The War That Changed Everything: Empire, Error, and Aftermath

The leading causes of World War One where a myriad of factors interacted to provoke the war. Causing a chain of events that extended it into the Great War that spanned much of the world. Militarism, imperialism, nationalism, and a system of alliances are the main causes of the conflict.  Taken together, they created the overall atmosphere of mistrust, animosity, ill-feeling, hate, and fierce competition among the major players that came to be called "the powder keg waiting for the spark."However, to find the culprit for starting the war, one must start asking who had the most to gain and the most to lose from it. 

Causes 

The present essay argues that WWI was the final play of three declining empires: The Austrian-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman, with three other intervening factors: Nationalism, Militarism, Imperialism, and an Alliance System. 

Nationalism is said to be "the underlying factor subordinate to all the others." This argument is supported by quotes that describe people's attitude at the time: “With what innocence, with what enthusiasm did the Europeans of 1914 respond to the tocsin (alarm bells). (…) No one foresaw even the contours of the disaster ahead, and most people welcomed the war as a great patriotic adventure.” (Garraty, J.A and Peter Gay,  p. 981). However, "patriotic exaltation had been preceded by the efforts of all governments to save the appearance of peacefulness, to make it seem as if the enemy were also the unprovoked aggressor. None had pursued this policy of deception with more cunning or under greater difficulties than the German government, and nowhere was the appearance of fighting a defensive war more important than in Germany '' (Garraty, J.A and Peter Gay,  p. 981). 

Nevertheless, except for the Balkans, the role of nationalism may have been overblown. Oppressed people everywhere are nationalists. A common denominator to the declining empires was the loss of popularity of the Tsar, Sultan, and Emperor coupled with social unrest and repressive actions which just stoked the fires. 

Militarism led to an arms race, particularly between a long dominant power - England -  and an aspiring one, Germany. England’s Navy had dominated its field since at least the Napoleonic Wars and was determined to keep it that way; Germany had decided to challenge that. Militarism also implied the belief in the superiority of might over diplomacy, then perceived as ineffective. As such, militarism was a contributing factor to the war, it's not the cause.

Imperialism is understood as the policy of European states to establish overseas colonies, particularly in Africa. Britain and France had the larger shares of African colonies; Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany were far behind. Competition for colonies was a source of tension and, as such, encouraged the system of alliances and thus the arms race. However, imperialism's role in the outbreak of the war was indirect, at best.    

The Alliance System created tension among European powers and contributed to expanding the conflict into a World War. But did it trigger the war? We could not detect a relation of cause and effect here. The opposing argument is that the system of alliances set up the two aggressive rival teams against each other. The alliances' existence exacerbated tensions but didn’t cause armed conflict.

The Culprit

Austria's actions were instrumental in igniting the war. After the assassination of both Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, in Sarajevo,  “the leaders of Austria insisted that the assassination must have been planned by the Serbian government. Serbian leaders denied it. But the denial did no good” (Bauer, pa. 217).  “Although Serbia’s reply to Austrian ultimatum was an almost complete surrender, the Austrians deemed it insufficient” , declaring war on Serbia. The assassination was the excuse Austria was looking for to punish Serbia. Another suspect, Germany, had no interest in fighting a war that would endanger its decades-long spiraling growth (Willmott, 2003, p. 17). Likewise, England had turned attention to its empire. Although it opposed Germany's burgeoning power in Europe, it didn't consider it a cause for war. 

The conclusion is that a fundamental cause of the war was a failure of deterrence, coupled with a failure of intelligence. The warring parties completely miscalculated the strength of their foes. Austria declared war only to find out (afterwards) that it wasn't prepared for it. Shooting started in July and everybody was saying that the war would end by Christmas. The rings of alliances, at first, were not taken into account. Hawks on all parties just considered it improbable that allies would honor their commitments.  None foresaw the disaster ahead. After a decade of worsening crises and spiraling arms race, they had come to expect a final showdown, but after decades of peace they had forgotten what war was like and few had an inkling of the destruction that a modern war would cause. A series of mistakes caused the war… and Austria erred the most.

Consequences 

The impact of the war still reverberates today. World War I didn’t just end empires—it reshaped the world’s political, social, and cultural landscapes. Borders were redrawn with little regard for ethnic or historical realities, sowing tensions that persist in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The war also normalized industrial-scale violence, introduced new technologies of destruction, and left behind a generation scarred by trauma. It shifted global power dynamics, weakened old imperial powers, and paved the way for the rise of the United States as a dominant force. Economically, the aftermath created instability that would eventually lead to the Great Depression and, politically, to the conditions for World War II. Even now, the war’s legacy lingers in unresolved territorial disputes, nationalist movements, and the collective memory of a century shaped by conflict.

Works Cited

ALLAN, Tony. The Causes of World War I. Heinemann Library, 2002

BAUER, Susan Wise. The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 4: The Modern Age. Peace Hill Press, 2014.

FREEDMAN, Russell. The War to End All Wars: World War I. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

GARRATY, John A. and PETER Gay, Editors. “The Great Powers to the Verge of War,” The Columbia History of the World. Harper & Row, Publishers. New York, 1981, chapter 85, pp 966-993. 

GARRATY, John A. and PETER Gay, Editors. “The Great World War: 1914-1945, World War I,” The Columbia History of the World. Harper & Row, Publishers. New York, 1981, chapter 86, pp 981-993. 

KING, Greg and WOOLMANS, Sue. The Assassination of the Archduke. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013.

WILLMOTT, H.P. World War I. Dorling Kindersley Publishing Inc. 2003.

By Sofia Lima