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Fritz Fischer Thesis On The Cause Of World War One

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Julian Gugliotta October 10th, 2014 Block 2-1 History 12 Should the Fritz Fischer thesis on the cause of World War One be tossed into the dustbin of history? WW1 was unlike any war ever fought in human history. The sheer amount of death and destruction is a testament of the brutality of mankind. Chlorine gas filled soldier’s lungs and burned them from the inside out. Machine guns tore through skin and bone like a hot knife through butter. Planes rained terror from the sky. After the war, the world would point fingers and argue over who started it. Fritz Fischer was one of these people. His controversial theory was both praised and criticized by historians, British and German alike. The aim of this essay is to discuss that Fritz Fischer’s thesis is significant towards who caused WW1. …show more content…

He earned a doctorate in theology in 1934 and a doctorate in philosophy in 1937. He became a professor in 1948, after WW2. In 1961, he released his book titled “Germany's Grasp for World Power” in which he states that Kaiser Wilhelm II was to a great extent responsible for the outbreak of WW1. His thesis was ”that Germany's naked ambition to spread its political and economic domination across Europe and beyond, to Africa, caused the war.” He came to this conclusion after running a research seminar in Hamburg University on WW1. The papers by his students inspired him to seek out East Germany's archives on the war. Fischer claims that Germany caused WW1 by its aggressive expansion, and a quote in the book "1914-1918: The History of the First World War" states " Germany's military and its civilian leaders endorsed aggressive objectives whose purpose was not only to consolidate the regime at home but to establish a global power position by dominating the continent and expanding overseas." In doing this, Germany destabilized the Balkans in its pursuit of world

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