enge. Meanwhile, other countries of Europe were busy building military strength. The nations of Europe did not trust each other. Some people believe that Germany was most responsible for World War I, because it wanted to become the strongest power in Europe (Ruggenberg). By the early 1900's Germany had the best army in the world and was building a strong navy. This made other nations nervous, and the British developed the Dreadnought, the first modern battleship. Germany began building ships to defeat the Dreadnought and developed submarines (U-boats). France worked to build a stronger army and increased the time people had to serve in the military from two to three years. All the other nations of Europe began to spend much more money to make their armies extremely powerful. During the four years between 1910 and 1914, Germany and Austria both doubled the amount of money they spent on their militaries (Craig, 484). Technology made it possible to develop new weapons such as the machine gun. This made it possible to kill more enemies at one time and fight longer and harder than ever before. Another development was that the military had a bigger effect on government policies, and sometimes military leaders were more powerful than civilian leaders (Craig, 485). At the same time, the countries of Europe were competing with one another for foreign trade. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, they could make more goods than they could sell at home. Many wanted to control parts of Africa because there was a lot of business to be had there, so they worked to colonize different parts of the continent. France controlled Morocco and Algeria. Italy controlled Libya, the British controlled Egypt, and they were competing with the Dutch for South Africa. Germany wanted to control Morocco and other areas, so it was constantly arguing with France and Great Britain over African soil. Because of the bickering in Africa, the nations of Eur...
