Usually I believe it was Serbia's fault; they should of known Austria would start a war for ANY reasonable chance. At least Serbia should of accepted the July Ultimatum.

It was the Elders of zion working with the global anarcho-communist revolutionist committee, the illuminati, the Kights Templar, the Masons, and *the MAN* who caused WW1.... obviously.

Blind fools. *grumble*grumble*.

Imperialism, militarism, and the convoluted diplomatic network of mutual protection pacts.

It is always the rich and powerful who start wars.

or the greedy

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

My favorite quote about war.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Have you read any of the books on the war?
There are some excellent treatments on it from different backgrounds. For Diplomacy players one of the best write ups of the era is in the book called Diplomacy by Hernry Kissinger. It is written exactly as a player would describe it...then again it was long believed that Herny was a player in the 1960's/

I am at work so I have typed this rather quickly - but here is my brief summary of some of the forces at work:

I'll put forward a couple of the main reasons:
* Intense rivalary between France and Germany, especially in light of Frances defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871
* The difficulties experienced by the Austro-Hungarian empire in managing an ethnically diverse empire, with the slavic populations within it borders a particular source of concern,
leading to tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia (a predominently slavic nation), with Russia pledging support for Serbia.

Germany's rapid rise as an economic and military power during the 19th C and the early 20th C had changed the balance of power within Europe, resulting in system of alliances desgined to ensure that no-one power had the upper hand. Thus France and Russia formed an alliance, and Germany and Austria Hungary formed an alliance. England, who for most of the 19th Century, had closer ties to the Germanic states than France (a traditional rival) decided to align with France, to maintain the balance of power (it was well aware that Germany was far more powerful than France), and partly because it was alarmed by Germany's growing status as a naval power.

Each of the powers had prepared for the possibility of war with each aware believing that speed would be of the essence.
Thus when the Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia after the assasiantion of the Arch-Duke Ferdinand, Russia as Serbia's ally had to respond. Germnay had pledged to support Austria-Hungary and was aware that France had pledged to support Russia. While England had pledged to support both France and Russia. With each power determined to act swiftly and decisively Europe was sucked into the Great War before anyone fully appreciated what they were getting themselves into.

Alright, Someone assassinated the leader of Austria, Austria blamed it on Serbia so they invaded Serbia. Serbia was allied to Russia so Russia declared war on Austria. Germany was allied to Austria so Germany entered the war too. France was allied to Russia too so when Germany attacked Russia, France attacked Germany. When Germany beat France, Frances other ally, England, entered the war also. When England entered the Ottoman Empire entered, then America entered.

It was a huge domino effect because of the system of alliances. Also most countries wanted to spread their empire and because of the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that if any European country tried to colonize the Americas then the US would intervene, and because most of Africa had already been claimed, the countries turned to each other.

@Mathias, actually Germany didn't attack Russia initially. Germany's view was the Austria-Hungary could deal with Russia. Germany responded to outbreak of hostilities by invading France via Belgium (which was neutral). Basically Germany launched a preemptive strike against France because it knew it knew that France would support Russia. The view was that by acting swiftly the war would be over by Christmas. What the powers didn't appreciate was the changing military technology meant that the war would have a far more defensive nature than anticipated due especially to machine guns and trench warfare, leading to a drawn out and horrific conflict.

all wars are a horrific conflict

If it wasn't for the machine gun the Germans would have won and quickly.

I blame Russia, which acted stupidly to protect a minor, insignificant country(no offense to any Serbs reading this). I view foreign policy as similar to interpersonal relations. WWI was a bunch of drunk people in the same bar rooting for two different teams. The British were like the bar managers and the Italians were frontrunning/fairweather fans. Serbia was like the little guy with the napoleon complex and he insulted the Austrians, who were a fan of the opposite team. The Austrians recruited the Germans to punish Serbia, but then the Russians(who are like that guy who looks tough and is really big but can't fight for crap) decided to stick up for him. If they hadn't Serbia would have gotten their asses kicked and then it would have been over, but instead, Germany punched out France and Belgium pre-emptively and England decided to help out France and Russia in order to keep things under control.

@Hamilton, I think thatsummary is unfair to Serbia. The "Serbians" did not assassinate the Arch-Duke, a Serbian anarchist did. Austria-Hungary knew this but was looking for an excuse to invade Serbia anyway.
If I had to pick a single reason I would say German aggression. Germany was a newcomer as a European power but it was in its way to becoming a truly great power, far more powerful than any other single European power (including Britain). From Germany's perspective a lot of German speakers lived in areas outside Germany - areas that Germany considered to rightfully belong to the German Nation.
Germany saw itself as full-filling its destiny in Europe (perhaps this is similar to the way the United States saw itself as full-filling its destiny in North America).

Austria-Hungary didn't care for Ferdinand they vastly prefer Charles I; Serbia Nationalists comminted the perfect murder. Austria should of won easier againist Serbia; all Wilhelm fault in my opinion.
I'm a bit skeptical about Germany reducing it's attack on France by not attacking Holland. Surely Holland's army had no chance and supplies could be pillaged from the country.

I'm in the middle of a book now called "King Kaiser Tsar" that pretty much makes the case, though that isn't the main focus, that Wilhelm II and his wacky antics set up the situation that made the First World War possible. He personally didn't like and wasn't liked by his close family who also happened to be the rulers of several major European powers. He was quite a pompous person in real life and his overtly military outlook set a tense, dangerous mood in Europe that didn't have to happen. Remember that the Kaiser actually did run Germany at that time, often counter to what the actual government wanted.

So, it's the Kaiser's fault if you want to track the blame back to the system that allowed it to happen.

http://s9.gladiatus.com/game/c.php?uid=156989

hint hint if kaiser wilhelm (dusch ) hadn't sacked OTTO VON BISMARCK THEN GERMANY WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SO AGGRESSIVE, but he just had to have that navy (sigh)

"England had pledged to support both France and Russia."

England (actually the United Kingdom, but who cares about semantics?) entered the war because Germany attacked Belgium, and Britain (it's like they try to make it difficult) legally had to respond in defense of Belgium because of the Treaty of London.

I doubt they could have stayed out long, or actually tolerated the dramatic rise in German power that a quick victory against France would have given Germany, but that's speculation. The reason that the United Kingdom entered World War I was that Germany violated Belgian neutrality which Britain (and Germany) were legally bound to protect.

ottovanbis, Bismarck died in 1898, which is about the time Kaiser Bill went boat crazy.

You do raise a good point in there, albeit you didn't intend to. Bismarck set up these alliances (though not exactly as they turned out, Russia and Italy were originally allied to Germany and Bulgaria wasn't) and wrote Germany's constitution which gave such power to the Kaiser. He anticipated that the Kaiser would let his Chancellor (himself) act in his name, but Wilhelm actually wanted to run stuff.

I guess you could blame Bismarck for setting up the situation where Wilhelm was in the position to set up the situation that allowed for World War I.

That's a joke.

It's a tough question. There's plenty of blame to go around.

it was probably france

that sucker wouldn't support me into belgium

@ Invictus "England (actually the United Kingdom, but who cares about semantics?) entered the war because Germany attacked Belgium, and Britain (it's like they try to make it difficult) legally had to respond in defense of Belgium because of the Treaty of London. "

Yes that is the specific event that directly led to Britain joining the war. In the lead up to the war, I think it is fair to say that there was an understanding between Britain, France and Russia that they would stop Germany if needed. (Perhaps it would truer to say there was an agreement between Britain and France on one hand, and France and Russia on the other).
Britain had already intervened, on behalf of France, against Germany in the second Morocco crisis in 1911 - so war was between Britain and Germany was definitely on the horizon.

At any rate in the lead up to World War 1, there was an allignment between Britain, France and Russia - the Triple Entente, which was supposed to act as a counter-weight the the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

@ Hereward. If you;re going to quote Blackadder Goes Forth, at least say so :)

I think World War One happened for the same reason that World War Three did not happen between the US and the Soviet Union. Namely, the First World War was the first time there had been such carnage on such scale. Those involved in taking us to war had no reason to stop the process once it started for the simple fact that they had no idea of what was coming.

I think all other issues are secondary to that key point. Noone was able to contemplate prior to the event how dreadful it was going to be.

Nice idea. Alas such thinking did not prevent World War 2.

Right, given that I wrote my dissertation on exactly this subject (it was entitled something along the lines of 'Are we justified in blaming Germany for WWI,' which does mean most of my research looked at what happened in Germany from roughly 1871), I feel fairly well qualified to stick my oar in. So:

@ottovanbis - Sorry, you're wrong there. That simply isn't the case, Bismarck, whilst being fairly pragmatic, was one of the people driving Germany's quest for colonial power (one of the key factors IMO). Plus, as someone mentioned, Bismarck died before 1900, which was about when things really got going.

@Invictus - Two points: 1) "Wilhelm II and his wacky antics set up the situation that made the First World War possible." Yes, I agree with you completely. That man did very little to encourage good relations with any of his neighbours, and, between him and Tirpitz, contrived to seriously piss off the British.
2) Bismarck wrote that constitution when he was effectively Wilhelm I's right-hand man, and pretty much had freedom to do what he wanted. Sadly for Bismarck, Wilhelm I died and left Wilhelm II to screw things up.

There is something else that should not be overlooked here either: Up until the mid-1960s, German historians all shared the belief that it was completely unjustifiable to have blamed Germany for WWI. Since then, however, the majority now agree that it was, indeed, Germany's fault. There are so many things that occurred in Germany that make it clear that everyone involved was on a war footing, they just had to wait for a catalyst to set it off: Germany did not want to appear the aggressor. That catalyst (and if anyone who doesn't know the definition of a catalyst in Chemistry, it is an agent [that comes out of the process unchanged - we can ignore that part] that speeds up the rate of a reaction - i.e. the reaction was going to happen ANYWAY) was the shooting of Franz Ferdinand, and it just gave Germany the excuse to start the war that they already wanted.

Sent from: germ519 (32 ) Sent: 10:18 PM
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand


This is so cute

@ spyman... That's fascism for you...

The lessons of history don't apply if you are a Master Race laid low by the perfidious dealings of an ethnic minority and who glories in the spilling of the blood of other lesser ethnic groups who need to be cleansed off the map so you can have more space for yourself.