I totally disagree that industrialization helped cause WW I, but it contributed to supporting the mechanization of the military.

However, advances in technology both help every war, and are helped by every war. A war produces funding for inventions to help the war effort, funding that would not otherwise be availalble, so during the war, certain technologies advance more rapidly.

A military can be seeped in what made sense in a previous generation, not paying attention to technological advances. In the American Civil War, the casualities at Gettysburg were huge because technology had improved the accuracy of long guns, while the military leadership was using tactics developed when guns were ineffective.

To say that industrialization helped cause WW I is like saying rock mining helped start the first Cave Man war, because now they had better ammunition. Some other annoyance with fellow humans led to the war. Advances in technology helped one side get the upper hand.

Imperialism was one of the reasons why nations were annoyed with each other. They were competing for resources, where either there was not enough to go around, or they were incapable of sharing.

The actual spark that set it off was a Serbian nationalist assassinating the Arch Duke Ferdindand, but this in turn was because the spheres of influence strategy of divide and conquer was deliberately stirring up ethnic disputes that continue to tear our world apart.

I dare say we might not have a War on Terrorism today, had not these seeds been laid so long ago, to drive a wedge between Christianity and Muslim religion.