Causes Of WWI And U.S. Involvement

Four main causes of WWI:
I. Imperialism-(When a nation takes political control over another country). Conflicts started to rise over land disputes in Africa, Asia and in some places in Europe.

II. Nationalism-(The feeling of intense pride of one's homeland). This made it so people were not as open to people from other countries and created huge tensions between European nations.

III. Militarism-(when a nation devotes a lot of resources to make armies and things for war). This started a huge race between nations to try and create the largest military.

IV. Alliances-Triple Entente: France, Russia, and Great Britain. Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria-Hungry, and Italy. These alliances formed huge threats to one another and when one country got into a conflict the rest went to back them up. This created large amounts of tension between European nations.

The Spark of WWI: In June 1914, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated wile on vacation in Bosnian, Sarajevo. The assassin was a member of the Black Hand a Serbian nationalist group that were trying to start a war to bring down Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination and used it as an excuse to invade. Russia, Serbia's ally, then declared war on Austria-Hungary with Russia's other ally France. Germany then went to war with both France and Russia and thus starting WWI.     

• Lusitania: May 7, 1915, a British passenger liner was sunk by the German's U-boats when it entered the war zone, or the area around England. They killed 1,200 passengers 128 of which were American. 
• Sussex Pledge: March 1916, US president Wilson threatened Germany to take a pledge to give warning before sinking merchant ships.
• Zimmerman Telegram: January 1917, a German telegram intercepted by the British asking Mexico for assistance in the war and in return they would give Mexico a hand full of Southern US states.  
• Unrestricted Sub Warfare: February 1, 1917, the German started up their unrestricted sub warfare and started to sink merchant ships again. They sank US ships before the United States on April 6, 1917, declared war on Germany.