Nations Simulation

In the nations simulation, the class was divided into 5 different groups. We weren't told it, but Group 1 was the UK, Group 2 was Germany, Group 3 was France, Group 4 was Russia, and Group 5 was Austria-Hungary. The goal of the simulation was to try to get security for our nation. I was in group 4. For us, the timeline of the simulation was that we started off realizing our only prospect was soldier generation, so we quickly sought to make a secret alliance with group 2 to try to have a strong ally. Having an alliance with just group 2 turned out to not be enough, as group 1 began to have a strong lead. Group 1 was getting too powerful and thus we made a treaty with every other group to try to make a coalition more powerful than them. We didn't have any real terms, just that we would oppose group 1 and not treaty with them. We then desired that we should all attack group 1 together and eliminate the problem, but group 5 didn't want to help us because they had made a secret agreement with group 1. We then decided we would all attack group 5 and eliminate them, and then all attack group 1 and have security. However declaring war ended the peace, so the simulation ended. The real purpose of the simulation was to learn hands-on what the struggles of maintaining peace were for the European nations before World War 1. Reasons included distrust of other nations, a need to increase arms to make sure your nation was caught up with the global arms race, and secret alliances. From my experience doing the colation, I also learned that it is difficult to make an organisation of nations. This is because the nations don't want to be told what to do, and there is no higher power/consequence for not following the rules of the organisation. This was shown by Group 5 not listening to the rule of not forming a treaty with group 1. Although it didn't apply in our simulation another motive for nations to not work together is economic competition. Overall all of these factors played roles in the growing tensions between the belligerent nations of world war 1, and they also proved themselves to be obstacles in the formation of the league of nations at the Versailles treaty. I also noticed that at the end of the simulation I found myself wishing we hadn't declared war because it ended the simulation, and I guess the leaders of the allies and central powers felt something like that when they learned the war was going to be longer and bloodier than they had anticipated.