Nationalism Main cause of WW1
I do believe that Nationalism was the main cause of the war because it all began from countries trying to get their freedom from the Austria-Hungary Empire. Guarilo Principe shot Francis Ferdinand because he didn’t want to be under their control any longer. Then, of course, the other countries went to war not only because of the allied agreements but because they did not like the countries they were up against. In this war, there were two types of nationalism: there was the type where countries did what they did for their own self-interest. The other type was that some of these countries, such as Austria-Hungary, had so many different ethnic groups who all wanted their independence. However, there were many other causes that led up to World War 1. Overall there were so many issues that were building up between these countries that I feel the war was unavoidable. Two of the biggest issues were imperialism and militarism because back then land was power so you have all these countries fighting to claim as much land as they can. Along with aggressively claiming land, you have these countries building military weapons rapidly for war due to rumors that neighboring countries are building bigger and better weapons. It was a ‘hot mess’ back then because not only did you have countries that didn’t get along, you had countries battling to be the most powerful claiming land and building up their military weapons. The boiling point was when Francis Ferdinand was shot, but it could be argued that nationalism wasn’t the main cause. Furthermore, I stick with my original opinion that nationalism was the main cause of the war because, although its power is sometimes underrated, nationalism is a powerful thing. These ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary wanted to have their own country so badly that they were willing to go to war for it. We see that nationalism is also a decider in a war when we reach World War Two; Hitler, although his intensions are something we don’t