Who is to blame for WWI?

Germs, money...

If a situation is precarious enough for a single death to cause four years of terrifying bloodshed I can assure you that the single death is not the root cause.

Every imperial nation is to blame to a certain degree, forming an incoherent web of mostly informal and secretive alliances and assurances without stopping to think about what would happen if even one party were to violate even one clause. Still, if any individual nation is to blame it's almost certainly Germany.

The french when they said they'd attack if Germany aided Austria against Russia.

They didn't attack tho
Germany did

If you mean the war starting the G*rmans, if you mean it keep going muricans and the WZO

I'd say the Germans were primarily responsible for escalating an assassination into a global war.

I don't believe Britain or America would have joined the war had it not been for Germany's actions.

You're at the club when this motherfucker slaps your neutral country's ass. Wat do?

Depends. Was it with his good arm?

>English and French criticizing the Germans for their Imperial ambitions

Is this the greatest hypocrisy of the 20th century?

Yes and no. At that point anglos and frogs were building empires on other continents. Krauts had the audacity to try building one in Europe.

The short: Germany
The long: Everybody
The very specific: Bismark combined with the idiocy of Napoleon III

Keep in mind that a major reason for Britain turning on Germany was because they held neighboring colonies in the Pacific and Africa which led to the naval race that cut them in twain completely.

Brainlet answer: Everyone

Slightly less brainlet answer: Germany

Intellectual answer: the tard who divided the Frankish Empire between his three sons in 843

>one man started one of the most devastating conflicts in human history
i said most because the first spot belongs to when your father anally raped your mom and then made the retarded bag of DNK you are

Russia mobilized their army which was basically an act of war when Austria was in negotiations with Serbia.

It’s Bismarck’s fault in that he built a machine so complex only he could run it and when he was fired as head-machine-runner he didn’t teach anyone else how to run it, he just screamed “LETS SEE HOW YALL RUN THE MACHINE THEN” as he left

The machine was failing before Bismarck was fired. It was failing before Wilhelm I died even. The issue was that Bismarck created a system that was inherently unstable on a continent with multiple major powers looking to advance at the others expense with no real sense of the cost involved. Everything between 1871 and 1914 was one major gamble after another, no matter which power you're talking about.

an autistic serb student

Bismark is last to blame if we dont take formation of Hunnland as reason why did WW1 happened. Bismark did not wanted to be harsh on French in 1871.

Man.

The unification of Germany considerably upset the balance of power in Europe which drew the leering eyes of Britain to the continent. He was also a driving force in Germany's colonial ventures despite having doubts about them. Even before unification, he was persuading Prussians to gain colonies (Guatemala in particular which was surprisingly on board) in order to draw Hanseatic cities into confederation. He alienated Russia by siding with AH in the Balkans. He is absolutely to blame.

Extremelly woke answer : the vaccum left by the fall of the Western Roman Empire creating the Hun caliphate that will systematically try to ruin and cripple Europe for the next hundreds of years

I wonder (((who)))

Of which all of those are only problems because Bismarck isn’t around to head off the crisis when it came. If Bismarck was still around at the time he wouldn’t have allowed Germany to get sucked in as far as Wilhelm II let it.

>only problems because they happened and had consequences
Congratulations, you played yourself

>TFW random user sums up the whole middle European post Roman history in 1 whole post.

Do you really think Bismarck would have let himself get cornered by the question of Balkan succession?

The problems that the german diplomats in 1914 had would have been solved easily by Bismarck, who certaintly would never be drawn into a war with France over the fucking Balkans, alliances be damned.

Australia

The narrator in the BBC's docu on WWI from the seventies has this quote that stuck with me:

"While ordinary people all over Europe were enjoying their summer holidays, the logic of power was moving to terrible conclusions."

>mobilizing your army is an act of war
You are aggressively stupid.

We are

He did in the 1880s by taking a side and your point is utterly moot regardless because the consequences came nearly a decade after his death.

Yes, the point being that if we’re putting the blame on Bismarck it’s for creating a machine that only works when he’s running it.

But it wasn't working as I noted multiple times.

Show me an instance of world war breaking out while Bismarck ran his machine.

Willy and the prussian general staff.

They could send a shut to fuck up to the austrian and stop the fire on Europe on every moment of the July Crisis and before the assassination. Instead, they drenched the situation with gasoline until the last drop.

>straw man
Wew. Just because catastrophic failure hadn't occurred yet doesn't mean the system was working. Germany was quickly becoming isolated due to Bismarcks maneuvering. I've noted how multiple times. Please stop, you're just going in circles to no benefit to your argument.

>Wew. Just because catastrophic failure hadn't occurred yet doesn't mean the system was working.

If the system is DESIGNED to prevent catastrophic failure, I'd wager the system is working pretty damn well if no catastrophic failure has happened.

And yes, foreign policy solutions create further problems, that's the nature of the beast in our ever evolving and changing world. The isolation is a question that wasn't worth addressing when Bismarck was in power and only became so when he was gone.

The fact the man was dead in 1914 and you still blame him for the war says much more of his replacements than it does him.

Either Austria-Hungary or Serbia, take your pick but also . Everybody and their mother knew that the Austrians were in the wrong for their ridiculous demands of the Serbs and Germany backed this like the madmen they are.

Kek! OH MY FUCKING SIDES!! AHAHAHAHHA!

Autism

Except Bismarcks system was designed to isolate France and keep Germany from isolated, you ignorant fuck

Now here is the exciting part my guy. user will either continue to wrangle for dear life for this argument or claim retardation. It's gonna be fun to watch. Stay tuned for his answer. :D

Austrians always were a piece of shit

There is a spectrum of blame.
Full Blame
>Germany
>Russia
>Austro-Hungarians

Partial blame
> France

Very little blame
>Serbia
>UK

Tard side show tier
>Italy
>Ottoman Empire

Imagine if Russia mobilized their military and tried to prevent the US from invading Iraq after 911. They turned a regional conflict into a war between great powers.

It was design to do one of two things:

1) Keep Germany out of wars it couldn’t win

2) Keep German power stable or growing, which ever was more practical at the moment

Isolation, of either Germany herself or her enemies, was a by product of these goals, not the purpose of the machine itself.

Lol

literally all wilhelm's fault for escalating it, had germany not mobilised it would have been a small war between russia and A-H

>Any war with Russia
>small

And either way, Wilhelm was bound by alliance to Austria, he had no option but to join her.

There is a practically difference between what you are saying now and what you said before. What you said before was Russia beating their chest to force Austria to take notice and what you are saying now is a full scale involvement in a war.

updoot :)

Here is the fact: The war was unavoidable all the way to Britain's deployment in August 1914. Had Britain chose to engage with Germany with diplomacy rather than military means, it would just be another French-German skirmish that would be quickly diffused.

They mobilized their military which was the largest in continental Europe. Czar Nicholai was pressured by Pan Slavic elements in Russia to expand their sphere of influence into Slavic lands. It was a goal of theirs centuries old. If they let Austria annex Serbia, objectively, WW1 might not have happened. But Russian imperialists were obsessed with opening a route to constantinople.

>all the ruling houses involved were lead by German monarchs
I guess you're not wrong.

>inb4 bulgarian knyazka, Japan, etc
Clearly the Brits, Russians, French, and AH

Me

>French
lmao *germans I need to get off here

>led by an anglo
an eternal anglo

Oh my God, dude... all of this is irrelevant. Mobilizing an army precedes a war but is not an act of war. What you are describing is aggressive dick wagging and not an act of war. Russia mobilized first to scare the Austrians and also be prepared and declared formal war later on. Though I appreciate the summary of Russian ambitions in your post.

Britain chose diplomacy, it chose it all the way up to the point Wilhelm decided to use one of their long standing treaties as toilet paper and invade a neutral country under their protection.
Oh and proceed to act like barbarians while in said country ensuring public opinion was firmly on the "remove kraut" side.

And all that to execute a war plan that failed to achieve any of it's goals.

>Russia mobilized their army which was basically an act of war when Austria was in negotiations with Serbia.
Correct, and even worse, the subhuman slavs mobilized against Germany.

>There is a spectrum of blame. Full Blame
>UK
>France
>Germany
>Russia
>Austro-Hungarians

Partial blame
>Serbia

Very little blame
>Italy
>Ottoman Empire

>Britain chose diplomacy
They chose perfidy, as ever. Even Kipling wrote about their lies.

They were preparing to invade Austria though. How do you justify the mobilization when Serbia doesn't even share a border with Russia? When they mobilized they made it clear it was you or us who would have hegemony in Eastern Europe.

>Full blame
>UK
>France

I'd put those two in an even higher tier, ackshually. They wanted muh/moi empire and thirsted for war with the krauts.

up until the invasion of Belgium the british public opinion as well as the parliament were against intervention in a european war
it doesn't really matter what grand designs you have if your country won't cooperate.
It's only after germany made diplomatic blunder after diplomatic blunder that they actively managed to instill a desire for war into the brits

That is the point I am trying to make. Mobilizing an army in that fashion is mainly to scare the Austrians into letting Serbia off.

>Edward Grey (Secretary for foreign Affairs) is desperately trying to get some sort of conference to negotiate over Serbia before war occurs
>Meanwhile Germany refuses to humor any talks, and wonders why Britain is upset when Hans marches into a neutral country that they were told to leave alone

*follow up
I'm not justifying it, I'll telling you what they were doing. And you too understand what they were doing but all we disagree on is whether mobilizing an army in preparation of war IS an act of war.

not to mention that given the nature of Russia, pre-emtive mobilization is a lot more critical for them than for Germany with it's vastly higher population density and average level of infrastructure

This. It was tactical as well as political.

>british public opinion
...as if the bong aristocracy actually cared what the public thinks. Not that such would be determined and understood within such a short period of time, particularly a major shift as you are fantasizing. But the bong aristocracy didn't care in any event.

>Britain is upset
How ironic.