The Cause Of Genocide: WWI

The Causes of Genocide: WWI World War I was the deadliest war of the 20th century resulting in a death toll of around 16 million and over 20 million injured. However, this deadly conflict cannot be blamed on solely one country, but on many different countries that used imperialism and nationalism to their personal gain. The outbreak of WWI was primarily due to the tensions created by nationalistic ideas, imperialistic actions taken by many European countries, and militarism which is a combination of both nationalism and imperialism. Nationalistic ideas created by European countries before the war can be greatly blamed for the build-up of WWI. Nationalism helped sparked unification of once many separates states into very powerful European
Many European countries like Britain and Germany were competing for land in Africa to set up overseas empires. Over time, the competition for land in Africa became serious with many countries like Belgium, France, Germany, Britain, and Italy all competing at once. This desire for land by these countries was fueled by the benefits of the natural resources Africa had to offer. The mineral revolution only made matters worse, for when diamonds were discovered countries rushed and competed to own land with potential diamond mines. However, the leader in the diamond industry in Africa quickly became Britain. This led to many countries like Germany and Italy to build resentment for Britain because of the wealth it was reaping from these diamond mines. They began to question at this point whether or not to consider Britain an ally or enemy, and thus lead to the formation of the triple alliance between the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and Italy. Germany’s economic jealousy of Britain not only rooted from the diamond industry in Africa but in Britain’s success with the utilization of imperialism. Germany did take steps in the right direction towards imperializing places. They built the Berlin-Baghdad Railway to increase relations while receiving oil, but it was never as successful as Britain’s Empire. At one point the British Empire had control of around 25% of the entire world. This allowed for them to not only harvest precious metals and minerals like gold and diamonds, but cash crops as well. Cash crops were popular during this era, and they were crops that were planted on colonized land, for the sole purpose of luxury and income; non-essential to human life and exported out of the area grown in to Europe. This along with the precious