Germany indeed did push Austria-Hungary toward war. A-H would never have undertaken an invasion of Serbia under threat of Russian counterattack without German backing. Germany essentially gave A-H approval for the invasion of Serbia by promising to declare war on Russia if she should mobilize to oppose the Serbian invasion. Until that time, the alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was a defensive one - all promised to support any others who were attacked by an outside power. That’s why Italy ended up on the Allied side; they declined to hold to the alliance because A-H was the aggressor, not the nation attacked. Germany could have done the same and remained neutral during the Austrian/Serbian conflict. Had they done so, it’s likely A-H would never have invaded and risked war with Russia.
In the actual event, Russia mobilized to oppose the Austrian invasion of Serbia. Germany saw this as a threat because its war plans called for defeating France on the western front before Russia had time to fully mobilize. Germany had to declare war against France and Russia so that they could defeat France before Russia completed its mobilization. Thus, the Schlieffen plan did cause Germany to pursue aggression against a neighbor that had nothing to do with the immediate crisis.
The truth is that Germany intentionally inserted itself into a diplomatic crisis that really did not involve Germany. They encouraged A-H to take a hard line with Serbia by promising support in the form of a war declaration should Russia threaten to oppose the invasion. When Russia mobilized, they declared war on Russia as promised, and then involved France and England by virtue of implementation of the Schlieffen plan. How does Germany not receive the bulk of the war guilt given all this? Had Germany not intervened, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand would have been a limited Balkan crisis. Certianly crises in the Balkans were fairly common at the time, but only one of them led to a war involving all the major powers.
I’m sure that had the Germans known what they were about to unleash, they would have backed off. However, WWI was really the first modern war fought by industrialized great powers. Warfare up to that time was not really too damaging to the belligerants. Nobody expected a protracted war, and nobody expected so much death and destruction. War was seen as an acceptable tool of statecraft at that time. Germany did intentionally seek out a war; they almost certainly did not intentionally seek the disaster that actually occurred.
I agree with most of the facts which you outline in your summary, with some particular objections. It is on the conclusions that we part company.
First, with respect to exceptions to the facts: I disagree that Italy withdrew from its treaty with the central powers because they were the aggressors, I think they withdrew because of Italy's secret treaty with France. Germany did not just invade France according to the von Schlieffen Plan, Germany reacted to France mobilizing on behalf of of Russia. I would disagree that Germany sought war, they were after all decades long paranoid about fighting a two front war, although I will agree that they, of all the belligerents, were the least indisposed to it. That is not a nicety of language but a distinction with a difference.
Indeed you seem to move toward that distinction when you write in your concluding paragraph, "I’m sure that had the Germans known what they were about to unleash, they would have backed off. " And so we come to our differences in conclusion. The headline of the piece is:
Germany Started the Great War
Which is a conclusion that makes Germany the sole efficient producing cause of the war, which is absurd. There were many efficient producing causes of that war among them were the accident of geography which placed Germany in a position to defend on two fronts, a system of interlocking alliances which caused countries to fall like dominoes, a naval arms race borne out of a desire for colonies by Germany with was late emerging as a nationstate and late into the 19th century game of accumulating colonies, the determination of the British to win that arms race at sea, the psychological weakness of the Kaiser, whose withered arm seems to have created a sense of inferiority compensated for by belligerence. We might add the burning ambition of France to recover Alsace Lorraine and to avenge itself of the humiliation of 1870. The ambitions of Russia in the Balkans which it paraded as Slav brotherhood. The list is long and might include the Serbs waging war by other means including by assassination and anarchy.
To pick on only one or even some of these which relate only to Germany and assign war guilt to Germany alone is bad history. When you ask rhetorically,
How does Germany not receive the bulk of the war guilt given all this?
You frame a rhetorical question to which the answer is one we can agree on, yes, Germany should receive the bulk (whatever quantity of the whole that implies) of the war guilt but that is a far different historical conclusion and one which is more in agreement with the bulk of historical opinion. It is actually a conclusion we can agree on.
