CAUSES OF WORLD WAR 1
Th e causes of World War I remain controversial. World War I began in the Balkans on July 28, 1914 and ended on November 11, 1918 , leaving 17 million dead and 20 million wounded . European diplomatic alignments shortly before the war. The Ottomans joined with Germany shortly after the war started. Italy remained neutral in 1914 and joined the Entente in 1915. Map of the world with the participants in World War I in 1917. The Allies are in green, the Central Powers are in orange, and the neutral countries are in grey. Scholars looking at the long term seek to explain why two rival sets of powers (the German Empire and Austria-Hungary against the Russian Empire, France, the British Empire and later the United States) came into conflict by 1914. They look at such factors as political, territorial and economic competition, militarism , a complex web of alliances and alignments, imperialism , the growth of nationalism , and the power vacuum created by the decline of the