Origins of the First World War

Abstract

The events of July and early August 1914 cannot be properly understood without a knowledge of the historical background provided by the preceding decades of Imperialism. On the other hand, that background alone is not sufficient to explain the outbreak of the First World War. Two general historical factors proved to be decisive, and both were fused by a third to produce the explosion known as the First World War. Imperialism, with Wilhelmine Weltpolitik as its specifically German version, provided the general framework and the basic tensions: the principle of national self-determination constituted, with its revolutionary potential, a permanent but latent threat to the old dynastic empires and built-up tensions in south-east Europe. The determination of the German Empire — then the most powerful conservative force in the world after Tsarist Russia — to uphold the conservative and monarchic principles by any means against the rising flood of democracy, plus its Weltpolitik, made war inevitable.