so my question is how did a small regional conflict in the Balkan States blow up into the biggest most devastating War the world had ever seen that war was World War One and this video is all about it so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk Total War style then let's get to it let's begin with the causes of World War One and there are four long-term causes you need to know and one short-term concept by the way if you want all of Unit 8 in a single review video along with Note guides and practice questions then check out my AP Euro review pack and all your dreams will come true Link in description anyway the first long-term cause you need to know is the rise of militarism now militarism by definition is the idea that states desire to increase their military capacity in order to defend and pursue their national interests now there are of course other ways to defend and pursue your National interest like you know diplomacy which means coming to an agreement through negotiation using your mouth hole but because of the terrific explosion in State's capacity to make weapons thanks to the Industrial Revolution solving problems through diplomacy seem less and less attractive in fact during the Second Industrial Revolution the major powers of Europe nearly doubled their spending on their military and in the same way you'd want to drive a new car if you spend a bunch of money on it if you spend a bunch of money on your military you kind of want to go blow things up okay now the second long-term cause of the war was the growth of antagonistic Alliance remember how we talked in unit 7 about Otto von Bismarck of Germany and how his leadership led to an increasing antagonism between Germany on one side and Britain and France on the other well those antagonistic alliances are going to bloom fully in the Years leading up to World War One Bismarck led the creation of the Triple Alliance between Germany Austria Hungary and Italy and in response Britain Russia and France created the triple on time each set of Nations stood apart from each other with their giant militaries built up and said Rock come at me oh I wish you would okay and the third long-term cause was imperialism remember in the last unit we talked about the Scramble for Africa and all the Imperial competition in Asia at the hands of European power this competition led to increasing strain among European power for example we talked about the Moroccan crisis in Africa which nearly led to war between Germany and Britain and France because each side wanted power over that territory and then the fourth long-term cause for World War one was nationalism the solidifying of nationalism as a binding Force for the modern nation-state led to tensions also in that day most military leaders of European States believed that war was an acceptable means of vindicating their National Honor and keeping their interests safe for example as a result of the franco-prussian war from the last period Germany secured two French territories Alsace and Lorraine and French leaders had no qualms about potentially using military aggression to restore to France what rightly belonged to them like it was a matter of National Honor and so gripped by nationalist Visions each of these great powers of Europe saw their own people in their own culture and their own Nation as Superior to others and that is a recipe for disaster okay and now let's talk about the short-term or immediate cause of the war and by all accounts it should not have led to a war as cataclysmic as World War one but it did so you know let's talk about it the immediate cause of the war was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 he and his wife were on a parade through the streets of sarajeva which was the capital of Bosnia now follow me here Bosnia had been annexed by Austria-Hungary a few years earlier so you've got bosnians living under the rule of Austria-Hungary and what have we seen over and over again when that happens nationalism Sprouts up among the conquered peoples and they desire to be free and to have a nation of their own so that is what's going on here so on the day of the parade a Bosnian Serbian nationalist named gavrilo princess shot and killed the Archduke now to be clear princip lived in Bosnia but he was a Serbia the Serbian government as far as we know had precisely nothing to do with the assassination so really what we have here is a conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary and that's it the truth is this is in these time a European leader had been assassinated in the recent past and in those cases those involved managed to keep the conflict local but when an assassination like this occurs in the context of those long-term causes I just mentioned then you've got a different scenario altogether so Austria-Hungary seeing an opportunity to weaken Bosnia and influence in the Balkans revved up that sweet military that they've been building up and decided to intervene they called on their Ally Germany to assist them and Germany was like uh so Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia and that was entirely unpalatable to the Russians they had suffered some humiliating defeats in the previous Balkan crises and so they rushed to Serbia's age and so Germany declares war on Russia and the rest of the alliance system lights up with activity and that's how you get a World War now once the fighting began it became clear that this was an entirely new kind of war that confounded traditional military strategies and much of this newness came from the Munitions technologies that were freshly minted first of all let me tell you about the machine gun and barbed wire but in order to understand why those were so devastating you need to understand the main method of fighting this war namely trench warfare now Army said hunkered down to trenches in many wars prior to this so wasn't really new but when you combine the trenches with machine guns and barbed wire things get nasty effect so each side would dig their trenches opposite to each other and then line the land in front of them with barbed wire and then station machine guns across the top which were capable of delivering hundreds of rounds of ammunition at great speed so when once I got tired of waiting they'd charge up out of their trench get caught in the barbed wire where there would be summarily mowed down by Machine Gun fire that lasted until they retreated and then the other side got tired of waiting and then they'd charge out and the same thing would happen additionally Germans introduced chemical weapons like chlorine gas that without the protection of a gas mask would blind and choke those that came into contact with it also Germans developed submarines which were able to attack ships from underneath the surface of the water also airplanes were used in battle for the first time and although bombing techniques wouldn't be perfected until the second world war airplanes were still formidable in their own run so the point is take all these new technologies together and you had the deadliest war that had ever been fought the casualties were staggering okay now World War one was what's called a total war which means that all of the state's resources both at home and on the battlefield were used to fight means that textile factories were converted into Munitions factories and people had to ration food in order to make sure the troops were fed and on and on and on and since the people at home were sacrificing for what seemed to be an unwinnable war with devastating casualties discontent began growing and that led to protest and Insurrection at home one Insurrection was the Russian Revolution but that's going to get its own video so let's focus here on the Easter rebellion in Ireland the Irish had long sought to be free of British rule on the manifestation of that was the home rule movement just prior to the outbreak of the War the British Parliament had passed a home rule bill that would have granted Ireland their independence but they put that on hold while the war was being weighed even so Irish soldiers enlisted by the tens of thousands to fight with the British during the war however the heavy casualties of the Irish and the growing frustration at home convinced them that the British had no intention of actually following through with the home rule bill as a result on Easter Sunday 1916 Irish Rebels took to fighting the British in the streets of Dublin now it wasn't long before the British were able to subdue them but it demonstrates how the stalemates and the casualties abroad were causing tensions at home now there were essentially two reasons why this was called a World War first because the massive efforts of Imperial expansion in the last period we studied Imperial Powers called up colonial soldiers to fight for this for example Indian troops fought for the British and North African troops fought for the French but the second reason this was a World War is because the theaters of War spilled beyond the borders of Europe first example is the Armenian genocide in which the ottoman officials encouraged the slaughter of Armenian Christian minorities living within their borders second all the way across the globe Japan got in the action by declaring war on Germany then systematically seizing German Colonial possessions in China and the South Pacific okay now in 1917 the United States entered the war because of the unrelenting aggression of German submarines and a few other factors and though the United States troops initially saw little action their entry on the side of the triple on taunt was a significant factor in turning the tide of the war in their favor and ultimately it was the triple entaunt that won the war and all that was settled in 1918 in the Treaty of Versailles and the end of this war significantly altered the global balance of power first of all the United States emerged far more wealthy and far more powerful than it had been before the war and so they became a true Global power second old European Empires were disbanded after the war which is to say the austro-hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire were dissolved Germany was severely punished in the Treaty of Versailles and thus lost his vaunted position as a major European power and then under the mandate system the Victoria's Powers took control of Germany's Colonial possession and all of this unbalancing and the punishment of Germany is going to lead us squarely into World War II but we're going to save that for another video okay click here to keep reviewing for Unit 8 of AP Europe click here to grab my AP Euro review pack which does everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your examinement I'll catch you on the flip-flop heimler out