Militarism in World War I

Militarism in simple words means preparing for the war. Most of the European countries after becoming economically strong started improving and developing their armed forces. As the people were very enthusiastic about the war the leaders motivated young men to become soldiers so that there would be no space left for a fault.

World War I Naval Arms Race

Another major inclusion in the armed forces was the strengthening of the Navy. The naval race was a race where all the world empires were building up their own versions of the dreadnought which was the most powerful ship ever designed. The naval race was between Britain and Germany. After Germany launched the dreadnought into the naval race, they started building 41 battleships and 60 cruisers. The British also started to take more interest in the navy and ordered to build more battleships. Germany also built a second version of the dreadnought called Rhineland. Then the British made another battleship called HMS Neptune which was a super dreadnought compared to the British.

In 1914, when the war started the British won the naval race which lead to the Germans wanting to take revenge. Secondly, the Germans introduced a ‘Schliffen plan’ which is a war plan. Their Schliffen plan was to quickly defeat France and then slowly approach on defeating Russia. They assumed that it would be easy to defeat France as they thought that they were very slow in mobilizing or get ready for action). The fact that this plan didn’t work out the way they imagined really frustrated the Germans which is why they fought the war which great enthusiasm. It is said that if the schliffen plan had been succeeded, then the war would be over in matter of weeks because once they defeated France, they didn’t have to fear as Russia wasn’t that developed. Plus, the British didn’t have big troops. They lacked troops so it would be easy to defeat Britain.