All powers except America and Britain doubled their size of their army between 1870 and 1914. The A, stands for alliances. Twenty years before the war, European nations started making alliances. The thought was that it would promote peace, because if you wanted to fight one country, you would also be fighting many more countries. Because of this, when Austria-Hungary and Serbia went to war, instead of just the two countries fighting, the alliances connected with them started fighting. The two alliances were the Triple Alliance, comprised of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, against the Triple Entente, with Britain, France, and Russia. Moving on to the I, which stands for imperialism. Imperialism is where substantial countries controll smaller ones. Countries would compete over who had the most countries, and it built national wealth and influence. This created many conflicts like wars, and builds ethnically diverse borders. The final part M.A.I.N., is nationalism. People in a country want their country to do …show more content…
As a last attempt, Germany went offencive in spring of 1918 with a series of advances. Firing huge railway guns at Paris, hoping they would surrender. France didn’t surrender and the Meuse-Argonne was created. It was a battle fought by mostly Americans on the Triple Entente side and started in September of 1918. This forced Austria-Hungary to surrender in November, who was the first country to declare war. the Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the agreement to end the war. It was signed on a railroad cart named CIWL #2419. This ended the fighting on November 11th, 11am. After the war was over, their was a Paris peace conference, consisting of U.S., France, Britain, and Italy. Out of the conference came the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to take responsibility for the war. Germany was forced to give up land to other countries and pay $442 billion U.S. in 2015 currency. Even after all of this, America never ratified the Treaty of Versailles and never joined the League of