#39 Was Germany Responsible for Starting the War?

Following on from last week’s blog, a second possibility was that Germany was responsible for the war in 1914. All the winning powers agreed with this proposition in 1919. The new Germany was the "contending" nation for world power. In the 25 years before 1914, the German economy was growing significantly faster than Britain's. Germany had only been unified as a single state in 1870, and therefore had missed out in the race for colonies: the ‘common sense’ of European foreign policy of the era. And Germany was competing for oil, the new super energy in the ground in the Middle East.