Militarism within European countries was responsible for WWI. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

There are four factors which could be held accountable for World War I; militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism. Militarism is the expansion of armies and navies, alliances refer to the webs of pacts and agreements that countries made with each other, imperialism is the taking over of other countries, and nationalism is the promoting of one’s own country and propaganda against either other countries or countries which were opposition of your allies. All of these four factors were partially responsible for causing the war. Militarism could be blamed for causing the war, because the growing competition between the European powers meant that countries were desperate to show their dominance, and this was best done through military investing. Furthermore, increasing military spending meant that countries wanted to use their armies, and this idea is backed up by the ”use it or lose it” mindset. Alliances were formed to protect one another against possible future attacks, but ended up further increasing the tensions between the European powers as alliances were formed against other alliances. Imperialism meant that countries were already fighting over territory, and though it was far away from where these countries actually were, it severely increased the risk of war as the tensions between countries increased. Nationalism increased hostility as the propaganda war began and continued. Each country was frantically trying to prove that they were superior to all other countries, and in this process they often ended up making negative propaganda slandering other countries and their leaders. Nonetheless, it was the Triple Alliance of 1882 that started the string of events that would inevitably lead to war. Even though none of the f...

... middle of paper ...

...ress from the continuous arms races and military scares, held a big part of the responsibility for the war. Imperialism is tightly connected with militarism, because as one increases so does the other, but if this relationship is ignored we can clearly see that militarism was the half that bore most of the responsibility. Without expanding militarism, countries wouldn’t have had as many imperialist aims. But the deciding factor was the changing alliances in Europe. Even though this ties in with the tension building from the military scares and naval arms races that went on because of military expansion, they provided an environment of mistrust and a sort of betrayal for the evergrowing tensions between nations to grow to the breaking point. Even though alliances alone did not cause the war, without the crumbling alliance system in Europe war could’ve been avoided.