World War I: Compare And Contrast

September 5, 2011
Origins of World War 1: Compare and Contrast
During the twentieth century Europe seemed to enjoy a period of peace and progress. But below the surface several forces were at the work and would lead Europe into the Great War. World War 1 was the mayor conflict that made its appearance in the beginning of the twentieth century. As we read in “The origins of the first World War” by Ruth Heing and in “The Iron Dice: World War 1” by John G. Stoessinger, World War 1 began in 1914 it had many countries involved but not all of them entered at the same time. At the beginning of this war there were two sides to choose from. The triple entente that was unified by Great Britain, France and Russia; Later called the Allied Powers and
The system that was managed before the war was conformed by MAIN; which stands for, Militarism: Every country in Europe except for Great Britain had conscription, which means that every men over 18 years old should register for the army; The conscription plan resulted because as the time was going by all of the countries in Europe had a great growth in their military power; Also they were working on arms race, which means that they were developing new arms, the country that was the most benefit was Germany. MAIN also stands for Alliances: Alliances were a key concept because the alliances began the conflict in Sarajevo, if it weren’t because they had a close relationship with Germany this conflict would have been local, therefore Russia and Germany and later on France and Great Britain would had not participate. There would not have been a world war. The third letter in MAIN stands for Imperialism early twentieth century saw a great deal of colonization of Asia and Africa by European powers, each trying to colonize this lands. These colonies funded a great part of the ruling countries’ economies and expansion became necessary and desirable to advance the glory and the wealth of each European power. The last concept N stands for Nationalism, which means the identity that the government or the rulers created towards their population so they were proud of their
In the first reading “The origins of the first World War” by Ruth Henig it is clearly marked that the problem was the system failure. And as it is stated in the second reading “The Iron Dice: World War 1” by John G. Stoessinger, “Mortals made these decisions. They made them in fear and in trembling, but they made them nonetheless.” We can infer that in this reading the ones to blame are the ones that were in control of the country: the leaders. Another difference between these two chapters is how the information is managed in the first reading the type of writing is strictly informative and in the second lecture it is more like a critique as we can see in the quotes that are stated in paragraphs before. In the second reading it is shown the relationship between leaders in a level where they interacted and send telegrams to each other; which it is not shown in the first