 Fischer was the first historian to have full access to the entire remaining German World War I archives.Previous historians had only been able to access heavily edited archives that had been created in order to support the view that war was the inevitable product of the breakdown of international diplomacy, rather than the end result of German expansionist ambitions.He was the first to draw attention to the War Council held by the Kaiser Wilhelm II and the top military-naval leadership of the "Reich" on December 8, 1912, in which it was declared that Germany would start a war of aggression in the summer of 1914.