Origins of World War One

Attempting to evaluate the origins of World War One is both a complex and contentious issue, highly debated amongst historians with discussion generally centring on war guilt and the main contributing factors. Amongst the most topical issues in this area are the extent of Germanic blame in relation to the war guilt dispute, and also the degree of blame that can be placed on the Alliance System in creating a war climate. The view that the Alliance System was the key element of the war climate can be supported by the argument that it is what caused the war to transform from an isolated incident to a global war. Whereas, this can be defended by the view that the whole tension of the European powers before the 1914 outbreak can be attributed to all elements of the environment equally. When analysing which nation was the main aggressor of war, Germany, according to many historians deserves to shoulder much of the blame. Contrary to this, the ‘Revisionist’ school of thinking does not see...