Were German militarism and diplomacy responsible for World War 1?

Answer 1

Since the early 1960s a number of German historians have argued - very convincingly, on the basis of German and Austro-Hungarian documents - that the German General Staff was indeed responsible for deliberating escalating the crisis caused in June-July 1914 into a major war. The best known of these historians is Fritz Fischer (1908-1999). Fischer stressed that in saying this he wasn't supporting Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which treated every German man, woman and child as guilty. The gist of the theory is that the General Staff urged the government of Austria-Hungary to be provocative and completely unreasonable in its dealings with Serbia. Among the most telling documents are those relating to the time when it looked as if the "doves" in Vienna were getting the upper hand. The horror on the part of the German General Staff of being, as it were, cheated of their jolly little war was boundless. In West Germany, when the implications of Fischer's theory became clear - namely that something had been fundamentally rotten in Germany for long before 1933 - the reaction to Fischer's hypotheis was *rage*. However, within a few years it became widely accepted. More recently it has been modified and altered, however. Well known historians who have echoed Fritz Fischer's interpretation (often with qualifications) include Hans-Ulrich Wehler (b. 1931) and Wolfgang Mommsen (1930-2004).