How World War 1 was propelled. How WWI was propelled

How World War 1 was propelled
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How World War 1 Was Propelled
Introduction
World War 1 (WWI) was a global conflict that lasted between July 1914 and November 1918. In this war, the Allied Forces fought the greater Central Powers. The immediate cause of this war was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. However, events leading to this colossal War date back into the 19th century. Such include nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and alliances. In this paper, we will discuss such factors, the rise of Pan-Slavism, and events that propelled America into WWI and why the US declined to take sides in the war between 1914 and1917. This essay also describes the role of ethnicity in America’s state of neutrality as well as events that led to the collapse of the Treaty of Versailles.
How WWI was propelled
Nationalism refers to a state where the citizens of a particular country place their nation’s interests above that of others. At the start of WWI, many citizens had gained a lot of confidence in their militaries and governments. They were assured of righteousness and fairness. According to Campbell & Hall (2015), the same nationalism also demonized the rival nations. Citizens saw rival countries as deceitful and uncivilized. Such made it easy to convince very many citizens that their country was under threat from rival nations when a small incident occurred.
In the mid-19th century, Slavs from Eastern Europe created the Pan-Slavism. The political ideology of this movement was to advance integrity and unite the Slavic-speaking regions/people (Goldschmidt Jr., 2018). In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s successor presumptive was murdered while visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia. The Pan-Slavism patriotism’s political goal behind this murder was to split the regions of Southern Slav and merge them with Yugoslavia. In response, Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia. This action attracted other major players from Europe. Great Britain, Russia, France, Belgium supported Serbia while Germany supported Austria-Hungary.
With imperialism, Great Britain and France had big empires while Germany persistently tried to become stronger by enlarging her wealth, global image, and power. The quest for new territories, power, raw materials, and superior markets led to rivalry and tensions among major European powers. They started acquiring colonies in Asia, Africa, and Pacific. According to Barth (2015), by 1905, the imperialistic expansion had reached a climax. The competition for colonies led to tensions amongst these powers. Germany invaded Moroccan harbor which led to the point of war with France. Russia and Austria were the only European powers that did not establish colonies as France, Germany, Britain, and Italy staged major clashes that led to WWI.
Militarism emerged as the competition for more superior weapons started after 1870 as all the Europeans seemed interested. At first, nations acquired weapons with the intention of securing themselves, but with time, the demand became high, and suspicions, fear, and hatred erupted among different countries (Mulligan, 2016). British had a stronger navy while Germany and France we...