Historiography of World War l

Sideney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the World War (1928)

Fay made his interpretation of the World War in the 1920's, a time when the revisionalist perspective was popular. The Revisionalist perspective reevaluated the Orthodox perspective of looking at how blame was distributed after the first world war. So, with WWl, the Orthodox interpretation originally placed the most blame on Germany, and served as a sort of justification for the Treaty of Versaille. Fay's revisionalist view contradicted the Orthodox view and asserted that Germany was not the primary country to blame, infact other countries, or to an extent most all European countries, shared responsibilty, as a result of actions that failed to take, that could have prevented war. I agree most with this perspective, despite the fact that it rests alot upon hypothetic situations.

Germany was not the sole country to blame for the First World War. Germany did not want a World War, but evidence does support that Germany wanted a localized conflict between Serbia and Austira Hungary. However, other countries such as Great Britatin, could have had a large role in preventing war. Britain could have threatened Germany, or told France they would not intevene, so that France would stop Russia, inorder to produce a localized conflict, and not a war on a world scale. France's responsibility on stopping the war could have consisted of asking Russia to not get involved, instead of doing everything to just strenghten their alliance. Russia was also ambigous, they had supported Serbian unity in the end. They had convinced Austria-Hungary that they may intervene, which wouldn't have produced a localized conflict. Austrian-Hungarian leaders, influenced by Germany did not make a distinction between Serbia as a country, versus Serbian nationalists. Germany supported them, to support their own alliance, and they did not want to be alone and isolated. This is why I believe that many countries shared responsiblity.