Causes of World War One

“War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed,” William McKinley stated in his inaugural address. In retrospect the First World War failed to follow this advice of McKinley and was more or less stumbled upon as a result of several unresolved conflicts, underlying problems within seemingly virtually flawless systems, and impulsive, irrational, emotional reactions rather than political knowledge and experience. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand along with the nature of the alliance system, and the nature of the monarchical system all played pivotal roles as primary causes to World War One.
Commonly regarded as the initial spark to the beginning of this Great War was the assassination of Austrian crown prince Franz Ferdinand by a member of an organization known as the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist secret society. The Prince Ferdinand along with his wife was murdered while in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914. The events that followed this sp...