The historigraphy of the Great War has mainly been concerned with establishing two things - responsibility and contingency. Who is to blame for the crisis, and why did it become such a large crisis at all?
The Treaty of Versailles, as is well known, was in no doubt whatsoever about who to blame: Germany was to take full responsibility for all damages done during the war, and its 'war guilt' was established absolutely. This was supposed to act as a legal basis for reparation payments. The German public, though, found this hard to swallow - like the governments of all other belligerent nations, their's had stressed the defensive nature of their actions throughout the war. Each government had published a book of official documents when war broke out to try and prove to their populations that they weren't to blame. These collections were, of course, highly selective - but their official nature gave them an air of objectivity.
After the war, governments again published document collections. Germany published forty volumes of documents entitled Die Grosse Politik des Europäischen Kabinette (The High Politics of the European Cabinets), Britain eleven volumes of British Documents on the Origins of War, Austria Österreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik von der Bosnischen Krise 1908 bis zum Kreigsausbruch 1914 (Austria-Hungary's foreign policy from the Bosnian Crisis 1908 until the outbreak of war 1914) in nine volumes, the Soviet Union five volumes of International Relations in the Age of Imperialism and France Documents Diplomatiques Français. France's document collection came too late to impact the first wave of histories, however.
The first wave of histories was mostly concerned with making the Treaty of Versailles look much too harsh. David Lloyd George began his memoirs by saying no-one had wanted war in 1914, and Sidney Bradshaw Fay, in his Origins of the World War (1929) blamed the war on latent structural factors within the old system - he placed the blame on impersonal isms, such as nationalism and imperialism. The Germans were, of course, glad to accept this interpretation (helped along by the propaganda department set up almost immediately after the war by their government) and the general consensus in Britain after the general desire for revenge had gone was that the war had been 'fated'. The governments had muddled into war and there was collective responsibility.
Some anti-revisionists did not accept this thesis, however. Bernadotte Schmitt, in his The Coming of War (1930) blamed the Central Powers for putting the old system of alliances to the test and risking general war in doing so. This interpretation acknowledged structural factors but also placed blame squarely on the shoulders of the Central Powers. Pierre Renouvin, writing in 1925, had reached a similar conclusion - French historigraphy, though, was concerned with justifying the reparation payments that they were extracting from Germany. Lenin, of course, had his own thesis, laid out in Imperialism: the highest stage of Capitalism as early as 1916 - this interpretation said that capitalism was bound to lead to general war in a battle for finite resources between governments.
So the field remained until after World War II, an even more destructive and terrible event which again shook Europe to its core. This time the militaristic expansionism of Germany could not be denied, and it became tempting for some historians to claim that aggressiveness was part of the German national character. West German historians saw National Socialism as an aberration, a 'blip' in their history which did not bear comparing to World War I. West German historiography continued to claim that the Great War was not the fault of anyone, that it had been inevitable - and outrage from other parts of the West was perhaps not as strong as it might have been, because West Germany was needed as an ally in the Cold War. In East Germany, the capitalist West was still blamed for the war.
One of the timeless classics of World War I history was written around this time, by Luigi Albertini. In 1942 - 43 he had written Le origini della guerra del 1914, which received an English translation in 1952 - 57 as The Origins of the First World War. This book has truly stood the test of time, and many scholars seeking originality go back to this book and find Albertini already made their point, or implied it. Albertini said Germany had primary responsibility for starting the general war, but had only wanted a local one. Moral outrage against this idea was now diminishing, but it was by no means the consensus.
A German, Fritz Fischer, would supply the next controversy. Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961) is a dense piece of history written in impenetrable Germanic style, but an explosive one. Fischer claimed that Germany had deliberately sought the war to annex territories - it had believed it could win the war and willfully sought it. This thesis saw a continuity over eighty years of German history, in which the nation was warlike and had Imperial prententions. Fischer was subjected to personal threats and some slightly more serious academic scrutiny - he was accused of reading history backwards, seeing Imperial Germany as a mere prelude to Nazi Germany. Gerhard Ritter responded, saying Germany had no plan for world domination. He claimed Germany acted defensively, trying to defend Austria-Hungary. He said the realisation that general war was going to break out came too late and German's war planners were too rigid and inflexible to stop it. This places some blame on German policy, essentially accusing it of being incompetent, but not too much blame.
Fischer's thesis, though, was gaining a large amount of support abroad. He was accused of being unpatriotic for digging up his country's past during a time when it was trying to re-integate itself with the West, but he continued all the same. Fischer's next book was more hotly contested - published in 1969 and entitled Krieg der Illusionen (The War of Illusions), it claimed Germany had sought a Pax Germanica over the entire of Europe. Furthermore, it had been planning this from as early as 1912! In seeking war it was said Germany was trying to deflect domestic disquiet abroad - the so-called "primacy of domestic policy", or den primat der Innenpolitik. This part of Fischer's thesis is now mostly rejected, as is much of his second book: but the conclusions of the first remain widely accepted.
Fischer, in seeking historical truth, had been willing to go against the wishes of his countrymen - when the Allies opened the German archives after the end of World War II, he had gone in to investigate. More archives were opened in the 1960s and now distance was finally starting to set in - Fischer's thesis is still widely supported, but some subtle alterations are being made. For instance, it is now thought blame should be spread a little wider, perhaps to Austria-Hungary as well (which is accused of risking a general war by wanting a local one). Blame should not be focused entirely on Berlin, but Germany was not innocent - she was the most willing to risk general war.