World War 1 also known as the Great War was a horrific event that that happened in the early 1900’s. This was tool the lives of nearly 37 million people and was the biggest war in history up to that point. There are many different theories of what caused World War 1 but in this post I will be talking about why I think World War 1 started. Most people say that the main cause for World War 1 was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand who was ruler of Austria at the time. My thesis is that what would have normally been a small international crisis (the assassination of Ferdinand) turned into the trigger for World War 1 because of all the tensions between countries at that that time.
Franz Ferdinand’s assassination was the final straw in a series of events that caused WW1. He was one of the only people in Europe who strongly opposed of war between Russia. Ferdinand also had very strong opinions about getting Austria and Hungary to become a tripartite state with the Slavic union. When he was killed there lots of tensions between countries in Europe at that time. Germany and England were in the middle of the naval arms race which was pretty much a contest to see who could have a bigger navy. This caused the two countries to get very tense and have disagreements in a few more areas. Whoever had the biggest navy was seen as the biggest threat to each other so this was something very important between the two countries and the whole of Europe. When the assassin killed Ferdinand the Austrian used the killing as an excuse to invade Serbia, he killed the one person that wanted to and was able to stop a war between Austria, Serbia and Russia.
