The alliance system, 1914.
By the summer of 1914, Europe had hardened into two opposing blocs: the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia, and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.¹ Treaties intended to deter aggression instead guaranteed that any local conflict would cascade across the continent.²
Historians remain divided — Fischer argued Germany pursued war deliberately;³ Clark frames the crisis as a collective failure of imagination. Both readings rest on the same brittle architecture of mutual commitments.