Germany: WW1 responsible?
Was Germany Responsible for Starting the First World War?The question of Germany's responsibility in initiating the first World War is one that has raised many differences of opinion among historians who have attempted to address the issue.Holger H. Herwig, in his quest to answer this question has concluded;"...The greatest measure of responsibility, however, remains with Germany. Planners, both civilian and military, were all too eager to resolve their perceived diplomatic encirclement by use of force -- "now or never," as Kaiser Wilhelm II put it."(Herwig, H. H., The Outbreak of World War I, 1991 )Harry Elmer Barnes, an American scholar, expressing his discontent with the treaty of Versailles wrote;".... In estimating the order of guilt of the various countries we may safely say that the only direct and immediate responsibility for the World War falls upon Serbia, France and Russia, with the guilt about equally divided."(Barnes, H. E., Who Started the First World War?, 1989)Other Historians tend to be less inclined to any one side, in favour of a position where every one is to be blamed almost equally;"The unthinkable happened because in each of the Great States, leaders did certain thi
This mode of thinking saw a highly escalated arms race from 1871 onwards. There were two reasons which prompted Britain to take action at once. The German interest in the Balkan region was on purely economic grounds. Analysis and ConclusionThough the immediate cause of the war was the murder of the ruler of Austria-Hungary, it was the long term causes, as elaborated throughout the course of this essay, that were the real reasons for the start of the First World War. In the final conclusion, one cannot but agree with the conclusion of the historian SLA Marshall, "The unthinkable happened because in each of the Great States, leaders did certain things that inflamed the crisis, or failed to do things that might have eased it. Hence within a matter of a few days, nearly the whole of Europe was involved in a massive military conflict that soon engulfed the whole of Europe and eventually the world at large. The German invasion clearly violated the treaty. The intensity of the naval race is reflected by the fact that between 1909 and 1911 Germany built nine Dreadnoughts while Britain completed 18 Dreadnoughts. Russia hoped to control the area because half of her exports passed through it. Firstly, Belgium had been guaranteed as a neutral state by all great powers in 1839 in the Treaty of London. As Britain built new naval bases for the Dreadnoughts in northern Scotland in 1913, Germany widened the Kiel Canal to allow the easy passage of her Dreadnoughts from the Baltic to the North Sea. As for the colonial rivalries that roused the tensions in Europe, then it is clear that other nations were equally responsible than the Germans. The next day Austrian artillery bombarded Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Furthermore, colonial rivalries also existed between France and Britain, independent of Germany. Hence, blaming the start of the Great War solely on Germany could only be possible if it can be proven that Germany was the only one responsible for creating all of these causes.
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