T: Yesterday we learned the text of Lesson 3 War Memories. Now I'd like you to tell me how World War I was started.

S1: World War I started when Austria declared war on Serbia. Then Germany jumped in and declared war on Russia and France.

S2: World War One started in 1914 and ended in 1918. World War 1 started because of mainly two reasons. The first reason is because of Germany. Germany was trying to find out a way to attack and conquer Austria-Hungary. Of course since Germany was doing this everyone in Europe knew about it too. The tensions in Europe got really high. In 1914 Europe started to divide and get a weaker environment. They started to attack each other and mainly Germany. Tensions were high between industrialized countries over colonies. Tensions were also caused by the nationalism that different nationality groups within empires had. Many countries also formed alliances for mutual defense. The Triple Alliance, between Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, and the Triple Entente, between France, Great Britain, and Russia, were formed. (Although later, Italy joined the Allies...) So, tensions were high in 1914 when Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, was assassinated by a Slavic nationalist, Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia, Serbia's historic protector, mobilized the borders of Austria-Hungary and Germany, a likely ally of Austria-Hungary. Germany demanded that Russia stop its threatening acts and demanded France to stay neutral if war were to break out. Both refused. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1 and declared war on France on August 3. Germany went through the neutral country of Belgium to attack. Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4 because of this. Then, a great war was started, using U-boats (submarines, introduced by Germany), poison gas, tanks, and machine guns for the first time ...

T: Thanks, you've done a very good job. What about World War II?

S3: World War Two started in 1939 mainly because of Germany. When Hitler took over Germany, he wanted to take some countries in Europe. When he did take over countries, Britain and France got mad at Germany. They told them to stop invading countries. Britain also said that if they took over Poland, they and France would go