Was it really Kaiser Wilhelms fault for getting germany into war or did the politicians want it too?
Why was the Kaiser so powerful In German still anyway? All other major European powers had severely curtailed their monarchs powers bbefore WW1
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Neither wanted it, but the Entente gave them no other alternative.
If Germany didn’t give zaistria-Hungary the blank cheque message then they wouldn’t have pushed as hard on the Serbians because they knew they had no chance alone against russia
Austria-Hungary had every right to punish a rogue state that actively supported terrorists in their territory.
Correct. But the problem is that Austria-Hungary made a huge list of insane demands form Serbia that they expected to be denied to give the, a pretender for war
But Serbia DID agree to almost all them. The few ones they refused or wanted to negotiate over were truly ridiculous stuff like Austria hungry demanding their soldiers be stationed in Serbian schools to “fused against dissidents”
They refused the one demand that made the rest of the ultimatum enforceable.
Who the frick cares about that moronic demand? It wasn't worth waging war over.
>hm yes, allow me to walk into your country with a billion of my own govt officials plz
>no this is not a takeover what are you talking about
Shut the frick up, moron.
>They refused the one demand that was intentionally made as nasty as possible to guarantee that the Inbred Austro's would be able to claim it was a casus belli
FTFY
This, without Germanies irresponsible support the war would likely have ended with a few brief skirmishes in the Balkans.
You could turn the argument around: Serbia would have never resisted AH demands without being backed by Russia.
What was Russia's business at the Balkans? Imperial games.
The idea that either of the powers involved here were better or worse than the others is a ridiculous position.
The Kaiser as well as his generals just took advantage of the situation that was already there, because all countries were afraid and had to fight to defend themselves.
Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg pushed back against the war repeatedly - refusing armament budgets during the Balkan War, taking a dovish position during the 1912 Imperial War Council, and even pushing back against submarine warfare during WW1.
It was the sidelining of his (and civilian power as a whole) that doomed Germany to war
The civilian government wasn't sidelined until the war was in full swing.
Bethmann-Hollwegh gave in after he learned about secret naval agreements between Britain and Russia regarding Baltic landing operations. That was the tipping point for him, since he felt completely surrounded by enemies.
Ancient Merovingian curse
War was coming because the various European powers had conflicting goals and claims.
The Germans where worried that Imperial Russia would complete it's industrialization and would then be stronger than them.
As such 1914 was the change for them to "sort things out" before the alliance got to strong.
And while there where many problems with this. The largest was probably that the Brits where looking to shift to the Germans in their ever shifting game of balancing the continent. As such they needn't rush to defeat the Russians as the Brits would shift and the balance that was to the benefit of the German empire would regained.
The emperor exercised his power only in certain areas. The main one however was the military. And it doesn't matter that you can't get a postage stamp changed when you want to go to war all you need is the military.
Russia was an enemy of Britain and France for the entire 19th century. Germany could've easily taken advantage of that sentiment and allied with Russia instead of worrying about muh inevitable conflict. Germany should've sought a relationship with Russia like China's relations with Russia today.
>Russia was an enemy of Britain and France for the entire 19th century
Russia was Britains enemy, with their rivalry in Central Asia, not so much Frances.
>allied with Russia
Restoring the Three Emperors League was not an option as Austria-Hungary and Russia were never going to be friends again, and breaking with AH in favour of Russia was not an option either as no German wanted another brothers war on their hands.
To blame anyone in particular for World War 1 is kind of stupid. It was the ultimate outcome of a long trend in European politics that had gone on for decades. I can understand, in the immediate aftermath of such a war, blaming Germany and AH for the whole thing. But with the hindsight of history I do not think it is correct at all to paint any one party as being "the cause" of WW1.
Everyone was champing at the bit for war and the defensive alliances that crisscrossed Europe would have made any spat turn into a full blown war. Even the actual reasoning of the time is quite flimsy - some Serbs killing off a figurehead leader caused the entirety of Europe to kill millions and destroy an entire generation.
Not really. German Empire and AH wanted war far more than the others because they border Russia, and understand that Russia’s potential was too vast to match in the long run. They had a direct inventive for war sooner rather than later, whereas the Entente (besides France maybe) would have preferred peace for the time.
incentive*