Indirect Causes of World War I

MILITARISM

Militarism was another indirect cause of World War I. Many of the main countries were rushing and trying to build their military as fast as they could. This was called the “arms race”. The French and the German army have both doubled, and Britain and Germany had a “naval arms race”. The naval arms race started when Britain built one of the best battleships during that time – the “HMS Dreadnought” (the name even strikes fear in its opponents). This led Germany to build their own versions of the “Dreadnought” battleships too. Because of that, Britain reacted by building even more Dreadnoughts, until this massive production of building dreadnoughts became the naval arms race. These races of building and bulking up their own military are important causes due to the fact that militarism was driving the war and to use their military to benefit their country’s gains. In addition to that, many countries already had “war plans”, which furthers this “militarism” and wanting to accomplish goals by using the military. For example, Von Schlieffen wrote a war plan long before even World War I started. His plan was used by the actual Germans to use in World War I. That and the other reasons is how militarism was such a main causation of World War I.

NATIONALISM

Militarism was just one cause though. Another prominent one was nationalism. Nationalism has two main definitions; both of which are reasons to cause World War I. The first definition is wanting independence to be a country. A good example of this was the province of Bosnia in Austria-Hungary. Bosnia sought independence and this led to some extreme effects; even to the point where a group of Bosnians formed a terrorist group, and killed the archduke of Austria-Hungary at that time. Thus, World War I wasn’t just caused by a crazed terrorist. The terrorist wanted their province to be separated from Austria-Hungary by nationalism. The second definition of nationalism is the “loyalty towards a country to the extent of hatred towards other countries”. The Serbs in Austria-Hungary and the Serbs from Serbia wanted to come together to form a greater Serb state, which was a nationalistic wanting. Because of these two reasons, Austria-Hungary did not like Serbia, and because the Austreo-Hungarians were offended by the archduke being assassinated by Bosnian terrorists (which had connections and help from Serbia) with nationalistic pride, they eventually declared war on Serbia. These nationalistic reasons, and others, all contributed to the formation of World War I.