Five Brothers and a War

World War II Causes—World War I

Empire, including Canada, British India (now India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Pakistan, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, Malta, South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), and very late in the game, the United States. (from http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm ) Other causes of the war were nationalism, (whereby various nations wanted to gain at the expense of others), imperialism (whereby European nations wanted to expand their strength by competing with others to colonize developing nations), and militarism (whereby strength to develop nationalism and imperialism were developed through arms and armies). When the three were combined, the stage was set for an explosion. Finally, the triggering of WWI occurred with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on June 28, 1914, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group five Serbs and one Bosnian. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's south-Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The various declarations of war would then create a World War. Holland was not directly involved in World War I, but it certainly was impacted. While Holland was neutral in WWI, it suffered economically, largely as a result of the elimination of importing and exporting. There was a blockade imposed on Holland by the Allies, some of whom came to the conclusion that the Dutch were at least somewhat complicit with the Germans in providing them with supplies. August 1918 was the month that trench warfare ended forever. Armored mechanized vehicles had made warfare very mobile, and this greatly sped up the warring process, resulting in the defeat of the Central Powers and armistice on November 11, 1918.

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Five Brothers and a War

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