/k/ knows much about military history. What was the First World

>>31328093
Basically, Germany wanted to prove it wasn't a diplomatic pushover, France wanted revenge for the Franco-Prussian war, Russia didn't want to appear weak after the Russo-Japanese War, and Austria-Hungary was trying to stave off its inevitable decline.

So basically WWI was caused purely by pride and blind nationalism on all sides.

>>31328093
DEY SHOT OUR PRINCE

I thought the school has already started and all the kids were gone...

But I am not gonna be a collossal faggot and will provide some info:
>Archduke of Austria-Hungary gets assassinated by a Serbian nationalist
>Austria-Hungary gets convinced by Germany to declare war against Serbia
>Russia backs Serbia
>Everybody goes and fucks themselves over; 40 million people die

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ztOV2wrrkY

I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich cause he was hungry.

>>31328143
So they killed each other by the tens of millions to show off how important they were?
>>31328154
>>31328167
Why would the whole world jump in over a small, unimportant country like Serbia? Who cares if the Austrians take over Serbia? What difference would it make to anybody east of the Dneiper or west of the Danube?

>>31328213
>So they killed each other by the tens of millions to show off how important they were?

Yes.

That's why WWI was considered the seminal tragedy of the modern era, because it was fought over completely pointless reasons.

>>31328213
The Serbs promoted a pan-slavic state. A-H had many slavs in it so it's viewed as an existential threat

It was kind of the Iraq War for Europe. Political stupidity spawned an unstable web of alliances, and with Ferdinand's assassination, the faction of warmongers in Austria-Hungary had the justification they needed to go to war.
On top of this, countries like France and Austria had been previously humiliated by Prussia, and wanted to redeem themselves, in a way.
Basically, politicians were idiots who thought they could control something well beyond their abilities.
And of course, once war were declared, you couldn't really easily back out, especially with the prevalence of nationalism in the European culture of the time. You had to keep fighting largely just to save face.

I'm hugely oversimplifying this, but you get the picture.

Treaty system dragged everybody in to war.

It didn't help how the Serbs managed to assassinate like literally the one guy who didn't want to beat the shit out of the Serbs.

>>31328213
RUSSIA cared about what happened in Serbia, because SLAV UNITY. This is also just a few years after Austria-Hungary invaded and annexed Bosnia and coerced Serbia into ceding land to it. A full Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia was a real threat to Russia.

>>31328154
HE WUZ A GOOD ARCHDUKE

>>31328213
Because Serbia and Russia were bros. Both slav countries. And then Germany started fucking with France; Belgium and other countries around it. Then the britbongs jumped in trying to fend off the German from taking over the Europe. And then Germans fucked up and accidentally sank an American boat with couple thousand people on it. And thats when Americans got furious and got involved in the war as well. Basically WWI is a big story of revenge on one another.

>>31328256
This so much, he actually wanted to feed his subjects

>>31328238
>The Serbs promoted a pan-slavic state
But their fellow Slavs, the Croats and Bosnians, were all too happy to exterminate Serbs on behalf of the Austrians.

>>31328256
There's reason to believe that was intentional. The Black Hand wanted to destabilize the Serbian population in Austria-Hungary so that they would hopefully rebel and join Serbia.
Can't be doing that when ol' Franz is actually advocating for them.

>>31328276
To be fair the lusitania did have munitions on in

>>31328282
Just because the Serbs wanted it didn't mean the rest did.

>>31328093
It was essentially a family conflict where every member of the family happened to be the king of a country.

>>31328233
Dubs of the sad truth.

WWI was the greatest waste of human life ever. Some countries came close to Losing and entire generation of men

>>31328259
>>31328276
>Russia
>Slav unity
Implying there weren't plenty of other Slavs, such as Bulgarians, Croats, and Bosnians fighting against Serbs. And why would Russians care about Serbia when they already had all of eastern Europe?
>American boat
It was a British ship carrying weapons.

>>31328276
>accidentally
>implying the German embassy didn't warn Americans that the Lusitania would be sunk
>implying Lusitania wasn't carrying thousands of rounds of ammunition and explosives
>implying Germany did anything wrong

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>>31328093
>Colonial conflicts and the race to snab the final bits of land available
>Economical competition
>Nationalism
>Germany's rise as a military might to challenge France and Britain
>Germany's attempts at building up their navy, challenging British naval supremacy
>Bismarck building a house of cards and leaving responsibility to a moron
>Russia thinking it's a Slavic protector, dreams of Panslavicism
>Ethnic conflict in Serbia / Austria-Hungary
>Treaties
All of this lead to the countries jumping the gun and joining the war, once the Austrian powder keg was lit. Everyone wanted a war, everyone wanted to beat their rivals and come up on top, France wanted revenge for their humiliation and everyone thought the war would be a fast, relatively painless bit of work.

>>31328276
Don't forget Germany provoking the shit out of the US with the Zimmermann note.

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>>31328093
The defeat of their enemies and overall hegemony over Europe?

Are you retarded or something?

>>31328317
I'm not saying the ideal of a pan-slavic state was actually feasible, but Russia and Serbia certainly believed it was. And Imperial Russia is not the same as the USSR. Their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe wasn't nearly as airtight as it was post-WWII. Serbia was one of the few nations in the Balkans unequivocally on their side.

>>31328338
To be fair to Bismarck, he realized what WWI would do to Germany and tried to prevent it by courting Russia as an ally. Then he got fired by Willhelm because the Kaiser couldn't into diplomacy.

>>31328093
Everyone wanted to prove they were the biggest swinging dicks around all at once.

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Oil.

Control of the near east was the factor that led to German escalation and British and French response. Oil was discovered in the Arab peninsula in 1906 or 7. Germans were allied with the Turks who had the most control of the region.

It was half 19th century grudge match and half modern resource geopoliticking.

>>31328213
Russia had an alliance with Serbia, so when Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, Russia declares war on Austria-Hungary. Austrian-Hungary has an Alliance with Germany so they declare war on Russia. France has an Alliance with Russia, so they go to war with Germany And Austria-Hungary. In order to attack France, Germany's army invades Belgium. Belgium has an Alliance with Britian so Britian declares war on Germany and then Austria-Hungary declares war on Britian to back up Germany. Portugal has a very long standing alliance with Britian so it declares war on Austria-Hungary and Germany. Italy was supposed to be in an alliance with Germany but they wait until 1915 to do anything and then they instead Attack Austrian-Hungary and Germany declares war on them. Then the Austro-Hungarians and GermAnS persuade Ottoman Turkey to join the war on their side promising them territory in the Middle East that Britian owns at the time. Also Japan Joins the war when Britian does because of an alliance between Britian and Japan.

>>31328154
WE WUZ ARCHDUKES N SHEIT

>>31328340
The Zimmerman telegraph was fake.

>>31328259
Russia also wanted other allies for another coalition against Turkey, their old enemy. They've had their eyes on Istanbul for about 400 years now. Supporting Serbia and others would mean not only a check against the Austrians, but one against the Turks as well.

>>31328093
ur mum xD

Going off memory:
>armies are huge
>that means they have huge costs
>most soldiers aren't mobilized until shit has obviously hit the fan
>mobilizing millions of people can't be hidden
>the main form of transportation is trains
>trains are hard to rush, so there's a rather strict maximum speed at which a country can have their army ready to go
>everyone has a good idea of how quickly their enemies can be ready to invade them
>everything is so precisely planned that the motherfuckers next door having a head start of just hours is unacceptable and is a de facto declaration of war
Everything was based on that. This is why Germany invaded France via Belgium when Russia mobilized to deal with Austria-Hungary. If you're not familiar with prewar treaties and military methods, this sounds absolutely retarded and unrelated to what happened in the Balkans.

In short the military policy of every European country was largely determined by the health of their train autist community.

>>31328509
Not really, oil was important, but not as important as it is today (use of oil for transportation was barely envisioned). It was not the driving force that pulled any power into the war, though Britain and France was definitively willing to go far to ensure that the Ottoman empire was broken up and colonized once the war was over.

>>31328093
Many things drove the nations to war. Some saw it as a way conquer territory they wanted (like say Russia with Istanbul) or that they recently lost (France), some did it to fulfill alliances (Britain, Germany) or to increase their standing among the other great powers (again Germany). In truth, its mostly a combination of everything you can imagine. The european nations was not aware the extent to which their military powers and the power of their nations had grown (which was exponential) and thought the war would result in a fast victory with great rewards for their victors, like it had almost always been in Europe. War wasn't really viewed the same way as it is today, mind you. This naivity was most likely the main reason that the war ultimately wasn't halted.

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>>31328093
>western powers wanted to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine
>Germany had expansionist ambitions and saw the current geopolitical situation as an opportunity to advance their "empire"
and that's pretty much it

>>31329779
hehexd

>>/pol/

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>>31330027
>balfourdeclaration.png
you're honestly retarded if you think such a massive conflict with such long lasting effects would be caused by something like A declares war on B declares war on C declares war on D declares war on E, and so on as most public education textbooks seem to imply.

>>31330048
Indeed. It mustve been the jews whispering into the ears of the leaders of the belligerents.

Good thing detective anon is on the case. *fedora tipped*

>>31330048
you think the Balfour declaration was the cause of WWI? are you insane

>>31330101
>It mustve been the jews whispering into the ears of the leaders of the belligerents.
still a better explanation than the official story as far as why the US suddenly entered the war, seeing that the US public sentiment towards Germany was nothing short of brotherly and nobody at home was calling for war until one day there's kraut propaganda slapped around

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>>31330121
Maybe because the leadership of the US favoured Britain more than Germany. And you know, Germany giving Mexico support to take back Texas. Or Germany sinking US trading ships (effectively shutting down the US economy).

Oh wait no, thats too implausible. Im leaning towards the jew theory now too.

It was an aristocratic dick measure competition that costed millions of lives.

>>31330176
>Maybe because the leadership of the US favoured Britain more than Germany
Certainly, hence there being a Rothschild agent at the helm of the post treaty private German banking system.

>>31328093
It was the result of a delicate balance of power. Germany had still only recently unified. This newly grouped power, together with the industrialization of Russia, massively upset the balance of things. France was threatened by a rising Germany. Germany tried to outdo Britain on the seas, so they were also seen as a threat. Austria Hungary was crumbling, as were the Ottomans. Russia was just about ready to catapult into new heights of power with its industrialization.

Everyone wanted their own piece of the pie, and nobody believed the pie was big enough to share. With so many nations being at great power status, they formed various blocs to try and contain their opponents' power and influence as well as increase their own.

World War One wasn't about the Archduke getting killed. It wasn't just about Serbia's incorporation or lack thereof into the Austrian Empire. It was the natural endstate of competition.