Germany's Fault For The First World War
The blame game for the first World War still rages on, a hundred years after the outbreak of the war. Historians’ views differ starkly, ranging from Serbia to Germany to Russia. At the end of the first World War, the Allied Powers decided to hold Germany answerable for the war and destruction caused by it. The undue responsibility that Germany had to carry due to the ‘war clause’ in the Treaty of Versailles resulted in resentment, which ultimately led to the second World War and the Cold War, after that. History pays increased attention to the origins of the First World War, fought primarily by European powers that changed not only Europe, but also the Middle East and Africa. The political consequences of the ‘Great War’ have been a major reason
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Fischer said the First World War was an attempt by imperial Germany to dominate Europe by force of arms. Long before the outbreak of hostilities, Prussian-German conservative elites were convinced that a European war would help to fulfil Germany's ambitions for colonies and for military as well as political prestige in the world.The explosive discovery of the ‘September Programme’ and the ‘War Council’ of 1912 (Fischer, 1967) that set out extensive territorial annexations to cement Germany's domination of the continent, highlighted the German government’s clear intention to go to war 18 months later. Germany's military and naval leaders, the predominant influence at court, shared a militarism idea that held war to be inevitable. The fine-tuning of this was left to the civilian chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, whose primary aim was to subvert diplomatic intervention in order to begin the war under the most favourable conditions possible. Following the Archduke’s assassination, Berlin deliberately used the crisis in relations between its satellite Austria-Hungary and Russia’s satellite Serbia as an excuse for a general war that would establish German hegemony. World War I started in 1914 because a government in Berlin wanted a
Fischer said the First World War was an attempt by imperial Germany to dominate Europe by force of arms. Long before the outbreak of hostilities, Prussian-German conservative elites were convinced that a European war would help to fulfil Germany's ambitions for colonies and for military as well as political prestige in the world.The explosive discovery of the ‘September Programme’ and the ‘War Council’ of 1912 (Fischer, 1967) that set out extensive territorial annexations to cement Germany's domination of the continent, highlighted the German government’s clear intention to go to war 18 months later. Germany's military and naval leaders, the predominant influence at court, shared a militarism idea that held war to be inevitable. The fine-tuning of this was left to the civilian chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, whose primary aim was to subvert diplomatic intervention in order to begin the war under the most favourable conditions possible. Following the Archduke’s assassination, Berlin deliberately used the crisis in relations between its satellite Austria-Hungary and Russia’s satellite Serbia as an excuse for a general war that would establish German hegemony. World War I started in 1914 because a government in Berlin wanted a