 In 1942 , Luigi Albertini published The Origins of the War of 1914 and concluded that Germany was primarily responsible for the outbreak of the war . Albertini 's work , rather than spurring on new debate , was the culmination of the first research phase into the war guilt question . The issue came back between 1959 and 1969 , when Fritz Fischer in Germany 's Aims in the First World War and War of Illusions " destroyed the consensus about shared responsibility for the First World War " and " placed the blame ... firmly on the shoulders of the Wilhelmine elite . " By the 1970s , his work " had emerged as the new orthodoxy on the origins of the First World War " . In the 1980s , James Joll led a new wave of First World War research concluding " that the origins of the First World War were " complex and varied " although " by December 1912 " Germany had decided to go to war . 
