Germany SHOULD be blamed for the outcome of World War I

Thank you for clarifying the rules and opening the debate.In the following I will try to show that there were several other important factors contributing to WW1 due to which it is not possible to blame solely (or even mainly) Germany for WW1.I start with the refutations:Refutation of Affirmative Contention 1: The affirmative's first contention is that Germany's dislike of France was a main factor of WW1. Germany declared war on France because of her dislike of France and that this in turn forced Britain to get involved. The affirmative however admits that the dislike was mutual. Niall Ferguson [1] and many others suggest that England's involvement in the war wasn't really about Belgium/France and that it in fact just might have been a pretext. England followed selfish reasons and wanted to avoid Germany hegemony in continental Europe. But whatever the real reason was for England to get involved in the war it was only England’s entry into the war that transformed a continental conflict into a world war. Refutation of Affirmative Contention 2: The affirmative contention is that Germany's submarine warfare forced the US to enter the war. It was Britain who first started to violate international law on the sea in August 1914 when they started to interfere with neutral food shipments to Europe. Shortly after they declared the whole sea from Scotland to Iceland as "war zone" and covered it with explosive floating mines. They then ordered all ships going to the Baltic, Scandinavia, or the Low Countries to go through the English Channel, where they were stopped, searched and much of their cargo seized, even if the cargo consisted of non-contraband goods. It was as a response to this that Germany declared the English Channel as a War Zone. For certain reasons the United States however recognized the war zone declared by Great Britain, but not the German War Zone. [2, p.182]Refutation of Affirmative Contention 3:This argument seems redundant to me as it reiterates the first contention. In the following my arguments:Contention 1: British Imperialism was a main factor for WW1. Great Britain's insatiable thirst for expansion of it's territory in the world led to imperialist rivalry among the nations [3]. Britain was envied by all other imperial powers, among them Germany. This led to imperialist rivalry which in turn led to armament and nationalistic chauvinism that was the foundation for the alliance system that later made a continental conflict almost inevitable. Contention 2: WW1 was a tragic accident that was a result of complex alliance system that guaranteed that if a war erupted in any of the involved European countries all of Europe would get pulled in. According to Carroll Quigley [2, p.167]"The decade from the Entente Cordiale to the outbreak of war witnessed a series of political crises which brought Europe periodically to the brink of war and hastened the growth of armaments, popular hysteria, nationalistic chauvinism, and solidity of alliances to a point where a relatively minor event in 1914 plunged the world into a war of unprecedented range and intensity." As the most significant among these crises he lists the following:1905-1906 The First Moroccan Crisis and the Algeciras Conference1908 The Bosnian Crisis1911 Agadir and the Second Moroccan Crisis1912 The First Balkan War1913 The Second Balkan War1913 The Albanian Crisis1913 The Liman von Sanders Affairs1914 SarajevoThereby I conclude by reiterating my entry statement: There were several other important factors contributing to WW1 due to which it is not possible to blame solely (or even mainly) Germany for WW1.[1] Was World War I the error of modern history?[2] Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, Carroll Quigleyhttp://www.google.co.in...[3] Origins of World War I