Explain how militarism, the naval arms race and the development of the alliance system created tensions and suspicion in Europe before 1914.

As a political concept, militarism denotes the presence of a highly dominant uniformed power that in some cases can even escape political and parliamentary control.

The background to the First World War is extremely controversial on important points, especially regarding the blame for its outbreak. The peace treaties attributed the blame for the war to the defeated central powers. On this treaty-bound declaration, which the defeated were forced to sign, the victors' right to damages was founded. The Allied war propaganda and many of its official documents further developed that the war was primarily, if not exclusively, caused by Germany's alleged deliberate, decades-long pursuit of "world domination", culminating in attacks on peaceful neighbors. In German official propaganda during the war, the war was portrayed as being solely caused by the Allies' equally protracted and determined effort to first "surround" and then "destroy" the German Reich, culminating in their opposition to the German attempts to "locate" the Austro-Serbian conflict. Neutral objective views can not accept any of these simplifications of the debt problem, since World War I has clearly emerged from a long-running crowd and the last decade before the outbreak of war has mostly exacerbated conflicts. Their intertwining and final culmination in the 1914 crisis cannot be given any responsibility to any individual, government or nation.