European civil war
... a taking over, and an added apprehension. The war had not included the continent of Africa as a continent participating on its own in the war in the war; it was still mainly a dispute between the European countries. With these resulting tensions, the side of military expansion came in. Now that Britain had realized that Germany was a threat (this was because it competed with Britain for countries in Africa and had started expanding its military in the early 1900’s) Britain had to also perform military expansion to keep up. Only later on in the war did Germany become a threat to many countries worldwide including Japan and the US. Although France was also a threat to Britain, Britain decided that France would be a good ally against Germany. And so the idea of Alliances had occurred between the European countries forming the two sides: the Triple Entente versus the Triple Alliance. Sooner than expected, other countries in Europe started to take sides; the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria had joined the Triple Alliance to make the Central Powers. Italy had left the Triple Alliance because of a conflict between them and the Ottoman Empire due to the Moroccan crisis; it also joined the Triple Entente. Japan, Belgium, and the United States had joined the Triple Entente to form the Allies. The US had joined later on in the war in 1917 because they found Germany to be a great threat to the balance of power in the world. Since both France and Great Britain were democracies, it was acceptable for the US to have as the major powers of the world. But having an anti-democratic country such as Germany who seemed to be the next logical country in the sequence, was not what the US had in mind, and so the US joined the war with the other European countries. Alliances only became international in a minority of these alliances, for the only foreign country that participated so far in the war was Japan. The US had entered at the end of the war and so they were hardly an intrusion and more like the peacemakers. Since so many countries were now connected together because of these alliances, any country included in one of these two sides had to enter the war whether they liked it or not. Some European countries, which formed the two sides, wanted to remain neutral. But this was not possible because they were also concerned with the nationalistic issues that started all of this. Besides that was the fact that most of the alliances were between European countries and so the countries that got involved in the war as it continued were mostly European with the exception of the States and Japan. What caused this war to be a more European civil war was the fact that of the 32 nations that had entered, more than 80% of them were European. Their reasons for entering were for imperialism, alliances, military expansion, and mainly nationalism. There similar nationalistic beliefs were similar to each other in that they all wanted their own country to lead and take over the world or at least Europe. World War I was a civil war to a large extent since so many of the countries of Europe were involved, all of them had the same basic idea of nationalism, and the only international countries that took part were Japan and the US. The clashes that occurred mainly between the European countries were about imperialism in Europe and expanding military in European countries. World War II was a European civil war only to a small extent in comparison to WWI. The new idea of fascism, militaristic totalitarianism, started by Italy’s leader Mussolini was a way to satisfy people’s needs in a more effective way than democracy, completely going against communism. The rise of fascism arose in countries all over the world because almost all countries that had gone through WWI, plus many other countries, needed a new change in government. One of the causes of WWII, the spread of fascism, had started in Europe but gone on to spread all around the world. The other dispute was the disagreement between communism, democracy and fascism, which occurred in the States, in Europe, and Asia. The US wanted to keep the democracy alive and be able to spread around the world. With communism already around, the US had a hard time keeping up with how far it had spread. Having another kind of government like fascism also circulate around the world caused another problem for the US. Communists also had the same problem with fascism to a larger extent because of their opposition. Hitler’s ambitions, which were a cause of the war, led to it. Hitler’s objectives, which were to take over and control the world as in his book Mein Kampf, only involved Europe in the beginning. Although Hitler was starting to become a threat after he was able to rearm Germany, take over Czechoslovakia, and succeed in making the annexation of Austria happen, he was able to trick European countries into thi...