The causes of the First World War remain one of the most controversial historical topics, as such you'll probably find very few historians who actually agree on the details. Whilst there is a general consensus that Germany must take on a large portion of the blame, there is significant debate about how much, and what other factors were in play.

One of the major problems that we have when looking at the years leading up to the war, and the July crisis which lit the bonfire, so to speak, is the benefit of hindsight. We know the the war which happened due to these events was one of the most destructive in human history, and looking at the sequence of events as a whole, it's very easy to subscribe to the so-callled 'domino theory', that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the first domino in a series of events which inevitably led to war. That is, once the first domino fell, war was inevitable. In order to truly understand the events and the reactions of the major powers to them, we have to try and imagine ourselves as being in the middle of them, without having a complete picture.

Since you asked about historiography and scholarship, I'm assuming you know the basics about the beginning of the war so I'll not go into much detail about them. For those reading this that don't know so much, this video by the BBC is a useful quick summary.

One of the most significant works in the historiography of the First World War was Fritz Fischer's Germany's Aims in the First World War, which was published in 1961 and proved to be immensely controversial. Fischer proposed that instead of blundering into war, as most German historians liked to believe, the German Government had taken an explicitly aggressive path in their Foreign Policy in the deliberate hopes of provoking a general European war from which they could then gain territory, colonial concessions and economic reparations. Needless to say this was enormously controversial, both because it offended the patriotic pride of ordinary Germans, who saw Germany in the First World War as being forced into war by hostile nations surrounding it, and because it went against the traditional historiographical view. Whilst Fischer does make some valid points, one of his key points of evidence is somewhat questionable (I will come on to this later), and he subscribes to the Sonderweg thesis, which holds that due to the nature of German society, dating all the way back to the Reformation, it was inevitable that Germany should eventually end up as an aggressive state, culminating in Adolf Hitler. I have alternately heard this theory called 'not meriting academic study' and 'borderline racist', but it does still have some proponents.

The second major school of thought with regards to the start of the war is the idea that Germany was forced into an 'offensively conducted defensive war'. This approach seeks to lessen the blame on Germany by looking at the foreign policy approaches of other nations, who could be accused of encircling Germany to the point where it felt that the only way it could relieve this pressure was to start a war with France and Russia and humiliate the two, relieving pressure on Germany. If you want to take it to the extreme level, some historians have suggested that Germany's very existence as a state in the geographic centre of Europe would lead it to inevitably come into conflict with other nations and so war was inevitable from the very creation of the state. However it has been pointed out that similar states such as Poland and Switzerland didn't behave in such a manner despite their similar geostrategic position.

The third major theory, and what appears to be the one that Kissinger lectures about, is that Europe 'sleepwalked' into war. I believe a commenter below me mentioned Christopher Clark's book Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914. This theory suggests that the Governments of Europe, through a series of bad Foreign Policy decisions and continuing escalation of crises, ended up in a spiral from which they could not escape. The confused and changing nature of alliances, diplomacy and foreign policy across European governments seems to support this theory, however it can be criticised as somewhat oversimplifying the situation, and the idea that every single political and diplomatic figure in the major European governments was incompetent enough to let this happen I personally find slightly far fetched.

Some key books in the historiographical debate are:

Fritz Fischer Germany's Aims in the First World War

Christopher Clark Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914

Paul Kennedy The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism

Volker Berghahn Germany and the Approach of War in 1914

Gregor Schoellgen Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany

This is by no means an exhaustive list as you could fill a library with books about the start of WWI

In the next part of my post I'll go into a little more detail about the actual events surrounding the start of the war.

Could you possibly link the lecture? I am very curious about what Kissinger had to say. I too read Dreadnaught and found it fairly conclusive. (Especially from the British perspective; the forming of alliances and the concentration of power all seem to be aimed at Germany)

Supporting the discussion, one point I saw raised in The estrangement of Great Britain and Japan is that the powers did not allow the Russo-japanese war to escalate, despite; long term animosities (Anglo-russian "great game"), alliance structures (Anglo-japanese alliance) and multiple flashpoints (Dogger bank, use of the suez canal) that are commonly placed as the 'causes' of the first world war, strengthening the idea that the first world war was an intentional confrontation.

Well another perspective is that of Christopher Clark in his book 'Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914'. He basically argues that the system itself made an eventual conflict inevitable, in that the decision-makers of the time were essentially forced by both internal and external pressures - pressures that had been building since atleast the turn of the century - to support a continental war.

In essence, no politician/European state wanted a continental war that badly (I stress 'continental': powerful individuals within both Austro-Hungary and Serbia desired a limited conflict in the Balkans), but eventually the system and the momentum of events compelled such a war into being. Let me give an example, the mobilisation of Russia.

Now, before this Austro-Hungary gives an ultimatum to the Serbs with a list of demands which, if the Pasic government doesn't agree with them, will lead to an Austrian invasion of the country. In rebuke, Russia mobilises its forces so as to support its ally in Serbia and warn the Austrians to back off. Within this decision we can see the influence of France, as Paris persuaded Russia to mobilise in return for French support and mobilisation should Germany respond to Moscow's escalation in kind. The Russian mobilisation in turn convinces Serbia to reject the ultimatum, leading to an Austrian invasion, in turn activating the alliance blocs of Europe and developing into a two-bloc war between Austria, the Ottomans and Germany and Russia, France, the U.K. and Serbia

That's a rough outline, there are many significant details that go into the decisions of each of these states. But we can see how the system encouraged each state to back each other up, causing a war that none really wanted but none could stop because of the alliance bloc system and the momentum of events.

Would thoroughly recommend Clark's book for anyone wanting a comprehensive analysis of the origins of WW1, highly readable.

Edit: also check out the writings of Paul Schoenberg (I think that's his last name?), he has some very good essays on how the structural failings of the European system led to war, and he also shifts much of the blame from Germany and Austro-Hungary to the Entente Cordiale