Who is responsible for starting WW1?

> Serbs killed Franz Ferdinand
> Austrians over reacted
> Russia had prexisting beefs with Austria
> Germany and England were building up so much and already had turmoil
Who's responsible?

Are you fucking stupid?

90% Germany, 6% Austro-Hungary, 4% Serbia.

germans and the balkanoids really

they're at fault for the conflict in europe for the entire 20th century

not to mention contemporary problems as well

Austria.

Not that they didn't have cassus belli, but they couldn't have expected to start a war in the Balkan without the whole thing turning into a continent-wide shitshow. They ought to have known as much, and Germany shouldn't have given them a carte blanche to follow up on their ultimatum.

But then again, who knows. The atmosphere in Europe at the time was one of relative fatalism, and as the Russians inched closer to completing their Great Program, Germany's future military prospects looked increasingly grim.

Russia and Germany. Same people responsible for starting WW2.

Yeah, pretty much. Russia was in fact bank rolling the black hand. Then shit got out of hand.

t. Frenchmen

Everyone was at fault.

Austria Hungary was at fault for going out of their way to go to war with Serbia, no matter how hard the Serbs were trying to make amends.

Russia was at fault for their heavy-handed mobilization that openly threatened not only Austria Hungary, but Germany as well.

Germany was at fault for working to facilitate the Austrian invasion of Serbia despite efforts by much of the rest of the world to stave off war.

France was at fault for providing the backing Russia needed to feel confident enough to continue threatening both Germany and Austria Hungary

And Britain was at fault for bringing in as much of the world as they possibly could once the conflict had erupted. Before Britain was involved, it was just a major European war. The British ensured that it would become a global one.

And that's not even getting into the longer period leading up to the war during which all these alliances were formed and the strategic situation took shape. That's what really caused the war - none of these powers could afford to stay out, lest the balance of power shift out of their favor.

The British involvement is directly caused by the Germans invading Belgium they were warned multiple times that invading Belgium would bring them into the war and they did it anyways.

That's simplifying it a bit. They were looking for any excuse to get involved, and they played up the atrocities in Belgium as much as possible so as to justify their involvement. They certainly had a valid casus belli, but they're far from some unfortunate nation sucked into a war they didn't want.

Germans were the ones, who changed local war into world war.

Serbs
Once for killing the Habsburg heir, twice for defying the ultimatum from AH.
Serb spotted.

This breaks it down

It helped a lot though that germany was comitting several atrocities which didnt even need much help in generating public outcry and resentment.
Gotta hand it to them, they are truly skilled at playing the badguy.

If the Japanese hadn't exposed the Russians as frauds then Germany wouldn't have been so eager to fight.

Yes, but the British reaction was pretty clearly an excuse to manufacture casus belli rather than one of genuine concern. While they were busy playing up the horrors of Belgium the whole war, the Germans were actually doing all that the British were claiming and often times worse in their colony of Ober Ost in the Baltic. But the Brits never seemed to care about it.

And this isn't an attempt to justify Germany's actions in the war. I'm just saying that the British were far from benevolent with their involvement.

Pretty accurate.

Willie deserves a category of his own between the first and second tiers though.

The Germans and Austrians are to blame.

Germany specifically for escalating the conflict into a world war.

This is a pretty novel one, props.

The Allies. Austria had every right to go to war with Serbia, Russia/France/UK turned it into a world war

The eternal habsburg

1. Serbia. Agitated the south slavs in Austria-Hungary for decades and aspired to acquire their territory for """"""Greater Serbia""""". When that agitation eventually evoked a response they of course dindu nuffin.

2. Austria-Hungary. Finally decided to put Serbia in its place as Serbia's actions constituted a direct threat against the integrity of the empire. The ultimatum was justified but it still lead to war.

3. Russia. Supporting Serbia because of its crackpot notion of '''pan-slavism'''. It was ultimately Russian intervention in the crisis that escalated the war from what would have been the 3rd localized Balkan war in less that 5 years to an international crisis. Russian mobilization thwarted any chance of a general war being prevented. And their broad mobilization against Germany as well as Austria-Hungary forced the German's hand.

4. Germany. Their diplomatic support of Austria-Hungary emboldened it and gave it confidence in the crisis it otherwise would not have had. German support was supposed to cause Russia to back down but it didn't.

5. France. It was opportunistically driven by revanchist sentiment and supported Russia. Its antagonistic attitude towards Germany backed it into a corner and limited its diplomatic options.

6. Britain. Again opportunistic but moreso to preserve what it though to be the balance of power. Within the past 15 years the title of strongest mainland power had shifted from Russia to Germany and Britain as concerned by a possible German continental hegemony. Previous German diplomatic buffoonery in previous crises as well as the naval arms race pushed it into the Entente camp.

Germany>Austria-Hungary>Bosnians(Serbs, Muslims, Croats, you name it)>Russia>Serbia>UK>France

Anyone saying Serbia is literally retarded or German.
Austria occupied Bosnia and ruled like 2 million Serbs.
But that's okay because of your autism, right?
That empire was fucking over anyway, only thing that kept it alive was Franz Joseph.

Also, Austria was puppeteering Serbian politics for about 25 years, and when the government changed Austria waged a customs war with Serbia for two years before giving up and annexing Bosnia a few months after.
Mind you France and Germany deliberately participated against Austria-Hungary in this conflict. France with increased investment in Serbia specifically designed to combat the pork ban. Germany by buying Serbian goods (German ships would sail down the Danube-a free waterway for travel, through most of Austria-Hungary, specifically to dock in Belgrade and buy Serbian meat products which Austria banned).

It's just outright stupid to lay blame on the entire nation of Serbia just because a Serbian terrorist group assassinated a shitty imperialist who was actively oppressing them. The same thing would have happened in any country, it goes with the territory of being an autocrat who rules through military strength.

First blame goes to Austria because they were ostensibly a major power and should have known better than to be starting shit in the manner that they did.

Second blame goes to Germany because their promise of unrestricted support made it difficult for anyone to treat the inevitable conflict as just another Balkan War.

And third blame goes to Russia, because even a "partial mobilization" meant they had opened the Pandora's box of European war between great powers. And they never should have changed their prize horse from Bulgaria to an unstable shithole like Serbia in the first place.

>shitty imperialist
*shitty imperialist's nephew
I know he was the heir but desu he seems like he wasn't that bad

Out of the 17 conspirators, 7 acted directly.
3 were Muslims, 3 were Croats, 10 were Serbs.
The last one was a Croat, who later viewed himself as a Serb and Yugoslav, but is claimed by all 3 sides because he's their only Nobel prize winner (in literature).

That kind of identity stuff isn't that strange. A counter example would be fieldmarshal Borojevic who was a Serb who viewed himself as a Croat.