On the eve of World War I, Europe was divided into alliances. These alliances were in part responsible for the outbreak of the Great War, as it was known. Germany was aligned with its fellow German-speaking neighbor of Austria-Hungary. Great Britain, France, and Russia were aligned with each other and would be joined by Italy. Great Britain, France, and Italy were parliamentary democracies whereas on the other hand, Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary were all empires under the authoritarian dictatorial rule of harsh emperors.
Great Britain had become an industrial power. Founder of the Industrial Revolution, it had prospered in the glorious Victorian age. London had become “the financial capital of the globe”. It had become a world empire on which “the Sun never set”. It justified conquering other peoples using the pseudo-science of Social Darwinism.
Due to class distinctions, Great Britain developed a two party system made up of Unionists (Conservatives) and Liberals. Eventually, the Marxist Labour Party would become more dominant than the Liberal Party for the Left Wing of Great Britain. This was coupled with the gaining importance of labor unions in British society. The Labour Party was strongly anti-capitalists and wanted the end of all private corporations.
Great Britain parted from “splendid neutrality” in reaction to other countries’ criticism of Great Britain’s handling of the Boer War. In 1907, it joined the Triple Entente together with France and Russia.
Whereas the British monarchy had been established in 1066, a unified Germany was a rather new concept. It had been united only in 1871 by Prussia uniting all the German kingdoms under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The new Germany quickly adopted traditional Prussian militarism. The older German generation was more Conservative but the younger generation wanted Germany to become a World power. Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck. Kaiser Wilhelm II had a rough childhood and was determined to take on the role of “Kaiser of the Atlantic”. Germany wanted “its place in the Sun”. It also produced proto-Nazis such as Nietzsche and composer Richard Wagner. These people would influence Hitler in the next century. This generation of G-dless proto-Nazis invented the racial theory of Anti-Semitism, which they felt the need to invent because they saw Jews as inferior for being Semites as opposed to for religious reasons based on Christianity, which is what earlier Anti-Jewish ideologies were based on. It was only natural of Hitler to base his Third Reich on the Second Reich.
Germany’s advantage in World War I was that it was centrally located and could fight two fronts at once. England on the other hand had a naval advantage due to the fact that it was an island nation. Germany ultimately would fail to achieve its objectives in the war of the failure of the Sclieffen Plan. Trench warfare had made what was though to be going to be a short war into a long war. There were many casualties on both sides. England had the advantage of not being on the mainland continent of Europe so therefore didn’t have a war on the home front. England’s role as an Anglo country was important in that it would eventually gain an important ally, the United States, which helped it win the war.
After the war, Germany was in shambles. At the Versailles Peace Conference, Germany was forced to accept a humiliating decree of accepting all responsibility for the war even though the actual trigger for the war was Serbian nationalism. This caused a lot of resentment and would lead to the rise to power of the Nazi Party.