The Outbreak of the Great War
Germany felt she had a right to an empire like Britain’s, and she was willing to get it at the expense of her neighbours.
1914-1918
King George V 1910-1936
Germany felt she had a right to an empire like Britain’s, and she was willing to get it at the expense of her neighbours.
1914-1918
King George V 1910-1936
In 1871, Otto von Bismarck hammered Prussia and other small princedoms of the region into a new united Germany. The new Union greedily coveted British industrial progress and colonial expansion, but as John Buchan wrote, ‘she began too late in the day, and could succeed only at the expense of her neighbours’.
FROM the 1890s onwards Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, envious of Britain’s industrial and colonial success and exhilarated by German unification, began pouring resources into battleships, weapons and manufacturing. Britain and other European nations, sensing danger, nervously followed suit.
Amidst rising tensions Austria-Hungary announced on 8th October, 1908, a formal claim on Bosnia. They had occupied it ever since helping the Russians to eject the Ottoman Turks in 1878, and now undertook to Westernise it, for its own good. Slav nationalists were outraged, and on June 28th, 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo.
In the ‘July Crisis’ that followed, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Bosnia’s neighbour, Serbia, backed by Germany, but Tsar Nicholas II of Russia bitterly disappointed cousin Wilhelm by taking Serbia’s side. When France also defied him, Wilhelm ordered his troops to cross neutral Belgium and teach the French a lesson, leaving Britain no alternative but to enter the war on 4th August, 1914.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Kaiser Wilhelm build up his navy in the 1890s?
To help Germany became a colonial power.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Britain was a great colonial power. She was an advanced industrial nation. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was envious.