Did the Germans launch a pre-meditated war in 1914? The causes of WWI still remains one of the hot button issues in contemporary historiography.

What caused WWI? Was it the international system of "entangling alliances?" Or an international arms race that created a powder keg scenario? Domestic political concerns in Imperial Germany? Competition between rival European Colonial Empires?

All these explanations and more can be found by students researching this topic. The following summary posits a more traditional view of how German decision-makers planned to unleash a war of conquest to change the European balance of power in their favor in the autumn of 1914.

Caution: No discussion of this topic is complete without reference to historiographical disputes raging over these issues. The following text makes no reference to the ongoing scholarly debate and the various "schools of thought." Instead it gives a one-sided account and places some obscure international crises of the pre-WWI era into a "blame Germany" perspective.

The following is a summary of an essay I wrote at the London School of Economics that argued that Germany bears the primary burden of guilt for the outbreak of the First World War. It should be used for research only.