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The key point to remember is that Germany was a few days or (at most) a handful of weeks away from total collapse and unconditional surrender. The Germans themselves admitted this; their HQ strategy was to get a temporary armistice covering the winter, use the time bought to try and rebuild...

I think they knew that Germany was determined to fight in 1914 when they had the best chance of victory. If we follow the French and Russian logic through, they knew they would be better off fighting in 1915 than in 1914 and even better off in 1916. Same logic for 1917 probably 1918...

An excellent summary of the situation. Thank you for putting it together. The Kaiser's blank check remains the key to the whole situation though and behind that lies the German General Staff assessment that 1914 represented the last chance Germany would have to engage the French-Russian...

I fear not. You have the situation flipped around. When the Kaiser's message to the Austro-Hungarian government made it clear that Germany would side with and support Austro-Hungary, that was when the Russian Empire decided to support Serbia. Which was what the German government wanted since...

Sorry, that's not correct. The Entente was uninterested in the Serbian-Austrian situation and barely aware it had happened. That's very clear from the diplomatic records of the time. It was just another Balkan crisis of which there had been a lot. Except, Germany had publicly declared that...

I would suggest you look back at the sequence of events that took place after the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary presented Serbia with a long list of demands that, if not complied with, would result in war. Serbia agreed to 9 of those 10 demands and offered to negotiate an...

Perhaps your opinion might change if you realize that essentially the Germans attempted to achieve that very end in the 1871 peace treaty. That was deliberately constructed to permanently destroy France as a military and industrial power. The removal of Alsace-Lorraine was intended to cripple...

Primarily because it was the bit left over. We could give Saxony to the Americans, Prussia to the French and Bavaria to the Italians. On the other hand, the legendary "Prussian Efficiency" wouldn't survive ten years of Italian rule.

I don't think that existing was the problem. The European statesmen were quite used to powers waxing and waning. I think the primary issue was that a sort of code of international conduct for the resolution of disputes existed and a code of what one might call good manners existed for...

Very much so. In fact, in his book Deluge, Adam Tooze makes a very strong case that the Versailles Treaty wasn't harsh enough. Ferdinand Foch came to the same conclusion when he said "This is not a peace, it is an armistice for 20 years". He was right almost to the day. According to Tooze...