World War 1

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.