As I understand it, the Austrians wanted Serbia, Germany egged them on, Russia supported Serbia with treaty, France supported Russia by treaty, England supported France by treaty.
And it went to Hell.
Russia wanted to take Serbia, and saw an opportunity to effectively control it as a dependency in a conflict with Austria. Germany’s issue was that (partly because of major world-spanning changes and partly because Kaiser Wilhelm was flaky) it was trapped between a hostile France and a hostile Russia. The Germans had been going back and forth trying to become England’s friend and torqing it off, with predictable results. Their only significant ally was Austria, and the belief that Germany would be destroyed by a resurgent Russia and France was very strong. So Germany’s actions were logical given events.
They were foolish actions, but the cruel logic of European politics favored insanity and the Germans were no different.
I think you’re just confused on what I’m talking about. I’m talking about casus belli not contributing factors.
And more specifically, you’re incorrect in saying Germany didn’t want a war with France or Russia. It did want a war with those countries; Germany knew an Austrian invasion of Serbia would lead to a more general war and that was its goal. I will grant that Germany didn’t want a war with Britain and it certainly didn’t want the war that actually happened. It was hoping for short war like the Franco-Prussian War, the Spanish-American War, or the Russo-Japanese War - a year, or maybe two, of fighting and then a good settlement to knock France and Russia down a few notches.
Well… okay, but that’s still a very Franco-British perspective. You’d still have to look at Serbia or Austria or Russia for the original Casus Belli.
I would say they didn’t want to be in a position where they felt such a war was inevitable or necessary. I’ll grant that it’s complicated, because you have people who didn’t want war, people who did, and people who wanted war but not war, and people who wanted no war but were eager to get at the one they had before things turned against them.
I can’t quite agree, because as erratic as he was, the Kaiser and many others in Germany had spent a lot of time trying to avoid the issue and dodge the war altogether. They believed that such a war would be possible, even probable, but would have preferred that Austria get some victory, Russia lose some influence, and that be the end of the matter.
It’s kinda hilarious that I’m here defending Kaiser Wilhelm. 
I’ve studied a lot of German history and he was clearly in need of someone holding his leash. He was a man with some emotional issues, which, combined with his boundless energy for action, led him to some serious diplomatic blunders.
So much history might have been different had Wilhelm’s mom not been British, or had she not been a braying jackass. His issues went back long before his father died, though I see no evidence that he was mentally deficient in any way. That’s a post facto speculation, and I never read that any concurrent figure found him slow or disturbed. Perhaps the oddest thing about him is that I’ve found very little to suggest that his father ever thought anything about him at all. It is perhaps not very surprising that the young Wilhelm turned to other father figures instead.
BTW, if you want see utter insanity of conspiracy theories in action, try this: http://www.reformation.org/kaiser-frederick3.html
Serbia, Austria, Russia, France, Belgium, and Britain were all involved. But Germany was essentially the one country that was in control. Every other country was just responding to what Germany did so Germany was the only country that was making choices in its actions.
It was the same situation as if the Soviet Union had invaded West Germany in the seventies. The United States would have declared war against the Soviet Union.
Post-war apologists might have claimed that the Americans and the Soviets were both responsible for the war. The Soviets declared war on West Germany but the Americans declared war on the Soviets. But that equivalency would be false - the Americans had a pre-existing commitment to West Germany so the Soviets knew their invasion would provoke an automatic American declaration of war. But the Soviets would have had no commitment to invade West Germany; that was a voluntary choice they made.
Same situation in 1914. Every country had openly declared what it would do if such-and-such a country were attacked. Germany certainly knew this (with the exception that they apparently had doubts over whether Britain would actually declare war in defense of Belgium). And knowing these consequences, Germany set things in motion.
Since I disagree with this belief, I disagree with your conclusions.
Again, I think that Kaiser Wilhelm’s mental state is important. He was forever making speeches about Germany’s desire for “a place in the sun”. He really thought that Great Britain was getting rich off its colonies-so he went and seized some (largely worthless) chunks of Africa for himself.
Yet, Germany was being so successful in the high tech industries of the day-it had beaten Great Britain in steelmaking, chemical engineering, and shipbuilding. Had Germany abandoned its foollish obsession with empire, they would have been prosperous beyond belief.
And Wilhelm’s amateurish diplomacy was a joke-he attempted to cosy up to The Tsar (“Cousin Nicky”-the “Emperor of the East”).
He caused Bethmann-Hollweg quite a lot of grief.
I also wonder of the emperor of the decaying Austrain Empire was in a state of near-senility…picking a war in the Balkans made little sense (to me).
I don’t know where you came up with this, as I’ve never heard such a claim.
And yeah, ralph124c, as I said before, the Kaiser did have some mental issues.
That’s an understatement.
That’s not even remotely in dispute among historians. Russia and Austria were competing to influence Serbia, for different reasons. Hell, Russia had been trying to take control voer the Slav popyulation of the Balkans for almost a century. Some of the Serbian radicals believed that Russia would back them against Austria (which it did).
Smiling bandit and I have our differences in opinion but I’m in full agreement with him on this. Turkish power was on the decline and both Austria and Russia wanted to replace Turkey as the dominant power in the Balkans. So both countries were trying to increase their presence in the region while keeping out the other.