Causes of WW1

I think that the First World War was the product of long-standing rivalries rather than a badly mismanaged Balkan Crisis because it was these rivalries that led to the Balkan Crisis. The Balkan Crisis may appear mismanaged because previous crises such as those in Morocco in 1905 and 1911 did not result in war. In the July Crisis Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) …

…agree with Fischer, that Germany deliberately started the war in order to become a great power. In conclusion, I think that the war was a result of long-standing imperial and commercial rivalries. The alliance system made it more likely that an incident could not be prevented from spreading. Without these long-standing rivalries the Balkan Crisis would never have happened, so the outbreak of World War One cannot be blamed in full upon the Balkan Crisis.