European Alliances

The alliance system, which was started by Bismark, helped keep the peace throughout Europe. Although the reason it was started was to keep Germany from ever having to fight a war on two fronts (France and Russia). So Germany had an alliance with Austria-Hungary and also had an alliance with Russia. Then Bismark was dismissed and the Kaiser did not renew the treaty with Russia. Instead a Triple Alliance was made between Germany, Austria-Hungary and …showed first 75 words of 252 total…

…showed last 75 words of 252 total…fight. I think the Kaiser wanted to beat the French to show the Brits how much stronger his army is. Then there was the Agadir Crisis, the Bosnian Crisis and the Balkan wars. All of these were smaller battles between two or three countries which very easily could have involved the other allied countries. Instead people got angrier and more power-hungry. It built upon itself until the final straw – which was the assassination of Ferdinand.