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.
Obviously, Germany was not SOLELY to blame for the war. We certainly can agree on that. The actions of all the other powers contributed. Saying “Germany started the Great War” is obviously an oversimplification. German actions, however, did lead to an escalation of yet another Balkan crisis into a general European war.
We can also agree on Italy. Their real reason for withdrawing from the alliance likely was the same as the real reason they eventually entered the war; they wanted to recover Austrian territory populated by ethnic Italians. Their stated reason, though, was that A-H was the aggressor, so they were not obligated to support them in their war with Serbia. I use this as support for the notion that German alliance with A-H did not require Germany to pledge support for A-H during the initial buildup.
The fact that they did support A-H leads to my conclusion that Germany did seek war. They were well aware that Russia was likely to intervene on behalf of Serbia. They were also well aware that Russia and France were solidly allied, so that war with Russia likely meant war with France as well. Obviously, they though Britain would not go to war over Belgian neutrality, so that was a miscalculation. War with Russia and France, however, cannot be said to be an unforeseen consequence of German actions. Maybe you’re right, and Germany was not actively seeking war. However, they were pursuing actions that were likely to provoke war with at least Russia and France.
Certainly, however, none of the powers envisioned the actual war that they were getting into. Experience with wars such as the 1870 Franco-Prussian and 1905 Russo-Japanese wars seemed to indicate that wars between industrialized powers would end quickly and with relatively little damage to the belligerents involved. This theory obviously was blown out of the water by the actual war that was fought. With the hindsight of history, we find it hard to believe that ANY of the great powers actually wanted to fight WWI or actively sought to do so. After all, there were no Hitlers around at the time; the leaders of the powers were all rational men. However, that’s the benefit of hindsight. In actuality, most of the leaders of the powers thought that the war would be more like the Franco-Prussian war, and would end quickly and decisively. That’s why I still maintain Germany sought war. They just did not seek the war they actually got.