For twenty years, the European countries had been creating alliances. Alliances were thought to be an amazing idea because they would promote peace, and if a country got into …show more content…
The Treaty of Berlin mad Serbia its own country with its own government, but the others weren't so lucky. The rest of the territories got split up and given to other countries. Bulgaria was kept by the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia was given to Austria/Hungary, and Romania was given to Russia. Serbia was not happy with this because without bulgaria, they couldn't be Greater Serbia. So it is said that Serbia sent an assassin team to the capital of Bulgaria called Sarajevo, the day that Austria/Hungary’s ArchDuke Ferdinand was visiting, and they assassinated him and his wife. The ArchDuke almost never brings his wife Sophie with him on his political trips but this time it was her anniversary present so she went with. The funny thing is that out of all the assassins (6), not one of them successfully assassinated the ArchDuke their first time through. It wasn't until later that day when the ArchDuke and his wife where taking a back alleyway, that they accidentally ran into one of the assassins hiding and that is when the wife and Duke were both assassinated and then the assassin shot himself in the …show more content…
Militarism is the belief or desire of the government or people that a country should maintain strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests. The “arms race” was basically just counties trying to one up each other, and it started out with Britain having a large navy, so of course, Germany now wanted a larger navy. It went on the same way with France and Germany competing to build bigger armies than each other. To further better their navies and armies, they created the “universal conscription” or better known as the draft. Of course, they are doing all of this upgrading and building in times of peace, and the they are preaching, “Its for self defense”. The thing about this is that all of the cost of these upgrades and improvements (which of course are super expensive), fell onto the citizens in their taxes. Between the years 1870 and 1914, all of the major countries armis doubled in size except for Britain and the United States. The reason this was such a big cause for WW1, is because now that they have such big armies and navies, why wouldn't you attack someone you don't like? The problem with that though is, those people have been growing their army and navy too, so you are pretty much just in a war of attrition waiting for one side to waste away first like the battle between france and germany at