Evaluate the First World War
Benjamin
Whether the First World War was primarily caused by popular nationalism or by the decisions of government leaders.
Before the explosion of World War I, widespread nationalism already arose throughout the Europe. Due to the weakening power of Ottoman Turks Empire, there became a power vacuum in Balkan district, where several ethnic groups resided in. Also partly attributed to the revolutions in 1848, more of these ethnic groups started asking for their independence, causing nationalism to further spread and exacerbate. For the reason that these ethnic groups like Slavs were ruled under Austria-Hungary for a long time, the Slavs group, together with the support from Serbia and Russia, wanted to fight for their independence, gradually causing the World War I to happen. Although the decisions of government leaders had a great impact on the outbreak of the first world war, widespread popular nationalism in each ethnic group played a more significant role in this event as they wanted to liberate there own people by glorifying the war and exaggerating the conflict across ethics.
The war was largely triggered by the rise of popular nationalism as people demonstrated more radical views toward other nations and ethics, and the wars were largely glorified. For example, the article in Document 2 directly shows that the nationalists young man in France find ‘warfare an aesthetic ideal of energy and strength’. These young man connected the warfare with heroism, viewing fighting the glorious war as demonstrating their heroism. This kind of nationalism tied young people together, each eager for showing off their heroic thoughts by fighting others. At the same time, the Constitution of the Black Hand shown in Document 1 asserted that they support all the nations and organizations who are fighting for their own national liberation and unification. This constitution united all the people with shared cultural or ethnical backgrounds together to, with shared ideology and the urgent want of their consistent liberation, fight with all means against all enemies of the idea. This clearly demonstrates the important role nationalism played that united people with shared believe and fight with everyone that opposes. From the image shown in Document 6, it is revealed that the soldiers felt glorious and exited for fighting the war. These young man were greatly influenced by the nationalist idea. The glamorization of the war highly aroused people’s emotions to fight for independence and their own races. The First World War is therefore a result of the nationalism spread in young men’s hearts that they seek for the glory from fighting for their country and people.
Although the first world war was mainly caused by popular nationalism among young men, the decisions of government leaders also played a significant role in the initiation of the war. Through the letter in Document 4, Berchtold conveyed to the Austrian ambassador to Serbia the message that the assassination of Ferdinand was largely affected by Serbian nationalist organization. This has shown that the communication between government leaders could carry personal interpretations to the factual incident that could cause greater tension and skepticism between different governments. Furthermore, Document 5 shows the telegram between Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, while Wilhelm suggesting Nicholas to avoid the war and maintain the peace as much as possible, Nicholas replying by stating they already started mobilizing the army, so that Wilhelm mobilized German army soon after the communication. This had directly caused the Schiefflen Plan as Germany wanted to defeat France before Russia finished mobilization. These evidences reflected how important government leaders’ decisions were in causing the war to happen. However, compared popular nationalism, government leaders’ decisions’ effects were limited. Popular nationalism successfully united all the people within a nation or ethnic group to fight other groups and nations, glorified the war to better arise people’s longing for war. This kind of ideological unity that was consistent throughout the whole Europe, partially attributed to the social darwinism, stirred everyone’s emotion. This kind of group-based emotion had significantly greater influence on the onset of the First World War than the government leaders’, few people-based action.
