Why did WW1 start?
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The easiest and simplest answer is that there were too many intersecting military alliances that started a domino effect when Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia in response to the assassination of its Archduke Franz Ferdinand. After that, the dominoes fell and all of the alliances were triggered.
The alliances between European nations shifted around a lot over the decade or so before WWI. After all the shifts, they were polarised into two groups, so that war between any opposing pair woyld draw in all the others.
Germany figured it couldn’t survive if it had to fight Russia in the East and France in the West at the same time; it figured that Russia would take about two weeks to mobilise so it was necessary to dominate France within that time. They had an incredibly detailed plan for the logistics of doing that ready to roll, if war should break out.
In that context, friction in the right spot was all it would take. There was plenty of friction to be found in the Slavic region and – whoompf.
There were tensions between major European powers. They had been conquesting around the rest of the world and not fighting eachother. This led to an expectation of war as this glorious conquest for the motherland.
On top of that, many new weapons had been created that armies were itching to use on one another. When an excuse for war came, the fighting began quickly as the major powers picked sides and started trying to take land.
Germany was jellous of other countries having collonies and wanted to go to war with France because of Maroco. They wanted a reason to go to figth French so they pushed Austro-Hungary to nitpick on Serbia, which would trigger Russia to help which would involve France as Ru and Fr had an war alliance agreement.
This way Germany could stand behind A-H and fight FR
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