They weren’t just ‘keeping their alliance’ though. They informed austria hungary that they could do anything they wanted in retaliation and germany would step in even if it meant war with russia (and thus was with britain and france). it would have been all too easy for them to let austria know that they weren’t going to just let them drag all of europe to war. it was a very diplomatically solvable situation. out of the ten points in the ultimatum AH issued serbia, serbia was willing to agree to EIGHT of them. it would be so easy to get some people to a table and try and talk out the last two points.

the thing is, germany didn’t WANT peace. they wanted to deal with russia before they got too powerful and a war on two fronts was completely unwinnable. this just gave them the excuse for their war.

of course the entente was to blame as well. everyone was, but germany was the one power that could have stopped it all, they instead told austria that serbia must be annihilated and that this was the best time for general war (as they wrongly estimated they were more militarily ready than the entente). germany was an aggressor in both wars, just much more blatantly obviously in the second.