1 The armed peace: After the German unification and the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, after the Teutonic victory in the Franco-Prussian War, German industrial and economic power grew enormously and with it the arms race was launched. From the middle of the decade of 1890, the government of the emperor Guillermo II began to dedicate substantial economic resources for the construction of the German Imperial Navy. Under the command of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the German navy intended to rival the British Royal Navy for naval supremacy in the world. As a result, the two nations began to compete and devote increasing efforts in the construction of capital ships.
2 System of alliances: Throughout the nineteenth century, the major European powers made a great effort to maintain the balance of power throughout Europe, resulting in a complex network of political and military alliances across the continent for the early twentieth century. Although its origins can be traced back to 1815, with the formation of the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Austria and Russia, it was in October 1873, with the negotiation of the League of Three Emperors, that the alliance system started to be forged. March during the Great War. Conceived by the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, the League of Three Emperors promised to be an alliance between the monarchies of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany, although it ultimately failed due to the lack of agreement between Austria-Hungary and Russia on the policy continue in the Balkans. This led to the formation of the Double Alliance between Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1879, seen as a way to contain Russian influence in the Balkans, where the Ottoman Empire continued to weaken. In 1882, Italy joined the alliance, so it became the Triple Alliance.
3 Conflicts: Austria-Hungary precipitated the "Bosnian crisis" with the official annexation of the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an old Ottoman territory occupied since 1878 by Austria. This infuriated the Kingdom of Serbia and its protector, the Russian Empire, which followed a policy based on Pan-Slavism and shared the Orthodox religion with its Slavic allies. The maneuvers of Russian diplomacy in the peace agreements caused the region to be destabilized, which added to the fracture that already existed in the Balkans, made the region known as the "powder keg of Europe"
4 Imperialism; In 1914, Europe was at the zenith of world domination. After the Industrial Revolution and the demographic explosion, Europe had managed to establish a political, economic and military domination worldwide. At the beginning of the 20th century, the world was configured for the benefit of Europe and the economic exploitation of territories outside the continent was guided by the maxim: "directed by Europe and for Europe". On the eve of the First World War, London was the "center of the world economy" and Europe, the "factory of the world", had absolute control of international trade and financial markets. However, before 1914 this hegemony was already threatening to crack, as a result of the imperialist tensions between the great powers, the rise of Japan in Asia and the United States in America and in its interior the growing influence of Marxism and the increasing agitation of European working class, which threatened to subvert liberal capitalism and the existing social order