Hi and welcome back to Heimler's History. In the last video we began Unit 7 of our AP World History Curriculum. In this video and the next video we're going to be dealing with World War I. In this video, the causes of the war, and in the next one, the war itself.
So if you're ready, I'm ready, let's get them brain cows milked. Now I don't think it's too much to to say that every major event in the rest of the 20th century has direct or indirect connections to World War I. So it's kind of a big deal, and if that's the case, then we need to understand what caused such a conflict. And the best way I know to explain the causes of the war is to tell you about the main- main causes of World War I. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism.
So let's start with militarism. By definition, militarism is the desire of a state to develop and maintain a powerful military in order to aggressively advance their own interests. In the couple decades prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Britain and Germany especially had invested huge sums of money into bulking up their military.
Each of these countries swelled the ranks of their ground forces through heavy recruitment. They built up their navies, they developed new weapons. And this massive stockpiling of weapons is, of course, brought to you by the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution.
When you need lots of things to kill people with, fast. Alright, second cause, alliances. Because of all the tension between these military powers, they began to make secret alliances with other nations.
Essentially, an alliance is when one country recruits other countries into an agreement of mutual self-defense. What that basically means is that if I'm country A and I forge an alliance with country B, and then country X attacks me, then country B is going to come to my defense. BOOM! Third cause, imperialism.
So imperialism is when one country brings another country under its political dominion, or sometimes economic dominion. And so if you've been following these videos from Unit 6, you'll remember that from 1750 to 1900 there was a metric buttload of empire building going on around the world. Europeans fought like toddlers to carve up their slice of Africa.
Japan and the United States joined the toddler party when China was on the table. And in this long-standing quest for global dominance and colonial holdings all over the world bitter rivalries had developed between these powers. Fourth cause, nationalism.
By definition, nationalism is a strong identification with one's own nation and people, often to the exclusion of other people. Now I should hasten to add that patriotism is different from nationalism. Patriotism really only has to do with the first part of that definition, a strong identification with one's own people. Nationalism takes it one step further and jams on the second part of that definition, to the exclusion of other people. So if you're an American and you enjoy giving bald eagles a high five, that's patriotism.
However, if after applying said high five, your desires for for that eagle to go chew the face off of anyone who does not like giving bald eagles a high five, well, that's nationalism. And so this rising surge of nationalism going on during this time, combined with the other three causes, means that the world is a powder keg about to explode. And what's really interesting is that these causes aren't just apparent to us as we are looking backwards on history. These four causes that I've mentioned also had the people during that time worried as well.
And my favorite example is from economist Frederick Passy, who in 1895, almost 20 years before the outbreak of . of World War I had this to say, The entire able-bodied population is preparing to massacre one another. Though no one, it is true, wants to attack, and everybody protests his love of peace and determination to maintain it, yet the whole world feels that it only requires some unforeseen incident, some unpreventable accident, for the spark to fall in a flash and blow Europe sky high. And now I get to tell you what that spark turned out to be.
It happened on June 28, 1914, and this story is is legitimately unbelievable. Like if it were written as a movie script and submitted to a Hollywood studio, they would reject it because this kind of stuff just doesn't happen. But I assure you, this is exactly how it happened. So on that day in June, the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a guy by the name of Franz Ferdinand, was in a car in the middle of a parade winding through the streets of Sarajevo. Unknown to him, a Serbian nationalist group called the Black Hand had made plans to assassinate him as a symbol of their desire to rid Bosnia of Austrian influence.
of the Black Hand were chosen to carry out this deed. They were given bombs and pistols to carry it out and they spread themselves out along the parade route. So as Ferdinand's car passed by the first assassin he chickened out and did nothing and then his car passed by the second assassin who also chickened out and did nothing.
He passed by the third assassin and this guy actually mustered his courage, threw the bomb that he had at the car but as it turns out it was on a timer and it was set a little bit too late so it bounced off the car and didn't explode until it hit the ground over here. here, injuring the people, but not the Archduke. And at this, the driver sped away down the road, passing the last two assassins, who also did nothing. And one of these last two was a guy by the name of Gavrilo Princip.
And maybe because he was feeling bad about himself because he was such a terrible assassin, he went to a cafe around the corner, sat on the patio, and began to drink a beer. Now once the Archduke was at a safe distance away, they sat around and decided what to do, and what they decided was that they should go visit the people in the hospital who were injured by the bomb blast. And in order to be safe, they decided that the Archduke was going to be the one to go Archduke and his driver should take a different route to the hospital, which is to say a less crowded route. But the problem is nobody ever communicated that to his driver.
And so when the first two drivers of the motorcade took a turn into the crowded part of the city, the Archduke's driver went right along with them. Alarmed, the front two drivers stopped on the street, ran back to the Archduke's car, said to the driver, what in the world are you doing? And here's where it gets unbelievable.
It just so happened that they stopped the cars and were having their discussion right in front of the cafe where failed assassin Gavrilo Princip was sitting and drowning his sorrows. And so, seeing the situation, Princip got up off his stool, walked over to the car, and shot the Archduke and his wife. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get a world war started. About a month after the assassination occurred, the whole alliance system lit up. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
Germany came to Austria-Hungary's aid. Russia came to aid Serbia. So Germany declares war on Russia. Then Germany declares war on France a few days later. A few days later, Britain declares war on Germany.
And a few days later, Austria declares war on Germany. A few months later, Austria declares war on Russia. As exhausting as all that is to say, it was more exhausting to live through it, but that's the topic of the next video.
That's what you need to know about AP World History, Unit 7, Topic 2. If you want to know the main causes of getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, there's a review packet right here. If you want to form a non-militaristic alliance with me, then subscribe and I'll keep making videos for you. Heimler out.