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.
The fixing of war "guilt" can be a more elusive matter the more one explores the historical context. I'm not talking about Germany in 1939 whose aggressive guilt was clear beyond dispute, I am talking about the Germany of 1914.
In virtually every tiny village which surrounds us where we live here in Upper Bavaria there is a "Denkmal" or monument to the fallen of both world wars. If one sits at a "Stammtisch" or the table frequented by locals in the village watering hole one will invariably see a fading frame photograph or series of photographs in sepia depicting the boys and young men who were killed in the First and Second World Wars. Relative to the diminutive size of the village, the list is shockingly long. This is more true of World War II that of World War I but the sacrifices of World War I were certainly appalling by any standard.
We can see grainy old newsreels of throngs cheering their boys off to war at train stations in virtually every country in Europe. No one can say that the enthusiasm for war in one country was greater than the impulse in the next. You are quite correct, everyone thought it would be a short quick and victorious war and they all had it wrong.
The modern revisionists seek to lay guilt on the United States for using atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Others seek to do the same against the British and the Americans for the fire raids on Dresden and Hamburg. I do not justify those raids by saying that the individual Japanese or German civilians who were incinerated in those raids were deserving of their fate because they were guilty of war crime. I say that as an extension of the Maxim, we get the government we deserve, we get what we deserve when our government goes to war. That maxim applies to some degree even if the country that goes to war is not democratic and that is because, ultimately, the people are responsible for the government they tolerate.
Are the Germans more or less guilty because they shared French, British, and even American enthusiasm for entering the war? Are they guilty because they tolerated a political system which vested too much power, especially the power to make war, in the Kaiser? Were the British guilty of extending a continental war into a world war because of their obsession over their Navy and their obsession to maintain naval supremacy?
When we say that Germany bears the bulk of war guilt, whom do we mean? The peasant farmers, the generals, the political elites including the diplomats, the Krups, the Kaiser? These questions may be applied to every country. The answer, whether rightly or wrongly, is to be seen in those sepia photographs.
