When diplomacy is hijacked by warmongers

Too Many Books, too Few Centuries! When I read Franz Fischer’s book titled, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, I was left with the impression that Germany was indeed guilty as charged. History is a narrative best sold with facts, but historians or even writers (for that matter) use a certain set of facts to garrison their narrative and they naturally tend to drop the facts not useful to their storyline or narrative. I have a deep sense of admiration for his book, his work omits every other great power and firmly focuses on Germany. What with over 25, 000 books and academic articles, you'd think we've got WWI all sorted. But WWI is a perfect case of, the more we know the less we understand. For my part, apart from Fischer, I've read Max Hastings’, Catastrophe 1914 Europe goes to war, Margaret Macmillan’s, The War that ended peace, the Road to 1914, and Sean McMeekin, July 1914 Countdown to War amongst others. However, the two books I hungrily devoured were, The Deluge by Adam Tooze, ( who incidentally has his own podcast, I am doing a bit of well-deserved publicity of him) and the brilliant Christopher Clark’s, The Sleepwalkers How Europe went to war in 1914. I also find the urge to do une petite publicité ( a little publicity as we say) for francophones. For those interested in widening their knowledge on this topic, please consider reading  the prolific French historian Jean-Jacques Becker who sadly passed away about two weeks ago, but not without leaving us his great works on WWI. The bulk of the historians laid blame on Germany, but with passing time, new historians have revisited the scene of the crime and they paint a more plausible picture of the past. WW1 was a collision of Great powers who had a trust deficit, and their poor diplomatic skills could only spell doom. Thus, the Hawks took off and doves took cover.