I also disagree with the ‘would have happened anyway’ argument.
Another set of alliances, another incident may have set off a regional war - like it had before, as in the Franco-Prussian war or the war in the Balkans - and such wars were probably inevitable; but there was no inevitability about the war that actually happened: a coalition war where one side could not beat the other without years of meat-grinding attrition, effectively destroying a generation in the process.
That was only ‘inevitable’ under the particular system of alliances at that time. Some shift in the system and it would no longer be inevitable.
The Franz Ferdinand assassination was an excuse-the Kaiser intended to provoke war with France-no later than 1914. The fact that such a war made no sense is proof that the Kaiser wasn’t quite right in the head. Germany was outperforming the UK and France-and launching a war would have destroyed all of that. But the Kaiser wanted his “place in the sun”-which included acquiring worthless African colonies, and a blue water navy. The whole enterprise was stupid
As I wrote in a previous post, Germany wasn’t really in a position of advantage. Germany might be more powerful than France or Britain or Russia - but it wasn’t more powerful than the three of them in combination. And Germany’s allies didn’t make up the difference.
That was the whole basis of the German war plan - they wanted to fight a war where they hoped to defeat France quickly before Russia could get ready, then defeat Russia after France was finished, and try to keep Britain out of the war. They thought this was still possible in 1914 but the window of opportunity was closing.
It’s somewhat ironic that Italy was at the bottom of the heap in terms of fighting prowess in WW1 yet they were the ones who finally set the defeat in motion for the other side (outlasting Austria, which collapsed and thus made the medium-term defeat of Germany assured.)
How do we know that Italy was at the bottom of the heap? Because Germany consistently beat Russia, and Russia consistently beat Austria-Hungary, and Austria-Hungary consistently beat Italy (until they didn’t.)
I have a hard time accepting that Italy was the key to the Central Powers’ defeat. After all, Italy entered the war in May 1915 and the fighting went on for years after that.
I hate to sound America-centric but I think a more likely explanation is that the American entry into the war was the tipping point. That’s not to say that the United States won the war but we were a major new factor in what had been a pretty balanced confrontation.
The introduction of tanks to the battlefield (on the Allied side only, until the very end) might also have tipped the balance; or at any rate broken the trench-war deadlock.
My understanding is that the war was one of attrition. The American entry had two effects. 1) A vast new manpower pool on the Allied side. 2) Rapid dispersal of the new influenza strain. In combination, the new reserves for the enemy and having your own reserves decimated quickly made surrender inevitable.
But stuff like tanks and gas attacks and aerial bombing were two-way streets. If one side showed they were really effective, the other side could match them and restore the stalemate. The American entry into the war was not something the Germans could counteract - there was no major neutral power left to join in on the German side.
And money. Lots and lots of money. While the impending arrival of American troops had a psychological effect, the main real effect of the American entry into the war was it put the American economy on the Allied side. The men would take a year or so to arrive, get trained and equipped, and enter battle but the money could move much faster.
AS I understand it, the war broke out more due to military tactics and strategy than due to an actual desire for a broad war.
The problem is that many countries - most notably but not limited to Germany - had military strategies that depended heavily on them being first to strike. So once it became apparent that a war might break out, they were locked into a cycle where one country mobilized which triggered another country’s mobilization which triggered an attack and so on.
Of course, in a situation like this there could have been any number of triggers, so it’s likely that war would have broken out over something else anyway. But that’s not the same thing as saying all these countries actively wanted war.