Abstract

DAEHNHARDT, Patrícia. The origins of the Great War and the Great Power status: the German case. Relações Internacionais [online]. 2014, n.42, pp.79-93. ISSN 1645-9199.

The article addresses the issue of the origins of the Great War from the perspetive of Germany’s great power status and analyzes the set of debates and more recent publications on the role of Germany on the eve of war. The historical debate on the issue of guilt and the role of Berlin is analyzed from the conventional analysis prevalent in Germany to the revisionism of the 1960s and 1970s that gave rise to the so-called first ‘historical debate’ in West Germany, up to the prevalent interpretation at the time of German unification that Germany’s actions had contributed decisively to the outbreak of the conflict. More recently a new consensus appears to be emerging among historians that the outbreak of war was nothing inevitable and that all the powers contributed with differing motivations for the start of the Great War.

Keywords : First World War; Germany; war guilt; historians’ debate; Historikerstreit.

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