Most people think World War One started with a single bullet in Sarajevo. But the real story begins decades earlier, in the boardrooms of Deutsche Bank, the shipyards of Krupp and Vickers, and the construction sites of a railway that threatened to reshape the entire global order.
In this video, we trace the hidden economic origins of the First World War, from Germany’s explosive industrial rise that terrified the British Empire, to the Berlin-Baghdad Railway that threatened Britain’s control over Middle Eastern oil and the Suez Canal. We examine how private arms manufacturers sold weapons to every side and profited from the escalation, how French banks poured billions into Russian military modernization, and how the scramble for colonies turned economic competition into a countdown to catastrophe.
We also break down the most important historiographical debate of the twentieth century: Fritz Fischer’s explosive thesis that Germany deliberately provoked the war, Christopher Clark’s argument that Europe’s leaders were sleepwalkers stumbling into the abyss, and why both narratives miss the deeper truth about capital, markets, and power.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s documented history that most textbooks leave out. The war wasn’t caused by an assassination. It was caused by a global system that made war profitable.
Sources and further reading:
— Fritz Fischer, “Germany’s Aims in the First World War” (1961)
— Christopher Clark, “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” (2012)
— J.A. Hobson, “Imperialism: A Study” (1902)
— Sean McMeekin, “The Berlin-Baghdad Express” (2010)
— V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” (1916)
— Imperial War Museums, “The Naval Arms Race”
— Gordon Martel, “Origins of the First World War” (2017)
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Credit to : Markets of the Past