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"I always hear Caesar did, Caesar conquered. Was not there at least a cook along?"—Bertolt Brecht In 1914, the world witnessed one of the most terrible and bloody wars in the history of mankind to that date. World War One, at that time entitled the Great War, began as a result of the conflict between the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbia. On the surface, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, seemed to be the cause of the events that led to a European and, eventually, a world war. Although the assassination precipitated the events that led to war, the true causes of the Great War were much deeper and much more convoluted than a gunshot and the death of a statesman. In order to fully grasp the causes of the First World War, and in order to eventually determine responsibility for the war, the state of affairs before its inception, including the events and intellectual climate in the previous century, must be recognized and acknowledged as vital components in the shaping of events that led to hostility and mobilization. The prevailing intellectual state in the mid to late nineteenth century was one of change. New ideas were brought to the fore by scientists and expound