i am doing world war one in history does anybody know why it started?

Question

anything will do

Answer 1

"ArchDuke Francis Ferdinand" heir to the Austrian throne and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo June 23rd 1914 by a Serbian dissident. The Austro-Hungarian Empire sent an ultimatum to Serbs July 23rd and declared war July 28th.
As the major powers got drawn in to what should have been a localised confrontation turned into what became The Great European Civil War. Germany declares war on Russia, France invades Belgium as a buffer between them and Germany, Britain declares war on Germany. Austria then declares war on Russia. Serbia and Montenegro declare war on Germany, France then declares war on Austria, followed by Britain against Austria. Austria then declares war on Belgium then Russia declare war on turkey and Britain and France also attack Turkey. That was the start of it all. All this finally got sorted out during the Bosnian conflict of 1992, strangely enough the worst fighting was around Sarajevo where it all started.....

Answer 2

The causes are quite vairied, although gasguy69 has chosen the wrong war.

Firstly, the nations of the industrialized world had signed mutual support treaties with each other which effectivly split Europe in two - Pro and Anti Germany.

The big boy on the block was Britain, or more precisely, her collonial might. Germany, however had envisioned a war and had been building up to it for some time. Naval construction was given as proof, by the victors, that Germany had designed its navy primarily to take on the British, since the coal guzzlers were unsuited to defending far flung collonies. Arch Duke Ferdinand was, some say, an excuse rather than a trigger.

The initial German war plan called for France to be taken out of the equation while Russia was still moving its troops to the front (Necessary due to treaty set up). If this plan had worked, the war would have been over effectively. Since the German generals did not stick to their master plan, Frances troops remained relatively in tact and were able to fortify, freeing up the manpower needed to tackle the German assault.

It then developed into a war of attritian.

Luck

Answer 3

Conventional wisdom would say the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and his wife Sofia) by a Serbian nationalist was the trigger for war.
But....
There is an alternative theory to this, based on the following:
In the early part of the 20th Century, the world's economies were gradually changing from coal-based energy to oil based. The British Empire controlled all of the world's sea routes (the Royal Navy was by far the most powerful on Earth at the time), thus controlling the movement of oil from the expanding oil fields of the middle east to Northern Europe. The German Empire was expanding its navy in an attempt to match the British, but crucially in 1913 the Berlin to Bagdad railway was opened, which provideed a land route from the oil fields of what is now Iraq to central Europe free from British interference. Could this have been a contributing factor ?
Incidentally, the first British troops deployed overseas in 1914 were sent not to France or Belgium, but to what is now Iraq !

Answer 4

There was lots of long term reasons for the First World War, such as Germany's and Britains rivalry. However, the short term cause was the assasination of Archduke of Franz Ferdinand. Who Gavirlo Princip killed because he wanted Bosnia and Serbia to be an independent country and not be part of the Austrian and Hungrian empire

If you are doing GCSE the BBC website is helpful.

Answer 5

Because, around the turn of the twentieth century, the riches from Britain's growing Empire required more and more accountants to deal with the paperwork, there was an accelerated change from a largely agricultural and industrial economy towards a commercial one and a huge increase in the number of lower-class city workers.
Members of rich, landed families as well as those who had enjoyed privileged educations in England became terrified of 'the masses' as they called them because the wider availability of a basic education meant that ordinary people could also read and reason, and therefore perhaps would start to question their lowly position in society. There were fears that they would soon be challenging their betters in the British Establishment.
With lingering jitters associated with the French revolutionary Terror - just a few generations ago - still at the back of their minds, this fear led to concentrated but private thinking about how the British Proletariat could be controlled.
The ingenious but unspoken answer was to go to war. A less important decision was who to go to war with but Germany was an obvious choice of 'enemy' because of the huge amount of Establishment wealth riding on keen competition with Germany for new imperial territory.
One problem in starting a war was that a believable story would have to be made up to convince men that war was inevitable and that they should 'fight for their country'. The assassination by young idiots of a member of 'royalty', the Archduke Ferdinand, was a happy fluke for the conspirators.
One unlooked for by-product of the war was the willingness of the more gullible men from the gentry to fight too and thousands of them were slaughtered as well as the target group of working-class men. On the whole though, the First World War was a huge success in its goal of reducing Britain's working population of potential revolutionaries.
Even today, annual Remembrance Day observance, acts as a less than subtle warning to anyone who thinks that working-class people can ever be emancipated through democracy or debate.
Fortunately though, the British Establishment is today composed of very pleasant people who are well grounded and very welcoming of ordinary people who would like to be judged and rewarded on their own merits. Television, radio and newspapers are also free of any Establishment control and the career successes of any individual now do not depend at all on their willingness to participate in any sort of 'old boy network'. Sorry... where was I - I think I fell asleep.

I'm very sad about all war and don't believe in revolutions either. If we are lucky, I hope that we will all be snobs one day. Then it will be impossible to start a war.

Answer 6

Very basically, WW1 was inevitable because it was really about the might of the industrial nations of northern Europe and how they would carve the world up in building their own empires. Primarily, Africa and the Indian sub continent were the reward for the victors. A few western Atlantic islands and non strategic African states were given to the losers.

Answer 7

Many things led up to WWI, but the spark that ignited the war was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

Answer 8

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Answer 9

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated and that's what kicked the whole thing off

Answer 10

It was the assasination of archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Black hand gang in serbia in the year of 1914.