[Olog-hai]

That’s what I remembered about the Second Reich. There seem to be different twists of history trying to write it out of existence.

I refer to this article a lot when looking at WWI, though. It is highly critical of what it calls the “Blackadder” revisionism.

[Lee Enfield]

The article is behind current research. WWI happened for a lot of reasons, but German hegemony was not one of them. After the fall of the Soviet Union a lot of Russian archives were opened. It turns out that the Russians were hoping for an excuse (and actively working to create one) to destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Austrians wanted an excuse to knock out Serbia as a Rival in the Balkans (the same reason the Russians wanted to knock out Austria). The French had only had one continental foreign policy since 1871, “Revenche” (revenge). Germany was undone by it's leader. Kaiser Wilhelm II was accepted as very intelligent’ but not wise. He alienated England because of his desire for a fleet to rival the UK and the fact that he was an egotistical blowhard who felt that England would never go to war against a Monarch who was “family”. The Serbs set the whole thing off by plotting and carrying out the assassination to the Austrian crown, which was an act of war under international law.