One of the reasons that's most cited as to a cause or
the cause of why World War One turned into a world war as opposed to just a
regional conflict in Southeast Europe
is the alliance system
that was developing in the decades leading up to World War One.
And to understand that, i've distilled a bunch of the alliances that occurred in those
decades leading up to World War One. This is just a distilled version, there are
many other alliances that were tangentially related, but I'll try to distill down the ones
that were directly related to
all of the dominoes falling
in 1914, that led to all of Europe being essentially at war with
each other.
So to understand that, we have to rewind 75 years. So World War One
it starts in 1914;
75 years before that, in 1839, you have the Treaty
of London,
and the Treaty of London did many things, but Article 7 is what's
relevant to the beginning of World War One,
where Britain agrees to protect the neutrality of the Belgium.
And, if you're skeptical you might say: "Hey, this is a 75 year old treaty, why
does this matter anymore?" and that actually would be a good question.
Really all of these alliances, it's a very healthy debate you can have as to
whether these are the direct causes of why one of these powers declared war
on the other, or whether these were just excuses, these were kind of a legal pretext
for saying "Oh i need to declare war" and in reality they really did want to
declare war for a whole set of reasons, to kind of
keep the other persons' empire and check, to flex their military muscle, to go after
more territory in their empires,
who knows what it might be?
But needless to say
1839 was a legal basis
for the British Empire to protect
to protect
Belgium.
Now you fast forward forty years, you get to 1879.
You have a
newly born German Empire out of the Franco Prussian War in 1871.
That newly born German Empire, they just had a...
essentially it's an extension of Prussia, fundamentally a
German kingdom,
they just had a war with France, they took some very valuable territory from France,
they're paranoid that France wants to get back at them, they're paranoid about
they're paranoid about the Russians, and they have some connection with the
Austrians, or the austro-hungarians I should say,
and so in 1879, they sign the Dual Alliance Treaty
between Germany and Austria-Hungary to protect each other if Russia attacks.
They have this common enemy right over here: Russia.
So they're going to... let me do some different color...
They're going to protect each other.
So this makes the new German empire feel a little bit better about
its position in Europe in case they were to get into a war with either of
these characters.
Then in 1892,
you can imagine if you ever play a game of Risk,
or if you play the game of Diplomacy, which is actually based on what happened
in World War One,
if you see some people that you might be at war with starting to become friends,
you want to look for other friends, other alliances that you can form in case they
declare war on you.
So in 1892, you have an alliance between the French and the
Russians, the Franco-Russian Military Convention, so this is an alliance... let me do
this in the magenta colour again.
You have an alliance
between France
France
and Russia.
And then finally in the early nineteen hundreds, 1904 to
1907,
you have a series of agreements, "ententes" essentially means "agreements",
agreements between the British Empire and France, between the British Empire and
the Russian Empire,
to essentially get on good terms with each other. These weren't as formally
bonding that "Hey, if someone's going to attack you, i'm going to attack them", but
they were essentially able to resolve a lot of their issues on what's going on in
their other imperial conquest
and they formed what is called "The Triple Entente", the triple agreement
between
Britain, between the British Empire,
and right here i just circle the United Kingdom, France
France and Russia.
And on the other side of that, you had the Triple Alliance: you have Germany,
you have Austria-Hungary, and you also have... you also have Italy.
Now the reason why, even though entering into World War One, Italy was formerly
part of the Triple Alliance, and there were treaties between Italy and Germany to
become part of this triple alliance,
the reason i don't focus on those, is once the war started, Italy did not go on
the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
It went on the side of the allies, on the side of the Triple Entente.
But this will give you a good background for why
what would seem like a regional skirmish in Southeast Europe
turns into a pan-Europe and eventually pan global war.