Alliances that led to World War One

One of the reasons that's most cited 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 alliances that occurred in those

decades leading up to World War One. This is just a distilled version, there are

many other alliances that were tangentially related, but I'll 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 One

it 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 One,

where Britain agrees to protect the neutrality of the 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" and in reality they really did want to

declare war for a whole set of reasons, to kind of

keep the other persons' empire and check,
to flex their military muscle, to go after

more territory in their empires,

who knows what it might be?

But needless to say

1839 was a legal basis

for the British Empire to protect

to protect

Belgium.

Now you fast forward forty 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, fundamentally 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,
and they have some connection with the

Austrians, or the austro-hungarians I should say,

and so in 1879, they sign the Dual 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 some different color...

They're going to protect each other.

So this makes 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 can imagine if you ever play a game of Risk,

or if you 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 the magenta colour again.

You have an alliance

between France

France

and Russia.

And then finally in the early nineteen
hundreds, 1904 to

1907,

you have a series of agreements, "ententes" 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 other imperial conquest

and they formed what is called "The Triple Entente", the triple agreement

between

Britain, between the British Empire,

and right here i just circle 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 Germany and Austria-Hungary.

It went on the side of the allies, on the
side of the Triple Entente.

But this will give you a good background
for why

what would seem like a regional
skirmish in Southeast Europe

turns into a pan-Europe and eventually pan
global war.