ABSTRACT
The debate on responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War has generated more heated controversy than any other within the survey of this book. The Allied Commission on War Guilt affirmed, in 1919, that ‘The War was premeditated by the Central Powers’ and that it was ‘the result of acts deliberately committed in order to make it unavoidable’.1 During the 1920s and 1930s the German government promoted a revisionist campaign in an effort to rescind the War Guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles, by stressing collective responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914. In this it was assisted by eminent historians like H.Rothfels2 but, it has been suggested, it allowed only certain documents to be used, concealing any evidence which was likely to impede what had become an active political campaign.3 Meanwhile, the whole concept of German war guilt had come under scrutiny elsewhere from both politicians and historians. Lloyd George, for example, expressed reservations about the post-war treatment of Germany, while H.E.Barnes,4 S.B.Fay,5 and G.P. Gooch6 all enhanced the academic side of the revisionist case.
