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Weltpolitik (German: [ˈvɛltpoliˌtiːk] ⓘ, "world politics") was the imperialist foreign policy adopted by the German Empire during the reign of Emperor Wilhelm II. [1] The aim of the policy was to transform Germany into a global power.
The main causes of World War I, which broke out unexpectedly in central Europe in summer 1914, included many factors, such as the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and ethnic nationalism played major roles.
Hewitson, Mark. "Germany and France before the First World War: a reassessment of Wilhelmine foreign policy." English Historical Review 115.462 (2000): 570-606; argues Germany had a growing sense of military superiority. online; Hewitson, Mark. Germany and the Causes of the First World War (2004) pp 1–20 on historians. Horne, John, ed.
Walter Rodney, in his 1972 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, proposes the idea that imperialism is a phase of capitalism "in which Western European capitalist countries, the US, and Japan established political, economic, military and cultural hegemony over other parts of the world which were initially at a lower level and therefore could not ...
During the First World War, the Allied naval blockade of the Central Powers caused food shortages in Germany, and resources from German colonies in Africa were unable to slip past the blockade; this caused support to rise during the war for a Lebensraum that would expand Germany eastward into Russia to gain control of their resources to prevent ...
Once the war broke out, world power became Germany's essential goal. [111] However, Schroeder argues that all of that was not the main cause of the war in 1914. Indeed, the search for a single main cause is not a helpful approach to history. Instead, there are multiple causes any one or two of which could have launched the war.
The aftermath of World War I saw far-reaching and wide-ranging cultural, economic, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were ...
Under Wehler's view, social imperialism was a device that allowed the German government to distract public attention from domestic problems and preserve the existing social and political order. [8] Wehler argued that the dominant elites used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for ...