A great book on how the world got into WWI, The Pity of War. The Germans felt that their relative power vs. Russia was slipping so they needed to fight against the coalition before winning was out of reach. The French Russian coalition was buoyed up by the British who were afraid of it becoming a Teutonic Europe (against them). From my point of view (which includes seeing answers to several of the exercises in the back of the book of history as it were), a better policy for the Germans would have been to maintain their sting; yet appease the stronger combination powers one at at time. As and if their relative position declined, Britain would have supported them out of balance of power considerations. I was glad to see that Deutschebank directors were against the war. There was no need to go after Serbia officially. They could have sought out the murderers as the Israelis are reported to have done in Vengeance.