Essay On Who Started World War One

Williamson, Jr. Find Free Essays We provide Death dying and bereavement essay with original essay samples, perfect Where can you find a list of all Macys stores that are closing? and styling. The Near Writing a formal letter about yourself, -- v. Some historians, notably MacMillan Death dying and bereavement essay Hew Strachanbelieve How do you start a preschool? a consequence of the policy of Weltpolitik and Germany's associated assertiveness was to isolate it. Baptist diverse essay many river tradition tributaries, Joffre, Conrad, and other military commanders held that seizing the initiative was extremely important.

What Caused the First World War?

Even though it was called the Schlieffen Plan, it was not the same as originally planned by Alfred von Schlieffen. When he died, the plan was changed to accommodate the times. Once the German troops broke through Belgium, they knew they had to defeat France quickly because Russia would soon be ready for war. The French were drove back to the Marne River. This is where they turned the offensive around and drove the Germans back. Germany would now be fighting a two front war, which the Schlieffen plan was made to prevent. By invading Belgium, they not only started a war but they also brought Belgium in to the war.

Belgium would have stayed neutral in the war if Germany had not invaded their country. When Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, it drew England even more into the war. England entered the war because they did not feel that Germany had good reason for the actions they were taking. This is one of the reasons that the Germans were turned back when they reached the Marne. Russia mobilized their troops against Austria and Germany but claimed that they would not attack with their troops if peace talks would occur. This was a very short amount of time for demobilization.

It did not let Russia have an apt amount of time to fully consider the taking down of their troops. It also shows that Germany was ready for a war because they did not consider holding peace talks. If they wanted to avoid they war, they would have agreed to peace talks. If peace talks would have occurred, the Western front would have been closed and the Germans would not have had to fight any more battles.

The German use of poison gas caused Australia and New Zealand to enter when France and Britain attacked to open a new front History Although sustaining The Schlieffen Plan consisted of war plans for the invasions of all the European nations. The German Military leader By sinking American ships, Germany forced the United States to enter the war. By bringing America into the war, Germany made the involvement of countries worldwide. Germany had many chances to avoid a war. They also had many chances to make the war a shorter one. Many countries were drawn into the war because of the moves Germany and its allies made.

Without Germany, World War I would not have happened. They caused the war and are the reason for most countries being a part of it. Blanchard, Edward. On the contrary, Sazonov had aligned himself with the irredentism and expected the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Crucially, the French had provided clear support for their Russian ally for a robust response in their recent state visit only days earlier. Also in the background was Russian anxiety of the future of the Turkish Straits, "where Russian control of the Balkans would place Saint Petersburg in a far better position to prevent unwanted intrusions on the Bosphorus.

The policy was intended to be a mobilization against Austria-Hungary only. However, incompetence made the Russians realise by 29 July that partial mobilization was not militarily possible but would interfere with general mobilization. The Russians moved to full mobilization on 30 July as the only way to allow the entire operation to succeed. Christopher Clark stated, "It would be difficult to overstate the historical importance of the meetings of 24 and 25 July. For one thing, Russian premobilisation altered the political chemistry in Serbia, making it unthinkable that the Belgrade government, which had originally given serious consideration to accepting the ultimatum, would back down in the face of Austrian pressure. It heightened the domestic pressure on the Russian administration Most importantly of all, these measures drastically raised the pressure on Germany, which had so far abstained from military preparations and was still counting on the localisation of the Austro-Serbian conflict.

Serbia initially considered accepting all the terms of the Austrian ultimatum before news from Russia of premobilisation measures stiffened its resolve. The Serbs drafted their reply to the ultimatum in such a way as to give the impression of making significant concessions. However, as Clark stated, "In reality, then, this was a highly perfumed rejection on most points. On July 29, , the Tsar ordered full mobilisation but changed his mind after receiving a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm and ordered partial mobilisation instead. The next day, Sazonov once more persuaded Nicholas of the need for general mobilization, and the order was issued on the same day. Clark stated, "The Russian general mobilisation was one of the most momentous decisions of the [ clarification needed ] July crisis.

This was the first of the general mobilisations. It came at the moment when the German government had not yet even declared the State of Impending War. Clark states, "German efforts at mediation — which suggested that Austria should 'Halt in Belgrade' and use the occupation of the Serbian capital to ensure its terms were met — were rendered futile by the speed of Russian preparations, which threatened to force the Germans to take counter—measures before mediation could begin to take effect. Thus, in response to Russian mobilisation, [ citation needed ] Germany ordered the state of Imminent Danger of War on 31 July, and when the Russians refused to rescind their mobilization order, Germany mobilized and declared war on Russia on 1 August.

The Franco-Russian Alliance meant that countermeasures by France were correctly assumed to be inevitable by Germany, which declared war on France on 3 August After the German invasion of neutral Belgium, Britain issued an ultimatum to Germany on 2 August to withdraw or face war. The Germans did not comply and so Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August Britain's reasons for declaring war were complex. The ostensible reason given was that Britain was required to safeguard Belgium's neutrality under the Treaty of London According to Isabel V. Hull :. The German invasion of Belgium legitimised and galvanised popular support for the war, especially among pacifistic Liberals.

The strategic risk posed by German control of the Belgian and ultimately the French coast was unacceptable. Britain's relationship with its Entente partner France was critical. Edward Grey argued that the secret naval agreements with France, despite not having been approved by the Cabinet, created a moral obligation between Britain and France. That would leave both Britain and its empire vulnerable to attack. What will be the position of a friendless England? What would be their attitude towards England? What about India and the Mediterranean? Domestically, the Liberal Cabinet was split, and if war was not declared the government would fall, as the Prime Minister H. Asquith , as well as Edward Grey and Winston Churchill , made it clear that they would resign.

In that event, the existing Liberal Cabinet would fall since it was likely that the pro-war Conservatives would come to power, which would still lead to a British entry into the war, only slightly later. The wavering Cabinet ministers were also likely motivated by the desire to avoid senselessly splitting their party and sacrificing their jobs. On the diplomatic front, the European powers began to publish selected, and sometimes misleading, compendia of diplomatic correspondence, seeking to establish justification for their own entry into the war, and cast blame on other actors for the outbreak of war.

The German government was still dominated by the Prussian Junkers , who feared the rise of left-wing parties. Fritz Fischer famously argued that they deliberately sought an external war to distract the population and to whip up patriotic support for the government. Other authors argue that German conservatives were ambivalent about a war for fear that losing a war would have disastrous consequences and believed that even a successful war might alienate the population if it was lengthy or difficult.

Many German people complained of a need to conform to the euphoria around them, which allowed later Nazi propagandists to "foster an image of national fulfillment later destroyed by wartime betrayal and subversion culminating in the alleged Dolchstoss stab in the back of the army by socialists. The argument that Austria-Hungary was a moribund political entity, whose disappearance was only a matter of time, was deployed by hostile contemporaries to suggest that its efforts to defend its integrity during the last years before the war were, in some sense, illegitimate. Clark states, "Evaluating the prospects of the Austro-Hungarian empire on the eve of the first world war confronts us in an acute way with the problem of temporal perspective The collapse of the empire amid war and defeat in impressed itself upon the retrospective view of the Habsburg lands, overshadowing the scene with auguries of imminent and ineluctable decline.

It is true that Austro-Hungarian politics in the decades before the war were increasingly dominated by the struggle for national rights among the empire's eleven official nationalities: Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Ruthenians Ukrainians , Poles, and Italians. However, before , radical nationalists seeking full separation from the empire were still a small minority, and Austria-Hungary's political turbulence was more noisy than deep. In fact, in the decade before the war, the Habsburg lands passed through a phase of strong widely-shared economic growth. Most inhabitants associated the Habsburgs with the benefits of orderly government, public education, welfare, sanitation, the rule of law, and the maintenance of a sophisticated infrastructure.

Christopher Clark states: "Prosperous and relatively well administered, the empire, like its elderly sovereign, exhibited a curious stability amid turmoil. Crises came and went without appearing to threaten the existence of the system as such. The situation was always, as the Viennese journalist Karl Kraus quipped, 'desperate but not serious'. Jack Levy and William Mulligan argue that the death of Franz Ferdinand itself was a significant factor in helping escalate the July Crisis into a war by killing a powerful proponent for peace and thus encouraged a more belligerent decision-making process. The principal aims of Serbian policy were to consolidate the Russian-backed expansion of Serbia in the Balkan Wars and to achieve dreams of a Greater Serbia , which included the unification of lands with large ethnic Serb populations in Austria-Hungary, including Bosnia [93].

Underlying that was a culture of extreme nationalism and a cult of assassination, which romanticized the slaying of the Ottoman sultan as the heroic epilogue to the otherwise-disastrous Battle of Kosovo on 28 June Clark states: "The Greater Serbian vision was not just a question of government policy, however, or even of propaganda. It was woven deeply into the culture and identity of the Serbs. The Black Hand believed that a Greater Serbia would be achieved by provoking a war with Austria-Hungary by an act of terror.

The war would be won with Russian backing. The official government position was to focus on consolidating the gains made during the exhausting Balkan War and to avoid further conflicts. That official policy was temporized by the political necessity of simultaneously and clandestinely supporting dreams of a Greater Serbian state in the long term. Clark states: "Serbian authorities were partly unwilling and partly unable to suppress the irredentist activity that had given rise to the assassinations in the first place". Russia tended to support Serbia as a fellow Slavic state, considered Serbia its "client," and encouraged Serbia to focus its irredentism against Austria-Hungary because it would discourage conflict between Serbia and Bulgaria, another prospective Russian ally, in Macedonia.

Imperial rivalry and the consequences of the search for imperial security or for imperial expansion had important consequences for the origins of World War I. Imperial rivalries between France, Britain, Russia and Germany played an important part in the creation of the Triple Entente and the relative isolation of Germany. Imperial opportunism, in the form of the Italian attack on Ottoman Libyan provinces, also encouraged the Balkan wars of , which changed the balance of power in the Balkans to the detriment of Austria-Hungary.

Some historians, such as Margaret MacMillan , believe that Germany created its own diplomatic isolation in Europe, in part by an aggressive and pointless imperial policy known as Weltpolitik. Either way, the isolation was important because it left Germany few options but to ally itself more strongly with Austria-Hungary, leading ultimately to unconditional support for Austria-Hungary's punitive war on Serbia during the July Crisis. Bismarck disliked the idea of an overseas empire but supported France's colonization in Africa because it diverted the French government, attention, and resources away from Continental Europe and revanchism after Germany's "New Course" in foreign affairs, Weltpolitik "world policy" , was adopted in the s after Bismarck's dismissal.

Its aim was ostensibly to transform Germany into a global power through assertive diplomacy, the acquisition of overseas colonies, and the development of a large navy. Some historians, notably MacMillan and Hew Strachan , believe that a consequence of the policy of Weltpolitik and Germany's associated assertiveness was to isolate it. Weltpolitik , particularly as expressed in Germany's objections to France's growing influence in Morocco in and , also helped cement the Triple Entente.

The Anglo-German naval race also isolated Germany by reinforcing Britain's preference for agreements with Germany's continental rivals: France and Russia. Historians like Ferguson and Clark believe that Germany's isolation was the unintended consequences of the need for Britain to defend its empire against threats from France and Russia. They also downplay the impact of Weltpolitik and the Anglo-German naval race, which ended in Britain and France signed a series of agreements in , which became known as the Entente Cordiale. Most importantly, it granted freedom of action to Britain in Egypt and to France in Morocco. Equally, the Anglo-Russian Convention greatly improved British—Russian relations by solidifying boundaries that identified respective control in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.

However, the Triple Entente was not conceived as a counterweight to the Triple Alliance but as a formula to secure imperial security between the three powers. Clark states it was "not that antagonism toward Germany caused its isolation, but rather that the new system itself channeled and intensified hostility towards the German Empire. The war made it clear that no great power still appeared to wish to support the Ottoman Empire, which paved the way for the Balkan Wars. The status of Morocco had been guaranteed by international agreement, and when France attempted a great expansion of its influence there without the assent of all other signatories, Germany opposed and prompted the Moroccan Crises: the Tangier Crisis of and the Agadir Crisis of The intent of German policy was to drive a wedge between the British and French, but in both cases, it produced the opposite effect and Germany was isolated diplomatically, most notably by lacking the support of Italy despite it being in the Triple Alliance.

The French protectorate over Morocco was established officially in In , however, the African scene was peaceful. The continent was almost fully divided up by the imperial powers, with only Liberia and Ethiopia still independent. There were no major disputes there pitting any two European powers against each other. Marxists typically attributed the start of the war to imperialism. Richard Hamilton observed that the argument went that since industrialists and bankers were seeking raw materials, new markets and new investments overseas, if they were blocked by other powers, the "obvious" or "necessary" solution was war.

Hamilton somewhat criticized the view that the war was launched to secure colonies but agreed that while imperialism may have been on the mind of key decision makers. He argued that it was not necessarily for logical, economic reasons. Firstly, the different powers of the war had different imperial holdings. Britain had the largest empire in the world and Russia had the second largest, but France had a modestly-sized empire. Germany had a few unprofitable colonies, and Austria-Hungary had no overseas holdings or desire to secure any and so the divergent interests require any "imperialism argument" to be specific in any supposed "interests" or "needs" that decision makers would be trying to meet.

None of Germany's colonies made more money than was required to maintain them, and they also were only 0. Thus, he argues that colonies were pursued mainly as a sign of German power and prestige, rather than for profit. While Russia eagerly pursued colonisation in East Asia by seizing control of Manchuria, it had little success; the Manchurian population was never sufficiently integrated into the Russian economy and efforts to make Manchuria, a captive trade market did not end Russia's negative trade deficit with China. Hamilton argued that the "imperialism argument" depended upon the view of national elites being informed, rational, and calculating, but it is equally possible to consider that decision-makers were uninformed or ignorant.

Hamilton suggested that imperial ambitions may have been driven by groupthink because every other country was doing it. That made policymakers think that their country should do the same Hamilton noted that Bismarck was famously not moved by such peer pressure and ended Germany's limited imperialist movement and regarded colonial ambitions as a waste of money but simultaneously recommended them to other nations. Hamilton was more critical of the view that capitalists and business leaders drove the war. He thought that businessmen, bankers, and financiers were generally against the war, as they viewed it as being perilous to economic prosperity.

The decision of Austria-Hungary to go to war was made by the monarch, his ministers, and military leaders, with practically no representation from financial and business leaders even though Austria-Hungary was then developing rapidly. Furthermore, evidence can be found from the Austro-Hungarian stock market, which responded to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand with unease but no sense of alarm and only a small decrease in share value. However, when it became clear that war was a possibility, share values dropped sharply, which suggested that investors did not see war as serving their interests.

One of the strongest sources of opposition to the war was from major banks, whose financial bourgeoisie regarded the army as the reserve of the aristocracy and utterly foreign to the banking universe. While the banks had ties to arms manufacturers, it was those companies that had links to the military, not the banks, which were pacifistic and profoundly hostile to the prospect of war. However, the banks were largely excluded from the nation's foreign affairs. Likewise, German business leaders had little influence. Hugo Stinnes , a leading German industrialist, advocated peaceful economic development and believed that Germany would be able to rule Europe by economic power and that war would be a disruptive force. Carl Duisberg , a chemical industrialist, hoped for peace and believed that the war would set German economic development back a decade, as Germany's extraordinary prewar growth had depended upon international trade and interdependence.

While some bankers and industrialists tried to curb Wilhelm II away from war, their efforts ended in failure. There is no evidence they ever received a direct response from the Kaiser, chancellor, or foreign secretary or that their advice was discussed in depth by the Foreign Office or the General Staff. The German leadership measured power not in financial ledgers but land and military might.

Lord Nathanial Rothschild , a leading British banker, called the financial editor at The Times newspaper and insisted for the paper to denounce the war and to advocate for neutrality, but the lead members of the newspaper ultimately decided that the paper should support intervention. Generally speaking, the European business leaders were in favour of profits and peace allowed for stability and investment opportunities across national borders, but war brought the disruption trade, the confiscation of holdings, and the risk of increased taxation.

Even arms manufacturers, the so-called "Merchants of Death," would not necessarily benefit since they could make money selling weapons at home, but they could lose access to foreign markets. Krupp, a major arms manufacturer, started the war with 48 million marks in profits but ended it million marks in debt, and the first year of peace saw further losses of 36 million marks. William Mulligan argues that while economic and political factors were often interdependent, economic factors tended towards peace. Prewar trade wars and financial rivalries never threatened to escalate into conflict. Governments would mobilise bankers and financiers to serve their interests, rather than the reverse. The commercial and financial elite recognized peace as necessary for economic development and used its influence to resolve diplomatic crises.

Economic rivalries existed but were framed largely by political concerns. Prior to the war, there were few signs that the international economy for war in the summer of Social Darwinism was a theory of human evolution loosely based on Darwinism that influenced most European intellectuals and strategic thinkers from to It emphasised that struggle between nations and "races" was natural and that only the fittest nations deserved to survive. German colonial rule in Africa in to was an expression of nationalism and moral superiority, which was justified by constructing an image of the natives as "Other.

German colonization was characterized by the use of repressive violence in the name of "culture" and "civilisation. Furthermore, the wide acceptance of Social Darwinism by intellectuals justified Germany's right to acquire colonial territories as a matter of the "survival of the fittest," according to the historian Michael Schubert. The model suggested an explanation of why some ethnic groups, then called "races," had been for so long antagonistic, such as Germans and Slavs.

They were natural rivals, destined to clash. Senior German generals like Helmuth von Moltke the Younger talked in apocalyptic terms about the need for Germans to fight for their existence as a people and culture. MacMillan states: "Reflecting the Social Darwinist theories of the era, many Germans saw Slavs, especially Russia, as the natural opponent of the Teutonic races. Britain admired Germany for its economic successes and social welfare provision but also regarded Germany as illiberal, militaristic, and technocratic. War was seen as a natural and viable or even useful instrument of policy. Russia was viewed as growing stronger every day, and it was believed that Germany had to strike while it still could before it was crushed by Russia.

Nationalism made war a competition between peoples, nations or races, rather than kings and elites. It tended to glorify warfare, the taking of initiative, and the warrior male role. Social Darwinism played an important role across Europe, but J. Leslie has argued that it played a critical and immediate role in the strategic thinking of some important hawkish members of the Austro-Hungarian government.

Although general narratives of the war tend to emphasize the importance of alliances in binding the major powers to act in the event of a crisis such as the July Crisis, historians such as Margaret MacMillan warn against the argument that alliances forced the Great Powers to act as they did: "What we tend to think of as fixed alliances before the First World War were nothing of the sort. They were much more loose, much more porous, much more capable of change. The most important alliances in Europe required participants to agree to collective defence if they were attacked. Some represented formal alliances, but the Triple Entente represented only a frame of mind:. There are three notable exceptions that demonstrate that alliances did not in themselves force the great powers to act:.

By the s or the s, all the major powers were preparing for a large-scale war although none expected one. Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Russia, and some smaller countries set up conscription systems in which young men would serve from one to three years in the army and then spend the next twenty years or so in the reserves with annual summer training. Men from higher social statuses became officers. Each country devised a mobilization system in which the reserves could be called up quickly and sent to key points by rail.

Every year, the plans were updated and expanded in terms of complexity. Each country stockpiled arms and supplies for an army that ran into the millions. Germany in had a regular professional army of , with an additional 1. By , the regular army was , strong and the reserves 3. The French in had 3. The various national war plans had been perfected by but with Russia and Austria trailing in effectiveness. Recent wars since had typically been short: a matter of months. All war plans called for a decisive opening and assumed victory would come after a short war. None planned for the food and munitions needs of the long stalemate that actually happened in to As David Stevenson put it, "A self-reinforcing cycle of heightened military preparedness The armaments race It was "the armaments race and the speculation about imminent or preventive wars" that made his death in the trigger for war.

The Second Hague Conference was held in All signatories except for Germany supported disarmament. Germany also did not want to agree to binding arbitration and mediation. The Kaiser was concerned that the United States would propose disarmament measures, which he opposed. All parties tried to revise international law to their own advantage. Historians have debated the role of the German naval buildup as the principal cause of deteriorating Anglo-German relations.

In any case, Germany never came close to catching up with Britain. From to , the Royal Navy embarked on its own massive expansion to keep ahead of the Germans. The competition came to focus on the revolutionary new ships based on the Dreadnought , which was launched in and gave Britain a battleship that far outclassed any other in Europe. The overwhelming British response proved to Germany that its efforts were unlikely ever to equal the Royal Navy. In , the British had a 3. Ferguson argues, "So decisive was the British victory in the naval arms race that it is hard to regard it as in any meaningful sense a cause of the First World War. The US Navy was in a period of growth, which made the German gains very ominous.

In Britain in , there was intense internal debate about new ships because of the growing influence of John Fisher 's ideas and increasing financial constraints. In , Germany adopted a policy of building submarines, instead of new dreadnoughts and destroyers, effectively abandoning the race, but it kept the new policy secret to delay other powers from following suit. The main Russian goals included strengthening its role as the protector of Eastern Christians in the Balkans, such as in Serbia. The start of the war renewed attention of old goals: expelling the Ottomans from Constantinople, extending Russian dominion into eastern Anatolia and Persian Azerbaijan, and annexing Galicia.

The conquests would assure the Russian predominance in the Black Sea and access to the Mediterranean. Traditional narratives of the war suggested that when the war began, both sides believed that the war would end quickly. Rhetorically speaking, there was an expectation that the war would be "over by Christmas" in That is important for the origins of the conflict since it suggests that since it was expected that the war would be short, statesmen tended not to take gravity of military action as seriously as they might have done so otherwise.

Modern historians suggest a nuanced approach. There is ample evidence to suggest that statesmen and military leaders thought the war would be lengthy and terrible and have profound political consequences. While it is true all military leaders planned for a swift victory, many military and civilian [ citation needed ] leaders recognized that the war might be long and highly destructive. The principal German and French military leaders, including Moltke, Ludendorff, and Joffre, expected a long war. Moltke hoped that if a European war broke out, it would be resolved swiftly, but he also conceded that it might drag on for years, wreaking immeasurable ruin.

Asquith wrote of the approach of "Armageddon" and French and Russian generals spoke of a "war of extermination" and the "end of civilization. Clark concluded, "In the minds of many statesmen, the hope for a short war and the fear of a long one seemed to have cancelled each other out, holding at bay a fuller appreciation of the risks. Moltke, Joffre, Conrad, and other military commanders held that seizing the initiative was extremely important. That theory encouraged all belligerents to devise war plans to strike first to gain the advantage. The war plans all included complex plans for mobilization of the armed forces, either as a prelude to war or as a deterrent. The continental Great Powers' mobilization plans included arming and transporting millions of men and their equipment, typically by rail and to strict schedules, hence the metaphor "war by timetable.

The mobilization plans limited the scope of diplomacy, as military planners wanted to begin mobilisation as quickly as possible to avoid being caught on the defensive. They also put pressure on policymakers to begin their own mobilization once it was discovered that other nations had begun to mobilize. In , A. Taylor wrote that mobilization schedules were so rigid that once they were begun, they could not be canceled without massive disruption of the country and military disorganisation. Thus, diplomatic overtures conducted after the mobilizations had begun were ignored. Russia ordered a partial mobilization on 25 July against Austria-Hungary only.

Their lack of prewar planning for the partial mobilization made the Russians realize by 29 July that it would be impossible to interfere with a general mobilization. Only a general mobilization could be carried out successfully. The Russians were, therefore, faced with only two options: canceling the mobilization during a crisis or moving to full mobilization, the latter of which they did on 30 July. They, therefore, mobilized along both the Russian border with Austria-Hungary and the border with Germany. German mobilization plans assumed a two-front war against France and Russia and had the bulk of the German army massed against France and taking the offensive in the west, and a smaller force holding East Prussia. The plans were based on the assumption that France would mobilize significantly faster than Russia.

On 28 July, Germany learned through its spy network that Russia had implemented partial mobilisation and its "Period Preparatory to War. Christopher Clark states: "German efforts at mediation — which suggested that Austria should 'Halt in Belgrade' and use the occupation of the Serbian capital to ensure its terms were met — were rendered futile by the speed of Russian preparations, which threatened to force the Germans to take counter-measures before mediation could begin to take effect.

But by the time that happened, the Russian government had been moving troops and equipment to the German front for a week. The Russians were the first great power to issue an order of general mobilisation and the first Russo-German clash took place on German, not on Russian soil, following the Russian invasion of East Prussia. That doesn't mean that the Russians should be 'blamed' for the outbreak of war. Rather it alerts us to the complexity of the events that brought war about and the limitations of any thesis that focuses on the culpability of one actor.

Immediately after the end of hostilities, Anglo-American historians argued that Germany was solely responsible for the start of the war. However, academic work in the English-speaking world in the late s and the s blamed the participants more equally. The historian Fritz Fischer unleashed an intense worldwide debate in the s on Germany's long-term goals. The American historian Paul Schroeder agrees with the critics that Fisher exaggerated and misinterpreted many points. However, Schroeder endorses Fisher's basic conclusion:. The U. S practice of isolation was dissolved.

There were also the economic chaos and irresponsibility that helped plunge England, Germany, France, and Russia civil war into bankruptcy. Eventually The Great Depression would enter the circle of financial strife that further throw the economic downfall into a black hole. Germany forms a strong sense of Nationalism that begins, after what is considered as an unfair settlement especially the crushing reparation payments and the shrinkage of their military power as well as the lost of land.

The Treaty of Versailles humiliated them and they become increasingly furious and wanted someone to fix the problem. Adolf Hitler gave rise to the nazi party and Germany found its way out of the ashes. All of this would pave way to start World War ll. The total of dead was around 16 million. The Great War had changed the way war was fought.