The first questions to be asked about the war are who was responsible for its outbreak? Why did it occur? For what reason? What possible explanation was there for the cataclysm? However, as years passed, new questions arose. In particular, that of the belligerents' war aims came to the fore.

The quarrel over responsibility

The mobilization of national historians

Article 231 of the Versailles treaty states: ‘The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her Allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her Allies.’ Even if, taken literally, this article only defines the legal responsibility of Germany on which reparations rested, it was viewed by the winners and above all by the losers as a moral statement, one which was not diluted by any other article of the treaty. Deemed to be the aggressors, the German nation was responsible for the war. For them, this was an entirely unjust accusation; more than that, it was scandalous and completely unacceptable. They termed it ‘the Versailles Diktat’.

Throughout the interwar years, the question of responsibility for the war, of the Kriegsschuldfrage, was of capital importance. In international affairs, German war guilt justified France's claim to reparations and a policy of firmness which led to the occupation of the Ruhr by her army in 1923.