World War One

World War one was most destructive of its time. The World war was conducted in enormous scale. It has introduced in modern times the concept of total war, day light savings and the concept of universal suffrage. This historical event showed the futility of war to resolve international disputes and enormous cost in terms of precious human life. Still in modern world there exist potential for another destruction of human civilization if disputes are resolved by military means rather than by dialogue and diplomacy. War mongering is not a solution to international dispute.

Causes of World War One

The primary cause of World War One is that Europe was dominated by powerful powers like France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia and Britain. At this time Britain had the largest empire and navy.

The War also is historical product of Germany’s configuration in the 18th and 19th century to protect its territory, which is posed primarily by France. As well, the world war one was caused to some extent of the fragility of the alliance system. For example in 1860’s Germany was made up of small or little states. However, in the period of 1864 to 1871 the largest state Prussia had three wars. This culminated in bringing the rest of Germany under its control. In the last war it defeated France and seized Alsace-Lorraine. At that time, the Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck was fearful that France would take revenge by creating an alliance with powerful powers in Europe such as Russia and Austria. To stop this happening, Bismarck made alliances with all major mainland powers in Europe such as Russia, Hungary, Austria and Italy. As well, Germany maintained good relationship with Britain. This made France powerless.

However, the Bismarck diplomacy failed. In 1888 and 1890 Kaiser forced Bismarck to resign and the treaty with Russia lapsed. This made Russia and France alone against the alliance of Germany. This produced nervousness and they signed dual entente. Tension began to rise as dispute between two of the powers had the potential to draw the other three. For 40 years Britain did not involve itself in European affairs. However, after the dual entente between Russia and France, Britain declared to patch up with France even though France was their traditional rivals. In 1904 British signed entente cordiale acknowledging French control of Morocco and French acknowledging British control of Egypt. This agreement even though it was not a military pact or agreement Germany thought it was anti-German and Germany broke their earlier agreement with Britain. In 1905 Kaiser visited Morocco and declared Morocco to be independent of French control and hoped Britain would not support France and the agreement with France will collapse.