Responsibility

Many different hypotheses have been proposed to explain who is to blame for the outbreak of the First World War. Early explanations, prominent in the 1920s and 1930s, stressed the rigidity of the alliance system and the nature of secret diplomacy, a contention that implied that responsibility for the war's outbreak was shared equally among the powers. The Fischer-Geise theory, proposed by Fritz Fischer and Immanuel Geise in the 1960s, places most blame upon Germany. Most recent scholarship largely echoes this: David Fromkin, in Europe's Last Summer, published in 2004, blames Germany and Austria-Hungary entirely, stating bluntly that "Austria-Hungary started its local war with Serbia, whilst Germany's military leaders started the worldwide war against France and Russia." Some other theories emphasize Britain's desire to join the war in order to stop Germany from increasing its political and economic power, although there is little documentary evidence to prove this. Furthermore, Niall Ferguson, in The Pity of War, published in 1998, argues that Britain went to war with Germany because it perceived it as being weak, and not strong.