[Tainnor]

Wilhelm II, as despicable as he was, really can't be majorly blamed for WWI. His ministers had arranged for him to be on vacation during the July crisis because they knew he wouldn't be tough enough, and when Serbia responded to the Austrian ultimatum, Wilhelm was convinced that this should be enough to avert a war.

[ghaff]

WWI seems like more of a slow motion train wreck than WWII does. There were so many pieces in motion even if Archduke Ferdinand's assassination (which came very close to not happening) precipitated it. Whereas while the aftermath of WWI planted the seeds for WWII, it seems a lot less inevitable.

Total side-note, I've actually seen Serbia's basic FU response to Austro-Hungary in Serbia :-)

[potato3732842]

WW2 is also is what defined the lines of the modern geopolitical world so everyone brought up in that world has been fed a lifetime of establishment media that portrays ww2 as inevitable.

It's kind of like how every religious founding document has a huge element of "and the sinners/bad people were struck down as they inevitably would be because they did not live by god/he was not on their side" when when describing the origin of whoever is god's chosen people according to that religion.

[ecshafer]

I am not really referring to wilhelmn II in world war I itself but rather the 20 or so proceding years where his pursuit of naval and colonial supremacy alienated Germany from the British and French, undoing Bismark’s alliance system. WWI I think was almost inevitable.

[Tainnor]

Some war between Germany and France was probably inevitable, and that the Balkan situation would blow up someday was also almost a given, but that this happened simultaneously and led to a war of this magnitude was very much contingent on specific things happening in Summer of 1914.