World War I Begins

Please read Chapter 19-1 and post your answers to the following questions. They are due by 8:20 a.m. Wednesday.
Title: World War I Begins Labels: WWI, Wilson, neutrality

1. What are the four main causes of World War I? Give an example for each as to why it was a cause.
Militarism: power struggle and the need for larger military. bigger weapons due to industrial age.
Alliance System: due to the alliance system most of europe became involved with the war because they were siding with either Austria-hungary or Russia who supported the serbians.
Imperialism: all european countries were in heavy competition for oversea territory.
Nationilism: more ethnic groups wished to have their own set country and power. Also each country wanted the Balkan Peninsula for themselves.

2. How did the June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand become the spark for WWI?
Because Austro-Hungary found the perfect opportunity to go to war with serbia because the assasin was Serbian. They found it the right moment to go to war and sieze the balkan peninsula.

3. What happened within the first few months of fighting?
warfare using trenches broke out.

4. Generally, why did the United States want to stay out of the war?
The war had virtually no negative effect on U.S lifestyle and culture.

5. Specifically, Why did the following groups of Americans tend to oppose U.S. participation in the war? Naturalized citizens; socialists; pacifists; parents.
Naturalized citizens: they feared that they would be fighting their homelands.
socialists: saw it as a battle for imperialism and opposed it.
pacifists: dont like fighting
parents: didnt want to send their sons to their demise.

6. How did Germany respond to the British naval blockade of Germany’s ports? What was the U.S. response?
a counterblockade of U boats.

7. What forced the United States into the war?
the german kaiser was going to sink all the boats in british waters by U boats. among these boats were american civilian ships and trade boats which forced the U.S into war.