World War I, known as the "war to end all wars," occurred between July and November 11, By the end of the war, over 17 million people had been killed, including over , American troops. While the causes of the war are infinitely more complicated than a simple timeline of events, and are still debated and discussed to this day, the list below provides an overview of the most frequently-cited events that led to war.
Countries throughout the world have always made mutual defense agreements with their neighbors, treaties that could pull them into battle. These treaties meant that if one country was attacked, the allied countries were bound to defend them. Before World War 1 began, the following alliances existed:. Germany, seeing that Russia was mobilizing, declared war on Russia. France was then drawn in against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Germany attacked France by marching through Belgium pulling Britain into war. Then Japan entered the war to support its British allies. Imperialism is when a country increases their power and wealth by bringing additional territories under their control, usually without outright colonizing or resettling them. Before World War I, several European countries had made competing imperialistic claims in Africa and parts of Asia, making them points of contention. Because of the raw materials these areas could provide, tensions around which country had the right to exploit these areas ran high.
The increasing competition and desire for greater empires led to an increase in confrontation that helped push the world into World War I. As the world entered the 20th century, an arms race had begun, primarily over the number of each country's warships, and the increasing size of their armies—countries began training more and more of their young men to be prepared for battle.
The warships themselves increased in size, number of guns, speed, method of propulsion, and quality armor, beginning in with Britain's HMS Dreadnought. Dreadnought was soon out-classed as the Royal Navy and Kaiserliche Marine quickly expanded their ranks with increasingly modern and powerful warships.
By , Germany had nearly warships and two million trained soldiers. Great Britain and Germany both greatly increased their navies in this time period. Further, in Germany and Russia particularly, the military establishment began to have a greater influence on public policy. This increase in militarism helped push the countries involved into war.
Much of the origin of the war was based on the desire of the Slavic peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina to no longer be part of Austria-Hungary but instead be part of Serbia. This specific essentially nationalistic and ethnic revolt led directly to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand , which was the event that tipped the scales to war.
But more generally, nationalism in many of the countries throughout Europe contributed not only to the beginning but to the extension of the war across Europe and into Asia. As each country tried to prove their dominance and power, the war became more complicated and prolonged. The immediate cause of World War I that made the aforementioned items come into play alliances, imperialism, militarism, and nationalism was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.
In June , a Serbian-nationalist terrorist group called the Black Hand sent groups to assassinate the Archduke. Their first attempt failed when a driver avoided a grenade thrown at their car. However, later that day a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke and his wife while they were driving through Sarajevo, Bosnia which was part of Austria-Hungary. They died of their wounds. The assassination was in protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region: Serbia wanted to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The assassination of Ferdinand led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. When Russia began to mobilize to defend its alliance with Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia.
Thus began the expansion of the war to include all those involved in the mutual defense alliances. World War I saw a change in warfare, from the hand-to-hand style of older wars to the inclusion of weapons that used technology and removed the individual from close combat.
The war had extremely high casualties over 15 million dead and 20 million injured. A train packed with soldiers leaves a railway station during the Bosnian annexation crisis in Under an treaty, Austria-Hungary was governing Bosnia and Herzegovina, even though technically they were still part of the Ottoman Empire. But after Austro-Hungarian government annexed their territory , the move backfired.
In the First Moroccan Crisis in , he actually sailed to Tangiers to express his support for the sultan of Morocco against French interests.
But instead of backing away from the conflict, the British rose in support of France. Again, the British backed the French, and eventually, Germany was forced to agree to recognize a French protectorate in Morocco. The two crises pushed the British and French closer together, and only hastened an eventual confrontation with the Germans. The Italian government declared war on Turkey in because it had refused to permit the military occupation of Tripoli by Italy.
Italian troops are seen here landing after the bombardment of Benghazi. The Italo-Turkish War ended with a peace treaty, but the Ottoman military left Libya and let the Italians colonize it. It was the first military conflict that featured aerial bombing , but as Fogarty notes, the real significance was that it exposed the shakiness of the Ottoman Empire and its slipping control over peripheral territories.
Soldiers resting with their weapons off a battlefield during the Balkan Wars. Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece, which had broken away from the Ottoman Empire during the s, formed an alliance called the Balkan League.
Bulgaria ultimately was defeated. The Balkan Wars made the region even more unstable. In the power void left by the Ottomans, tensions grew between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. The archduke, who was heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, went to Sarajevo to inspect the imperial troops stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He and his wife Sophie were shot to death in their car by a year-old Serbian revolutionary, Gavrilo Princip. Instead, the tension between European powers increased, as they took different sides in the crisis. As the U. Neither one of them wanted to back down and appear weak.
Fearing a fight that would draw in Russia, Austria-Hungary turned for help to Germany, which promised backing if the Austro-Hungarians used force against the Serbians. German support emboldened Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia on July
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