The implication here I'm disagreeing with is that the war was the unintended consequence of mistakes. Instead of mistakes leading the continent down a dark path it was intentional, just waiting for an excuse to start fighting.
I have to differ. I don’t think anyone on either side even imagined, let alone intended, that the Western Front would get bogged down in four years of trench warfare or (on the Allied side) that Russia would fight so suboptimally. There was a lot of catastrophically-naive optimism at work.
