The assassination of Archduke Fran Ferdinand is known as the match that lit the fire for the start of World War 1, but was it really the only cause? The answer is, not really. There were four M.A.I.N causes for war- militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism. These are the underlying ideals that most countries held and pursued through their actions that led to the world’s first wide-scale war. While what happened in Austria may have sparked the war, these aims were already rooted deep in each nation involved. Seeing these ideas play throughout history building up to WW1 will prove that these ideas were the catalyst to each nation in starting the “War to End All Wars.” When ideas of WW1 were beginning to pick up, nobody had ever thought…show more content… To start, all the nations thought they were better than each other at the time, especially in Vienna, expressing their heated opinions and turning against one another. The intense nationalism drove people apart; an excerpt from Mark Twain, (Doc 2), states this: “Broadly speaking, all the nations in the empire hate the government—but they all hate each other, too, and with devoted and enthusiastic bitterness; no two of them can combine.” Because of the intense political climate after the Archduke's assassination, everyone was hot-wired and upset. To prevent governments from falling apart, leaders would turn this hate against other nations rather than themselves to prevent rebellion and find a common enemy. This was a frequent way to use nationalism, and even militarism, to drive the people of a nation together, and then pit those nations against each other. Nations, Germany especially, thought of themselves as superior and deemed fit to rule as they saw fit. This meant they would seize the opportunity while people were pitted against each other and try to imperialize nations like Russia and…show more content… With all these nations participating in their alliances and already set to fight against each other, tensions rose higher and higher. With alliances established, nations aimed to create a strong sense of militarism and even more nationalism. The people of these nations could see that war was about to strike at a large scale. While most turned to find an enemy, some turned to look for peace. Doc 3 is a letter of correspondence between cousins Willy and Nicky, political heads from Germany and Russia. Willy urges for peace, saying, “I cannot refrain from a certain feeling of anxiety, that if not contradicted at once, the foul and filthy lies which are freely circulated about my policy and my country, will tend to create bitterness between our two
