Was World War 1 an unecessary war?

Answer 1

Of course it was! Absolutely. Who got anything out of it, other than grief? Who even expected to get anything out of it?

Serbia got the whole thing started because they coveted a few hundred square miles of the neighboring massive Austro-Hungarian Empire, for the glory of greater Pan Serbia. Say about the size of a county or two in the US. France hoped to get back the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, lost in the Franco-Prussian War. Italy hoped to trim off a slice of the south edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for herself. Germany hoped to gain land from France. The Russians, God Bless them, took what was a war between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, started by the Serbians by backing terrorists who assassinated the Heir to the Throne of the Empire, like a mouse biting a lion, and the Russians decided to jump in it, making the local war one that involved the world, for no better reason than they thought of themselves as the "mother of the slavs", the Serbs being Slavs. So like a deranged mother ("my babies can do nothing wrong") in swooped the Russians, bringing in Germany and France, and in short order Belgium and England, and then all the rest.

So millions had to die because the Serbians had delusions of grandeur and the Russians couldn't keep their snouts out of it.