^ These answers I've given should be pertinent.
With regards to the issue of "War Guilt", it should be stated that the Treaty of Versailles never says anything about German "War Guilt". Article 231 of the Treaty reads as follows:
The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies
The article was primarily focused on Germany accepting responsibility for the damages done to civilian property by their forces during the war, and to pay for those damages. This same article was included mutatis mutandis in all the treaties that came out of the Paris Peace Conferences.
Even more so, histories of the war and examinations of the causes of the war varied in where they laid blame. Historians like Albertini, Schmitt and Renouvin tended to place responsibility on the shoulders of Germany and Austria-Hungary, with some consideration given to Serbia and Russia. Germany's invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France, and it's place as essentially leader of the Central Powers, meant that focus tended to be placed on their actions. It's worth noting, however, that especially in the United States, the idea that 'no one country was responsible', or that everyone just 'slithered into war' was the dominant narrative by the 1930s, thanks to the efforts of the German Foreign Office.
Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? by David Fromkin makes a good case for the Germans knowingly starting the war. http://www.amazon.com/Europes-Last-Summer-Started-Great/dp/037572575X
In brief, Prussians were feeling left-behind in Germany due to the wealth from rapid industrialization in the western part - Rhur valley, etc.
That coupled with a prevailing sentiment that they weren't respected as a world power, made them create a bunch of excuses for preemptive war.
The US didn't, as Wilson's Fourteen Points explicitly made clear. Europe was a different matter as for one, they had been ravaged by four years of the bloodiest war to date and second, Germany had occupied both Alsace-Lorraine which incensed France, and neutral Belgium which angered Britain.
That, in addition to hyperbolic German statements during the war about a Germano-centric Europe after their victory, plus the European power's need for a moral victory to give to their increasingly fraught domestic populations as the full shock from the war years began to set in, lead to the rejection of the 14 Points and the eventual Treaty of Versailles.