What caused World War I? That’s an easy question, right? Wrong! In fact, the cause of World War I is still highly disputed among historians. For this blog post we had to research different reasons historians had for why the war began and choose our own stance on the topic. Then, of course, we had to find a creative way to display our findings. I decided to create a few political cartoons to highlight my key ideas, two of which I drew on paper, and I edited the other on my iPad.

The cause of World War I is highly disputed among historians and while researching what the cause was, I found many different ideas. After finding multiple views on the beginning of World War I I came to the conclusion that, while there were many factors that caused WWI, the main issue was the many alliances formed between various countries.

The two main alliances were the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Triple Entente consisted of France, Britain and Russia, and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy were the three counties who made up the Triple Alliance. Along with those alliances there were other, smaller, alliances, the most notable being Russia and Serbia. Russia was allied with Serbia because of their common Balkan background, and felt the need to protect the smaller, struggling country. These alliances made it impossible for a regional dispute to stay isolated, and not escalate.

When a disruption did occur it happened to be the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The disruption that sparked war could have been any minor disagreement, the assassination just happened to occur at a time when it would cause much more than a small dispute.

Bosnia, a region in southern Austria-Hungary, wanted to become its own country. Serbia also wanted this freedom for the Bosnians. Bosnian nationalists saw, and took advantage of, their opportunity to strike at Austria-Hungary when Ferdinand announced his trip to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Assassins were recruited throughout Bosnia and Serbia, and were trained to kill the Archduke. These assassins were part of a terrorist group called the Black Hand. Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb, who one of these assassins. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary when he was killed.

This assassination caused a chain reaction of events that set off WWI. The Austria-Hungary government felt the assassination was a direct attack on them, from Serbia. They believed that the terrorists had been aided by the Serbian government, and put an ultimatum on Serbia. When this ultimatum was denied by Serbia, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. They began this war as a way of showing that terrorism would not be tolerated, and they also hoped it would inspire nationalism within the country. The government of Austria-Hungary just hadn’t expected on fighting against two countries.

This dispute would have only lead to a small war, if not for all the alliances. Russia had agreed to aid Serbia if you Austria-Hungary attacked, so when war was declared, Russia mobilized. The French wanted power over all of Europe and were allied with Russia, so they mobilized right away, as well. Germany, having had agreed to help Austria-Hungary in the case of war, then declared war on both Russia and France. Belgium originally hadn’t planned on joining the war until Germans invaded Belgium on their way into France. The chain reaction of European countries joining the war had began, and continued until almost all of the continent, and eventually other continents, were pulled into war due to various alliances.

World War I would never have grown to the size it became without all of the alliances. These made the war grow much more than it needed to, and the amount countries joining in, to defend their allies spiralled out of control. Without the many alliances World War I would have never occurred.