There were many factors that led up to the first world war, some more influential than others.
In the late eighteen-hundreds into the early nineteen-hundreds tensions were high in Europe. Countries were forming alliances, taking over land, and building up their military in order to become the most powerful and influential country in Europe. A Serbian group of rebels killed the archduke of Austria-Hungary which sparked tensions between the two. This dragged in alliances, which became the main cause of the war because it forced countries to pick sides. Militarism and a “race for arms” was the second biggest contributing factor because it made it a competition for other countries to build their military. A combination of these two things caused a political conflict between two countries to turn …show more content…
Serbia, who was allied with Russia, got into a conflict with Austria-Hungary over the murder of the archduke because Serbia did not want to be apart of Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary demanded an retribution and Serbia refused, which caused just those two countries to go into war. However, the main reason it turned into a full scale world war was because who the countries were allied with. As seen in Document A the map of European Alliances, Russia had alliances with Serbia, causing them to join in. Austria-Hungary also had alliances though, with Germany and the Ottoman Empire who all also jumped in. Russia was allied with France, Britain, and Italy . Those were just the main or most powerful countries, what also really made it a world war was that all these countries who had alliances had taken over other countries. So now those countries that all the powerful European countries had taken over were now also apart of the war. Now what had just started out as a conflict of even a small war between two countries had turned into a full scale world war because all of these were