Why was countries building up their armed forces was another reason which led to World War one ?
It was a lethal combination of a number of factors, including Darwin’s theory of The Survival of the Fittest which was trendy at the time; raging nationalism; and a natural progression for the era of modern warfare which dates to the US Civil War and the Prussian campaigns of the 1860s. Britain just thought they were Number One so wanted to stay there and reacted badly to Germany trying to catch up in the naval race (We want Eight and we won’t wait); Germany was keen to flex its industrial might after becoming a nation in 1870 and challenging British domination; the French feared another German attack after being defeated in 1871; and other old empires like the Russians, Turks and Austro-Hungarians just wasted money building war machines that were useless. Arms races either end on war or one country goes broke as history shows us, and the First World War was no exception. As one historian put it, the only thing men learn from history is that men learn nothing from history, and we seem
