First World War and Russian Revolution — Social Science STD 9 — Question
Gujarat BoardEnglish MediumSTD 9Social ScienceFirst World War and Russian Revolution4 Marks
Question
Explain the factors responsible for the First World War.
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Answer
$1.$ Economic Factors: European nations required huge quantity of raw material after the Industrial Revolution and resorted to Colonisation
In the last quarter of the $19th$ century, Germany started competing with England and France to procure markets in Asia and Africa. This shattered the monopoly of England and France and led to intense economic competition between Germany and England.
$2.$ Militarism : As military force was necessary for competing with the other nations, the European nations went for expansion of their military power.
Conscription (Compulsory Military Training) was started in Japan, Italy and Germany.
Under the pretext of self-defence, production of weapons was increased.
Military competition, added to economic competition and created a serious atmosphere of war.
$3.$ Secret treaties and Groupism : Jealousy, enmity, mistrust, fear and hatred led to secret treaties and divided Europe into two rival camps / groups :
The Central Power group consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy (not mentioned in the textbook) Turkey and Bulgaria.
The Allied Power group consisted of England, France, Russia and Japan. $[$Please note that Italy switched allegiance from the Central Powers to the Allied Powers during the First World War in $1915.]$
$4.$ Fierce (Aggressive) Nationalism : Natio- had led to the independence of Belgium and Greece as well as unification of Italy and Germany. However, nationalism later became aggressive as the national interest of the European nations were conflicting with each other.
The European nations encouraged extreme nationalism,i.e, love for own nation and hatred for other nations.
German Emperor Kaiser William II was ambitious and wanted world leadership for Germany with its grand military power.
This fuelled the war frenzy among the people.
$5.$ Role of newspapers: The newspapers spitted venom against rival nations, aroused mutual hatred by their exaggerated or fake write-ups.
$6.$ Philosophy about war: The write outs of the philosophers like Nietzsche glorified war by using maxims like ‘Only mighty deserve to live’ and ‘War alone is the national need,’ or describing war as a sacred work
$7.$ Immediate cause: Assassination of the Crown-Prince of Austria and his wife by a member of the Serbian nationalist (terrorist) organization ‘Black Hand’ led to issue of ultimatum by Austria to Serbia and eventual declaration of war on Serbia on $28th$ July, $1914.$
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