WWI Themes

Country A is Serbia

Country B is Austria

Country C is Russia

Country D is Germany

Country E is France

And Country F is Britain.

This cartoon represents the chain reactions leading to the Great War. It starts with Austria attacking Serbia and then Russia attacking Austria because of this. This then leads Germany declaring war upon Russia because Germany is connected to Austria through alliances. And lastly, France then declares war upon Germany because of Frances connections with Austria, and finally, Britain supports France’s decision and declares war upon Germany.

2.) Identify the theme and explain the history.

This first theme relates to the theme of Treaties and Alliances, where the blue circles represent the “Triple Entente”. Which was an Alliance between Britain, France and Russia. Serbia was included in this as they had an alliance with Russia after Austria declared war upon them. They yellow circles represent the alliance between Germany and Austria as well as the Triple alliance between Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. This alliance was formed after Russia refused to stop helping Serbia and Germany declared war upon them.

The green circle is around the person who represents Serbia. He could represent the idea of nationalism when a group of terrorists from Bosnia and Serbia attacked the Archduke Franz Ferdinand because they wanted to pressure the government to let Bosnia be independent and out of the Austrian government

The orange circles are around Germany, France, and Britain. These countries all wanted to colonize Africa, “Race for Africa.” This is the idea of imperialism, expanding your empire. All these countries wanted to expand their empire.

The Red circles around Germany and Britain represent the strongest countries at the time based on their navy. This as well represents the theme of militarism,  and the idea of Britain “two power standard” where they needed to have a Navy bigger than the second largest and third largest combined so they are always ready for war. Germany however doubled their Navy prices in 5 years and was Britain’s biggest threat at the time.

This cartoon shows the chain reaction of the start of the Great war. It starts when Austria won’t let Bosnia out of their government so Bosnia’s terrosit group attacks the archduke leading Austria to declare war upon them, which makes Russia declare war upon Austria as Bosnia/Serbia would not be bale to defend themselves and Russia has an alliance with Serbia. Since Russia declared war on Austria, Germany steps in because of their alliance with Austria and tells Russia to step down but that didn’t work so they then declared war.Germany then invades Belgium to surprise France which brings France into the situation, as well as Britain because Britain didn’t like how Germany invaded Belgium which was a neutral place, so They declared war upon Germany.

A) The perspective of the cartoon is from the view of the outside, meaning countries who weren’t directly correlated in the war. Because if it we’re made by a country in direct correlation, there could bias towards how everything started. It would also have to be a few years after the war when people didn’t have a biased opinion, and all the information about the beginnings was public and all the alliance were public to the world.

B) The first country Serbia is depicted as a child or smaller than all the other countries because it didn’t have any power at the time compared to these great big countries. Serbia/Bosnia didn’t have a huge Naval base compared to Germany and Britain. They were also apart of Austria at the time so didn’t have much say in how they wanted thing to be, much like a child.

C) The title “The Chain of Friendship” represents how friendships work. When one friend is in trouble they come to help, which is what the alliances do. However, the title is also sarcastic as these countries were obviously not friends as they were declaring war upon each other.