The origins of the First World War: controversies and consensus

European alliances before the First World War

German territorial losses following the Treaty of Versailles

Long- and short-term causes of the First World War

The July Crisis and the outbreak of war

The Question of War Guilt during the War and at the Versailles Peace Negotiations

The beginning of the debate on the war's origins

The Versailles war guilt allegation

The German 'innocence campaign'

Official document collections

Revisionists and Anti-Revisionists

The German quest for a revision of Versailles

American revisionists

European revisionists

Anti-revisionists

The comfortable consensus of the 1930s

The Origins of the War and the Question of Continuity in German History

The debate after the Second World War: towards a comfortable consensus

Fritz Fischer's new challenges to an old consensus

Fritz Fischer and his critics

Support for Fischer's conclusions

New consensus and new debate: Fischer's War of Illusions

The search for new evidence

The end of the Fischer decade

Post-Fischer Consensus and Continuing Debates

Nuances in the debate in the wake of the Fischer controversy

Assessing the role of the other belligerent powers in 1914

The debate at the end of the twentieth century.