Although Austria started the war, in response to the actions of the Serbian terrorist group The Black Hand, Germany was largely responsible for the war becoming a global. Germany sided with Austria, due to their alliences. This in turn provoked Russia, who feared a tutonic expansion. Germany had had a plan to invade France (the Schlieffen Plan) for over a decade, and took the hostilities as a chance to enact their plan. They invaded France partly by going through Belgium, despite the fact that Britain had an agreement to defend Belgium for around 60 years. Germany had never expected Britain to uphold the agreement, and was surprised when the British sent an invasion force. By 1917 America was deciding whether to actively join the war, and the excuse came when a German U-boat sunk a US hospital ship, the Lucitania. This shows that Germany directly provoked Britain, France and the USA. Also, Germany held the vast majority of axis troops and made a very large impact compared to Austria. At the end of the war everybody knew that Germany had not started the war, but blamed them for its severity, over time this understanding has been warped to the present view that the war was Germany's fault.

I might add that Germany's Schlieffen Plan was designed to counter the Franco-Russian alliance by defeating France first, then Russia. So, although the Serbiuan crisis involved Austria-Hungary, then Russia, and finally Germany, Germany had no plan to deal with Russia alone. Therefore, with tragic inlexibility, the Germans had to attack France before they could consider dealing with Russia because that's what the plan said to do. Thus Germany, as Godfather PartII poinys out, was considered responsible for taking a regional war into a general European conflagration.

Your timeline and facts are incorrect, Godfather. The Lusitania was sunk in 1915. It was not a hospital ship and it was not an American ship--it was a British Luxury liner. Americans were on the ship when it was torpedoed, however, and a public outcry ensued in the US. German unrestricted submarine warfare was halted due to the worldwide outrage over the loss of innocent women and children (although it has been said that the Lusitania was not as innocent as it was made out to be and that it was carrying armaments to England in addition to its human cargo). Wilson asked Congress to decalre war two years later in April 1917 in response to Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, with the concern that it endangered American lives on the high seas.

Germany was the only superpower during World War 1. Germans had actually offered a truce to the Allies in 1918 and in 1940, but were handed the blame for both the Wars even though it was America's fault who keeps entering the War in the forth quarter that makes it a Global War

1) And you mean, Austria-Hungary was not blamed for WW I? Austria-Hungary was dislocated! 2) "During the period immediately following the end of hostilities, Allied historians argued that Germany was solely responsible for the start of the war; a view heavily influenced by the inclusion of 'war guilt' clauses within the Treaty of Versailles. In 1916 Prince Lichnowsky had also circulated his views within Germany on the mishandling of the situation in July 1914. However, academic work in the later 1920s and 1930s blamed all participants more or less equally. Starting in the mid-1920s, several American historians opposed to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles such as Sidney Fay and Harry Elmer Barnes produced works that claimed that Germany was not responsible for war, and as such, Article 231 of the Versailles which had seemingly assigned all responsibility for the war to Germany and thus justified the Allied claim to reparations was invalid. The objective of Fay and Barnes was to put an end to reparations imposed on Germany by attempting to prove what they regarded as the moral invalidity of Article 231. Both Fay and Barnes were provided with generous use of the German archives by the German government." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_World_War_I

The sadest part about revisionist history is that the original stuff is out there to read. The Schlieffen Plan, the telegrams between the Kaiser and the Czar. Official communication, diaries, journals. All one need do is read and think but there isn't a great deal of thinking going on in some arenas these days.

The victors write the popular history, and it usually differs a lot from what you'd read in the history books. Britain of course has had a media monopoly or dictatorship for over a hundred years and most of what the world knows is what Britain prefers the world to know. Back then the media was almost completely state controlled and the respective governments could convince their people to believe whatever they wanted them to believe. Germany could unfortunately only convince its own people while Britain and the BBC basically had power over the minds of the entire world. Based on the technicalities Germany did start the war, but it was basically the involvement of Britain and its global empire and the other nations that share their language, like the US and Canada, that escalated it to a world war. The reason Britain fought Germany was purely imperialistic. Thy wanted to destroy Germany as a trade rival. They did not have to hold true to their aggreement with Belgium, it in fact only caused Belgium to be destroyed.