Alliances leading to World War I

one of the reasons that our that's most cited as to as to a cause or the cause of why World War one turned into a world war as opposed to just a regional conflict in Southeast Europe is the alliance system that was developing in the decades leading up to World War one and to understand that I've distilled a bunch of the Alliance's that occurred in those decades leading up to World War one and this is just a distilled version there were many other alliances that were tangentially related but I try to distill down the ones that were directly related to all of the dominoes falling in 1914 that led to all of Europe being essentially at war with each other so to understand that we have to rewind 75 years so World War 1 is starts in 1914 75 years before that in 1839 you have the Treaty of London and the Treaty of London did many things but article 7 is what's relevant to the beginning of World War 1 where Britain agrees to protect the neutrality of Belgium and if you're skeptical you might say hey this is a 75 year old treaty why does this matter anymore and that actually would be a good question really all of these alliances it's a very healthy debate you can have as to whether these are the direct causes of why one of these powers declared war on the other or whether these were just excuses these were kind of a legal pretext for saying oh I need to declare war on you when in reality they really did want it to clear war for a whole set of reasons to kind of keep the other person's Empire in check to flex their military muscle to go after more territory and their empires who knows what it might be but needless to say 1839 was the legal basis for the British Empire to protect to protect Belgium now you forward fast-forward 40 years you get to 1879 you have a newly born German Empire out of the franco-prussian war in 1871 that newly born German Empire they just had a essentially it's an extension of Prussia the the unde 'mentally a German Kingdom they just had a war with France they took some very valuable territory from France they're paranoid that France wants to get back at them they're paranoid about they're paranoid about the Russians so and they have some connection with the Austrians on the Austral the austro-hungarian I should say and so seven in 1879 they signed the duel alliance treaty between Germany and austria-hungary to protect each other if Russia attacks they have this common enemy right over here Russia so they're going to let me do this in a different color they're going to protect each other so this makes the new the new German Empire feel a little bit better about its position in Europe in case they were to get into a war with either of these characters then in 1892 you could imagine if you ever play a game of risk or if you were play the game of diplomacy which is actually based on what happened in World War one if you see some people that you might be at war with starting to become friends you want to look for other friends other alliances that you can form in case they declare war on you so in 1892 you have an alliance between the French and the Russians the franco-russian military convention so this is an alliance let me do this in a let me do this in the magenta color again you have an alliance between France France and Russia and then finally in the early 1900s 1904 to 1907 you have a series of agreements on tantra essentially means agreements agreements between the British Empire and France between the British Empire and the Russian Empire to essentially get on good terms with each other these weren't as formally bonding that hey if someone's going to attack you I'm going to attack them but they were essentially able to resolve a lot of their issues on what's going on in their their other Imperial conquests and they formed what is called the triple Anton to the triple agreement between Britain between the British Empire and right here I just circled the United Kingdom France France and Russia and on the other side of that you had the Triple Alliance you have Germany you have austria-hungary and you also have you also have Italy now the reason why even though entering into World War one Italy was formerly part of the Triple Alliance and there were treaties between Italy and Germany to become part of this Triple Alliance the reason I don't focus on those is once the war started Italy did not go on the side of German and Austrian German II and austria-hungary it went on the side of the Allies on the of the triple on tante but this will give you a good background for why what would seem like a a regional skirmish in in Southeast Europe turns into a pan Europe and eventually pan global war