Authors emphasizing the rising Russian threat

See in particular Fritz Fischer, The War of Illusions, trans. Marian Jackson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Fischer, From Kaiserreich to Third Reich (London: Unwin Hyman, 1986); Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols., trans. Isabella Massey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952); John Röhl, ed., 1914: Delusion or Design (New York: St. Martin's, 1973); Röhl, "Germany," in Keith Wilson, ed. Decisions for War, 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995); Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Röhl, "V. Admiral Von Müller and the Approach of War, 1911-1914," Historical Journal 12, no. 4 (1969): 651-73.  See also V. R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 2nd ed. (London: MacMillan, 1993); Imanuel Geiss, German Foreign Policy, 1871-1914 (London: Routledge, 1976); Geiss, "The Outbreak of the First World War and German War Aims," Journal of Contemporary History 1, no. 3 (July 1966): 75-92; David Hermann, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1975); Richard Ned Lebow, "Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump Through Them?," International Security, 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984).
 

Fritz Fischer and the Hamburg School

See Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War; Fischer, War of Illusions; Fischer, From Kaiserriech to Third Reich; Fischer, World Power or Decline (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974); Fischer, Juli 1914: Wir sind nicht hineingeschlittert (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983).  On the Fischer Controversy, see inter alia Wolfgang Mommsen, "The Debate on German War Aims," Journal of Contemporary History 1, no. 3 (July 1966): 47-74; John Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (London: Harper and Row, 1975); John Langdon, July 1914: The Long Debate, 1918-90 (New York: Berg, 1991), chaps. 4-5; Dwight Lee, ed., The Outbreak of the First World War, 4th ed. (Lexington: Heath, 1975); H. W. Koch, ed., The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed. (London: MacMillan, 1984); Gregor Schöllgen, ed., Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany (Oxford: Berg, 1990); Fischer, "Twenty-Five Years Later: Looking Back at the "Fischer Controversy" and its Consequences," Central European History 21, no. 3 (September 1988): 207-223.
 

Authors emphasizing security over domestic politics in German desire for war:

Fritz Stern, "Bethmann Hollweg and the War: The Bounds of Responsibility," [1966] in Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); David Kaiser, "Germany and the Origins of the First World War," Journal of Modern History 55, no. 3 (September 1983): 442-76.  Neither, however, would see security as the sole driving force behind German policy.
 

Authors suggesting that Germany was driven by security, but sought above all to localize the conflict to the Balkans ("calculated risk").

 Karl Erdmann, "Zur Beurteilung Bethmann Hollwegs," Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 15 (1964): 525-40; Erdmann, "War Guilt 1914 Reconsidered: A Balance of New Research," in H. W. Koch, ed., The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed. (London: MacMillan, 1984); Egmont Zechlin, "Cabinet versus Economic War in Germany," and "July 1914: A Reply to a Polemic," both in ibid.; Zechlin, Krieg und Kriegrisiko (Düsseldorf, 1979); Andres Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, trans William Kirby (Cambridge, 1981); Hillgruber, "Riezlers Theorie des kalkulierten Risikos und Bethmann Hollwegs politische Konzeption in der Julikrise 1914," Historische Zeitschrift 202 (1966): 333-51.  See also Konrad Jarausch, "The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914," Central European History 2 (1969): 48-76; Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), chap. 6; John Langdon, July 1914: The Long Debate, 1918-1990 (New York: Berg, 1991), 109-29.
 

Spiral Model/Inadvertent War and WWI

 See Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), chap. 3 and the references in chapter two.  This perspective was heavily influenced by revisionist historians of the late 1920s and 1930s.  See Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War (New York, 1925), Sidney Fay, The Origins of the World War, Vols. I and II, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1930); Max Montgelas The Case for the Central Powers, trans. Constance Vesey (New York: Knopf, 1925).  See Landon, Long Debate, chap. 2.

See aslo Lebow, Between Peace and War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), chap. 5, p.135;  Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984), 64, 71-78; Van Evera, "Why Cooperation Failed in 1914," in Kenneth Oye, ed., Cooperation under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Van Evera, "The Causes of War," vol. 1 (Ph.D. diss., University of California Berkeley, 1984), chap. 1; Jack Snyder, "Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984," International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984); Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Lebow, Nuclear Crisis Management (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), chaps. 2-4.  Van Evera also argues that belief in the efficacy of the offensive makes expansion more tempting, increases the risk of preventive war, pushes states towards more aggressive diplomacy, and heightens the need for secrecy.

 See Albertini, Origins, Vol. II; Lebow, Between Peace and War; Van Evera, "Cult of the Offensive;" Snyder, "Civil-Military Relations," and Ideology of the Offensive; Joachim Remak, "1914--The Third Balkan War," in Koch, Origins, 93-95; Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (Toronto: Bantam, 1962).  L.C.F. Turner argues that ill-advised Russian mobilization made war inevitable by invoking Germany's fixed military plan (Origins of the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970).  See also A.J.P Taylor, "War by Timetable," in Taylor, From the Boer War to the Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 1994); Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan (New York: Praeger, 1958); Ritter, The Sword and the Sceptor, vol. 2 (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970), 255-75.  For an important critique, see Marc Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," International Security 15, no. 3 (Winter 1990-91): 120-50.
 

Domestic Politics and WWI

 Fay, Origins, 38-49; Paul Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1980), chap. 14; Wolfgang Mommsen, "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy in Wilhelmian Germany, 1897-1914," Central European History 24, no. 4 (1991): 381-401.  Pan-Germanism is identified as a particularly virulent form of this disease.

 Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 31-49, chap. 3; Echart Kehr, Economic Interest, Militarism, and Foreign Policy, trans. Grete Heinz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

 Fischer, War of Illusions, viii.  On the primacy of domestic politics, see Wolfgang Mommsen,  "Domestic Factors in German Foreign Policy Before 1914," Central European History (1972): 3-43, revised in Mommsen, Imperial Germany, 1867-1918 (London: Arnold, 1995), chap. 9; Mommsen, "The Topos of Inevitable War in Germany in the Decade before 1914," in Volker Berghahn and Martin Kitchen, eds., German in the Age of Total War (London: Croom Helm, 1981); Mommsen, "Kaiser Wilhelm II and German Politics," Journal of Contemporary History 25, nos. 2-3 (May-June 1990): 289-316; Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, "Germany and the Coming of War," in R. J. W. Evans and Strandmann, The Coming of the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); Michael Gordon, "Domestic Conflict and the Origins of the First World War: The British and German Cases," Journal of Modern History 46, no. 2 (June 1974): 191-226; Arno Mayer, "Internal Causes and Purposes of War in Europe, 1870-1956," Journal of Modern History 41, no. 3 (September 1969): 291-303; Mayer, "Domestic Causes of the First World War," in Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern, eds., The Responsibility of Power (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967); Gregor Schöllgen, "Introduction," in Schöllgen, ed., Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany (Oxford: Berg, 1990), esp. 5-12.  A useful critical analysis is Kaiser, "Germany and the Origins of the First World War."  References on other social imperialist arguments and a critique are provided at the end of this chapter.

In addition of cites of Fischer and Berghahn above, see Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918, trans. Kim Traynor (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985); Wehler, "Sozialimperialismus," in Wehler, ed., Imperialismus, 3rd ed. (Cologne, 1976).  See also Mommsen, "Topos of Inevitable War," in Berghahn and Kitchen, Germany; Willibald Gutsche, "The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany and the Outbreak of the War, in the Historiography of the GDR," in Schöllgen, Escape into War; Gregor Schöllgen, "Introduction," in ibid., 5-12; Mayer, "Domestic Causes," in Krieger and Stern, Responsibility of Power (Mayer emphasizes the domestic conflict within many European states).

For critiques of the Sonderweg thesis, see Blackbourn and Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); review of book by W. Carr, English Historical Review 101, no. 398 (January 1986): 191-93.  See also Eley, Reshaping the Germany Right (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), xiii-xxvi, 1-16; Blackborn and Richard Evans, eds., The German Bourgeosie (London: Routledge, 1991).
 

Austrian Aggressiveness and WWI

Those arguing that Austrian aggressiveness and fear of decline drew all the other states into war include Samuel Williamson, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin's, 1991); Paul Schroeder, "World War I as Galloping Gertie," Journal of Modern History 44 (1972): 319-45; Fritz Fellner, "Austria-Hungary," in Wilson, Decisions.
 

Neorealism and WWI

 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 167; Thomas Christensen and Jack Synder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity," International Organization 44, no.4 (Spring 1990): 137-68.  Like the first category, this explanation sees war as inadvertent.  Yet states are drawn into war less as a function of irrational beliefs, and more as a rational response to systemic imperatives.  See Scott Sagan, "1914 Revisited: Allies, Offense, and Instability," International Security 11, no. 2 (Fall 1986): 151-175.

See Turner, "Significance of Schlieffen Plan," in Kennedy, War Plans, 211-212; Otto Friedrich, Blood and Iron: From Bismarck to Hitler, the von Moltke Family's Impact on German History (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 235; Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, 111, 153-54.  Bernhardi, recognizing that Germany would be opposed by Britain, France, and Russia, had advised in 1912 that "We must therefore prepare not only for a short war, but for a protracted campaign" (Germany and the Next War, 154).