up a large empire), Britain had created many colonies worldwide, over 27 million square kilometres of land was colonised by Britain, although Britain were not the only imperialised empire, so were France with 11 million square kilometres of colonised land, and also Germany, with just 2.5 million square kilometres, so this had put the Triple Entete ( the alliance between Britain, France and Russia) at a massive advantage.

There were a few other reasons for the outbreak of World War One, one of which was the reason Britain was part of this war. This was connected to Germany’s plan to defeat France and Russia, created by Alfred von Schleiffen, this was none other than the Schleiffen Plan. The idea of this plan was to win the two-front war by first quickly defeating France in the west, this was planned to take 39 days to defeat Paris, and an extra 42 days to took over France, this was thought to work as Germany had beaten France before in the Franco Prussian war. After this, Germany thought that the Russian army would not have mobilised t quick enough to defend themselves.

The mistake Germany had made with this plan was that they went through Belgium so they could attack from the west of Paris.

The reason this was a mistake, was travelling through Belgium, as Britain promised to protect Belgian neutrality, and because of this, Britain went to war with Germany, something they never saw coming.

Still, the most important reason for this war to have occurred was the fact that Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princlip, because this caused Franz Joseph to wage war on Serbia, this then caused Russia to fight as they had always supported Serbians. This then brought Russia, from the triple Entete and Austria-Hungary, from the triple Alliance ( the alliance formed from Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) to war.

This shows that World War One was caused by so many things, from an assassination, to marching through a country, the wars intensity and death count could have lessened dramatically if any one of the many reasons had never occurred, but Europe (and Britain’s worldwide colonies) who had awaited the excitement and thrill of battle, realised that the war had lasted much longer, and was a lot more merciless than anyone had expected, it was a massacre of a war, a war that frightened us all.