Causes of World War I

hey there students I'm going to go ahead and start belting out a lecture series that I probably should have done a long time ago I'm going to get into World War I and in this lecture I'm going to focus on the causes of World War I and in other lectures I'll go into the Weaponry the psychological toll some of the poetry and art and of course the Paris peace conference but let's go ahead and start with the causes now World War I ran from 1914 to 19 18 and in the course of this 4-year period 38 million casualties around 10 million of those deaths just a level of Destruction unheard of in history up to that point and we ask ourselves what started this mess how did Europe go from 99 years of relative peace between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I into this war that was beyond anything that they'd ever seen the war to end all wars so to speak little did they know most people explain the causes of World War I by breaking them into four parts going over the so-called main causes which are militarism alliances imperialism and nationalism and that's the framework through which I'm going to explain the causes to you now first of all let's start with militarism and this goes to the Anglo German arms race is really the biggest expression of this pre-World War I militarism starting with the HMS dreadn that is quite a name dreadn and you already know this is something big even compared to all of these other ship names the Arrogant the Gladiator the unbeaten unbending unbroken undaunted Valiant vampire vanquisher vehement Vengeance Victory lots of V's there and that's only a few of them the dreadn that's just wow okay like this better be good this is got to be a big ship and sure enough it was this thing loaded with 12 in guns that's like 12 in in diameter as far as the shells that this thing would put out and here is the deck of the dreadn at least part of that's the deck and you can see a crosssection and all of that kind of stuff and you see all of these different gun placements it is unreal this is beyond anything that had ever been made before you see that the industrial revolution has been fully realized you've got a fully automated loading mechanism you see that sailor there that is just kind of like all right I'm just sort of watching this thing do its thing and this is a killing machine so much that it renders every other ship ever made Obsolete and what's important to note here is that Britain it had all of this Naval superiority in the 19th century but now that they've made this ship to End All Ships so to speak now we're starting over at one and if someone wanted to catch up they could let's go ahead and look at this data here we look at 1870 and 1913 and we look at the manufacturing capacity of westernized Nations now in 1870 of course the UK that being Britain Etc being the first to start the Industrial Revolution they were still ahead behind them the United States and then behind them Germany fast forward to 1913 now we see that whoa the US America woo yeah all right more than Germany and the UK combined but keep in mind that Americans are kind of still on that Washingtonian Jeffersonian kick sort of was staying out of this thing at least at the beginning and when we look here we see that in the intervening years between 187 1913 Germany has surpassed the UK in manufacturing capacity remember in my lectures on German unification how I noted that the unification of Germany fundamentally altered the balance of power now that Germany can out manufacture Britain there's nothing saying that they can't out Navy the British and that is going to be the impetus for this arms race that perhaps we can catch up and then relations between Germany and Britain weren't going so well anyway Kaiser willhelm II whom the British sometimes called Kaiser Bill and Kaiser Bill thought well I'm just going to give an interview to the Daily Telegraph which is still a major newspaper in the UK today and I'm going to go ahead and try to smooth over anglo-german relations well he does about the opposite first of all somebody asked him something the effect of hey why all this military build up are you trying to compete with the British and he's like well yeah what else would I be trying to do and that's not really what the British wanted to hear and then instead of being cool about it when he's asked hey what about all this distrust between the UK and Germany instead of saying hey it's cool man this just a misunderstanding he says you Brits are about as mad as a bunch of March hairs you are just crazy all right this just crazy stuff and so now the British get in their biggest paper one of the biggest papers the Kaiser of Germany who's saying that y'all are a bunch of crazy people and of course we're building up our military to compete with y'all and this really did not go so well so when you think oh I'm going to give an interview to smooth this over doesn't always have the intended consequence and then of course there are Franco German tensions when we look at the Franco Prussian war and everything that led up to that and the a aftermath where the Germans proclaimed their empire right there in the French Hall of mirors they exacted reparations from the French after the Franco Prussian war and then they took the territory of alace lorine from the French so keep in mind it's not just the British and the Germans there's a lot of tension between the British and the French well of course but the French and the Germans as well three nationalities that don't really like each other except that Britain and France are going to be on the same side during this war next we move on to the Alliance System now the alliance system was the byproduct of bismar bismar who was pretty much a foreign policy genius for the most part and what bismar thought that he was going to do was to forge a system of alliances which would actually prevent Wars this is kind of a recipe for peace and a recipe for maintaining the balance of power through alliances he made alliances with Austria Hungary and with Italy and then France and the UK and Russia make alliances with each other you've got two major alliances here first of all the Central Powers Germany Austria Hungary and Italy which is then going to turn coat during the war but then the Ottoman Empire will join the central power so for the purposes of the war Germany Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and then the so-called triple onon onon is a French word meaning something to the effect of understanding the United Kingdom Britain AKA France and Russia and the objective remember is peace that bismar felt like the objective here is not to go to war that if we have this whole pileup effect or something like that that look if you mess with this one you mess with me if you mess with that one you mess with me I mess with you you really don't want to get into a fight if Austria is thinking about o let me pick on little Serbia and take Serbia's lunch money or something like that Russia's like yet and that's like whoa okay like when the Russians get like that no no and then the Germans might get involved and then the French and the British and all that kind of stuff and you think about it and you think maybe not maybe I don't want to get into this big fight with a whole bunch of people rather than just just over picking on this one individual nation and the thing about the alliance system is that it works until it doesn't kind of like at a baseball game or something something like that where the pitcher hits the batter and then they get in a fight and then it all piles up and it gets out of hand it's almost like nuclear war and mutually assured destruction that works it's worked so far until it doesn't next we move on to imperialism which I'm not going to stress a whole lot but I do want you to think about imperialism in terms of national rivalry Going Global whether it's the Scramble for Africa whether it's imperialism in Asia or in the Pacific Islands what this does is it gives European nations another Forum in which to compete and this is going to escalate those National rivalries and beyond that I'm not really going to stress imperialism as a factor then there's nationalism this whole idea of self-determination on the basis of ethnicity that we as a people should be able to form our own country and associate with each other whether it is uniting like Germany and Italy or whether it is dividing like a lot of folks in the Balkans nationalism is about determining your own course of action for your own ethnicity and this is where we have to turn our attention to the Balkan Peninsula which includes lots of countries the former Yugoslavia Romania Greece even a little bit of turkey but where we're really going to focus on is the so-called former Yugoslavia these countries that after World War I were put together and just called Yugoslavia I mean after all they can all be yugoslavs right that's not really how it works you've got slovenians macedonians serbs croatians all of these other people bosnians you've got a lot of different people that are here that don't play well with each other in fact with all of the conquest ranging from the byzantines to the Ottomans to the habsburgs and all of these different groups who have different languages different religions different cultures these people don't play well with each other in fact they are really fond of killing each other now Miss Snyder went out to Croatia and the Balkans and all that kind of stuff over the summer she seem to be having a good enough time but I don't want to go out there that's just too many people who like to kill each other for me to go out there and you know be a part of that and all that kind of stuff but she goes to Israel and all kinds of dangerous places like that too so she can have that I'll just just stay right here in America I mean it looks peaceful enough it's like oh look waterfall all that kind of stuff but don't be fooled by that okay that is a tank and this used to be the National Library in the 1990s so they just gutted that thing and this chist uh decided to play there in the National Library just to kind of show what's become this thing so don't underestimate these people don't feel too safe over there because they're very fond of killing each other now hopefully I did not offend anybody over there if they're watching in the former Yugoslavia that is not my intent in fact if you are offended I'm happy that you're alive to be offended because that means that somebody has not killed you it's been pretty quiet over there lately maybe one day might go over there who knows and this former Yugoslavia in the Balkans becomes a hot bed for what you would call panslavism here is a map of Slavic peoples when we talk about Slavic peoples we're talking about the Russians the poles and then all of these other people that are here in the Balkans who share language groupings who share the Orthodox religion a lot of these slaves share a lot of elements of culture with Russia and Russia has always taken an interest in this area so it's very important to note these balance of power considerations when you look at Serbia for example it is there on the border of the Austrian Empire but they share this Orthodox religion with the Russians they share this SL Heritage with the Russians and that's going to be important and there's a group of Serbian nationalists known as the black hand and these people want to liberate slaves that are still in the Austrian Empire and if you look at Croatia at Bosnia at these areas here they are still being dominated by the Austrian Empire and the Serbian nationalists would like for that to not be so and they launch a terror campaign because they can't launch a standard military campaign against a great power but they want to make a point and in order to make a point they are going to pretty much start World War I arch duuk France Ferdinand is an important guy to remember he was the heir of the Austrian Empire if the Austrian Emperor croaks then he's the emperor this guy is a pretty important guy now why they sent him to where they're sending him I have no idea but they decide you know what let's send the arch Duke to ser o after all this old postcard here looks really pretty why don't you drive across that bridge it might be fun no it's not going to be fun but he's got a pretty cool car it's like let's just send you over there in a convertible you can wave at people and they'll be happy they'll love you and they'll be like yeah we want to be part of this big Empire that really has nothing in common with us or anything like that because you got a cool car man it's not quite how it panned out in instead somebody shot him he was the victim of a terrorist attack from these Blackhand Serbian nationalists e gross okay Richie why'd you put that in there that's cuz that's his shirt he got shot it's sort of like a relic I don't know why they kept it but still on display if you ever wonder I'd kind of like to see the shirt that he was wearing when he got shot there it is all right that's it and this ignites all of these tensions that have been going on here when you think about this arms race and the tensions between Britain and Germany between France and Germany all of the imperialism the alliance system that everything is going to go up and the biggest war that the world has ever seen is going to start and this web of alliances is activated that the austrians declare war on Serbia the Russians are like oh no you didn't yet and then the British come in the Germans come in the French come in the United States is like no not not yet but this is what starts the whole thing and the bench clears now one thing I'm going to tell you on the way out is that Major League Baseball did about the most genius thing I've ever seen all of the fights that you've had the big brawls and everything you can go to their YouTube channel just put in like MLB brawls or baseball brawls or Nolan Ryan Robin Ventura brawl that's one of the classics but any of these big brawls MLBs decided let's put them on YouTube and make some money out of them so if you're teach cool right now you're going to well when the video is over let me finish okay respect people right now when I finish you're going to look at some brawls maybe like two or three of them just see I maybe your teacher's a coach and knows some of these but it's such good stuff baseball is America's pastime and it's kind of sad that it's sort of losing interest although I love football anyway the bench clears and World War I start so again the main causes militarism alliances imperialism and National ISM the alliances the Central Powers Germany Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire triple on taunt Britain France Russia Italy's going to leave one go to the other To the victor you know well that's about it subscribe tom.net follow on Twitter and Instagram like on Facebook all of that good stuff I'll be back soon to continue this lecture and kind of get into the war itself but until then I got to go till next time a

Channel: Tom Richey

Views: 353,344

Keywords: World War I (Military Conflict), WWI, Causes of World War I, Causes of WWI, WWI Causes, World War I Causes, MAIN Causes of WWI, main causes of world war i, WWI AP Euro, AP Euro World War I, Tom Richey WWI, Tom Richey World War I, AP European History Review, AP Euro, Tom Richey, causes of world war 1

Id: fFuOFTp9zeE

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2015