HIST 1031 Lecture Notes - Passenger Ship, Balkans
Document Summary
At the start of the 20th century, rivalries started to develop between the nation states in europe. Germany, austria, italy vs. britain, france, and russia. 1914 alliances had evolved within europe and diplomacy developed based on alliances with secret clauses and agreements. Many small ethnic groups wanted to free themselves from their austrian rule (ie the serbs) The nations were not threatened by the idea of war because they thought it would help bring back cohesiveness to the continent. By 1900, an arms race began to accelerate and militarists became more prominent. Germany invested in building a navy that could challenge the british navy. Militarists had a lot of sway in the governments and many states began to build up large, modern armies to show their strength. Russia had an army of 1. 3 million men, and france and german had armies of 900,000. As the 20th century progressed, war seemed inevitable and necessary.
