Was Germany Responsible For World War I

Several of the events that occurred in the time leading up to World War I suggest that Germany, although not solely responsible, played a large and significant role in starting World War I. Germany’s desire for a dominating empire appeared to be the main factor to fuel the events which led up to the war. “People in Germany felt that they needed and deserved a ‘place in the sun,’ by which they vaguely meant some kind of acknowledged supremacy like that of the British” (Palmer, 690). The British and French were known as the leaders of modern Europe since the seventeenth century, so they could not share these aspirations.
Before the war began, Britain and France had negative connotations of Germany. The French dealt with the significant loss of Alsace and Lorraine, annexed to Germany in 1871. The British experienced German salesmen in their foreign markets, selling goods at unfair prices. They also saw Germans become colonial rivals in Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, and watched many Europeans gravitate to Berlin. …show more content…
As stated by Palmer, “The German Empire was the strongest and most obvious of the new political structures that had emerged through the use of armed power” (692). Leading up to the war, German militarism had been rising for quite some time. As noted in the article by Boris Johnson, clear militaristic actions left Germans to blame: Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914. Germany also deployed the Schlieffen plan and sent troops to invade neutral Belgium and go into France; and Germany openly provoked Great Britain and France with their pursuit of an arms race and their buildup of a strong navy. Germany encouraged Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia, believing that it could strengthen its southern