Can someone explain World War I to me?

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/history/euro-hist

I know this is an old thread, but I just finished listening to a great podcast about The Great War and thought I would share it...
The title of the podcast is "Blueprint for Armageddon" and all told its about 14 hrs of material(so far,its not over), but I wasn't ever bored and learned more about the military and political story of WW1 than I could have asked for from a college course...

http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php?page=hharchive

Enjoy!

It's an old thread... but just in case someone might still read it, Dan Carlin of Hardcore histories is producing a series of WWI - as always, top-notch research, a bird's eye view combined with the soldiers' experiences.

Think of the acronym MANIAC:
Militarism
Alliances
Nationalism
Imperialism
Anarchism
Colonialism
Those are the root causes of World War I

It was a fight over some fat Russian whore.

The first world war happened because France and Germany had never made a proper peace at the end of the Franco Prussia war of 1870. Germany had taken the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from France as war reparations and there was a strong desire within the French army for revenge and to get these two provinces back..Germany on the other hand wanted another go at France because she felt the job had never been finished properly and reparations were good for the bank balance.

France had formed an alliance for mutual defence with Britain and Russia called The Triple Entente and Germany had joined with the Austria Hungarian Empire to form the Central Powers. These two blocks contained within them several smaller countries joining the larger for mutual defence. Some countries joined later when in became clear they could gain territory from the spoils of war. Japan for example joined in to gain possession of German colonies in the Far East.

To cut a long story short - When Austro Hungary declared war on Russia France declared war on Austro Hungary. Germany, allied to Austro Hungary, now declared war on France. Great Britain in alliance with France and Russia declared war on Germany and Austro Hungary. Most of the smaller countries of Europe joining in according to their various alliances.

It could all have been avoided if The Kaiser and the Tzar had been prepared to talk and the French not so determined to get back their lost provinces but war fever was in the air and war meant the chance of glory. And besides it will all be over by Christmas, won't it ?

Dan Carlin's podcast series Hardcore History does a good job as an introduction i think. Despite a daunting length (6 parts of 3-4 hours each) i highly recommend it. He does a good job of putting it into perspective and starting to explain some of the human elements as well. The series is called Blueprint for Armageddon.

This should explain a thing or two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DoM3sWkgfU


Why is it whenever I'm having fun, it's wrong?