What started World War I?

BungeeAZ

The assasination of Archduke Ferdinand Dec 05 06, 9:16 PM

zbeckabee

An interesting view: "A common elementary history textbook will explain the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria as the sole cause for World War one, but further research seriously brings this statement into question. I feel as though it was not one single person, or even a single country who/that caused the war, but rather a series of events and situations which include the following: the allying of countries and preparing for war which preceded the fighting itself, the actions of the Black Hand as a message of Serbian nationalists, the persuasion of Austria-Hungary by Germany for a swift retribution for this act, and Russia's swift mobilization of troops along the Central Powers' eastern border in the early stages of the war." http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/ad1/keb20.shtml Dec 05 06, 9:34 PM

Tathra

It was just a local European conflict to start with between Austria-Hungry and Serbia and started because of the assassination on the 28th June 1914 at Sarajevo which at that time was the capitol of the Austria-Hungary province of Bosnia. The Archduke Ferdinand was the heir apparent and a Serb. Germany declared war against Russia on the 1st August 1914 and eventually the war involved 32 nations. Dec 05 06, 10:57 PM

Baloo55th

To clarify Tathra's post: the Archduke wasn't a Serb; it was a Serb named Gavrilo Princip that assassinated him. (And more or less by accident, too. The main attempt had gone wrong, and the Archduke's car had taken another route than the planned one as an escape. By chance, Princip had run through that way, and by another chance, the car slowed down right by him, giving him a chance to use his gun.) Bosnia-Herzeovina wasn't quite a province. It had been occupied with dubious legality by the Austrians after the breakdown of the last bits of the Ottoman Empire on that side of the Balkans. As with Albania, it was supposed to be gaining independence (and probably a German prince as King) but the Austrians took over. This greatly upset both the local population and the Serbs, who had dreams of linking up with the other Slavonic peoples in the area. Montenegro was independent already, Slovenia was Austrian, and Croatia part of Hungary. Serbia felt threatened by this expansion of Austria, and the Austrians felt that Serbia would fit nicely into the Empire. Also, when things came to the crunch, Serbia called on its ally Russia, which mobilised. Trouble was, the Russians couldn't just partly mobilise. The generals worked from preset plans and those said get the lot going. So they did. Which got the Germans worried, as this might bring France in as Russia's ally - and then as well Russia was their immediate neighbour as Poland didn't exist as a nation. Then the UK got involved, as a guarantor of Belgium's independence. Belgium had provided a handy way for the Germans to get to France. The fact that Belgium was neutral didn't worry them. Italy came in a bit late, as an ally of the UK, and took a bit of a pasting but kept the Austrians occupied to an extent. Other bits of the Balkans got involved as well, but the main war was in the west, far away from where it had started. To agree with Zbeck's site, the assassination wasn't the actual cause of the general war, but it was the trigger that fired the starting gun. The complex alliances that were expected to be only part of a paper war were a major cause of actual involvement and fighting when they were called upon in reality. Dec 06 06, 5:59 AM

bloomsby

The question is still a source of much (sometimes heated) controversy. This website may be of some use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I Dec 06 06, 9:10 AM

Andy_L_28

All the reasons mentioned here were contributary factors leading up to the spark that was the assassination. The seeds were being sown for major conflict in the ten years or so leading up to it, in the form of a huge (naval) arms race primarily between Britain and Germany. I think it would be fair to say that the power politics of the old, imperialist nations was the major underlying cause. Dec 10 06, 7:41 PM