Have you read The Sleepwalkers? I found it so depressing that despite really liking it I couldn't finish it. It made me pine for the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Have you read The Sleepwalkers? I found it so depressing that despite really liking it I couldn't finish it. It made me pine for the Austro-Hungarian empire. Which I freely admit is totally idiotic. In any case it painted a picture (to me; I have no idea if this was the authors intent or view) of WWI starting because all of the parties were convinced that they were at a point of maximum relative strength. Germany wanted war in 1914 because they believed Russia would soon be an unstoppable colossus, France wanted war in 1914 because they thought an alliance with Russia and the U.K. in it was untenable and would soon split apart. Maybe it's a convincing argument, maybe not but it appeals to me because it's not so much apportioning blame as it is describing motivations. WWII on the other hand. Blame is easy to hand out. The motivations I can ascribe to Germany/Japan/USSR start out vaguely plausible in a geopolitical sense but the more you look at them the more it seems just madness in a way that none of the parties in WWI seem.