The causes of The Great War, as it was generally known in Britain and France until superseded by a later and a good deal greater conflict, are still the subject of much debate and inquiry, with several schools of thought having emerged. It is not proposed to enter into this particular thicket here, but it can hardly be controversial to state that the origins of the conflict lay in Europe. The ostensible spark that set it off being, as Bismarck is supposed to have predicted, ‘some damned silly thing in the Balkans’. Whether the subsequent events were due to misjudgements and gambles, or through hardheaded calculation, is arguable. There were though several milestones along the road, if I may be forgiven for putting it so, and it as intended to highlight at least some of these.

As has already been argued, avoiding situations, whether ‘damned silly’, or geographically based, or neither, whereby Germany would get into a serious conflict, potential or actual, with the other European Great Powers had been the leitmotif of Bismarck's Chancellorship after 1871. Neither Caprivi nor Hohenlohe were desirous of foreign confrontation, though neither was wholly in control of foreign policy. Bülow, who saw himself as the ‘executive tool’ or ‘political Chief of Staff’ to the Kaiser's personal rule, wanted to avoid this kind of dichotomy at the top of government.