How about a situation where a near assassination of Kaiser Wilhelm II takes place, he survives and unfortunately so does his assassin. The assassin is found out to be a member of (
fill in the ethno/political group) this in turn leads to an escalation of events that brings on the Great War.
Joho
I think this is plausible. Suppose-
IOTL, WWI was touched off when Frank Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip of the Serbian
terrorist organization The Black Hand in Sarajevo. But suppose FF got back to Vienna safe &
sound- & IOTL he was shot only because his chauffeur, in what should be regarded as one of the
great traffic accidents of history, made a wrong turn & drove FF's car right to where Princip was standing. The Black Hand would then have to decide what to do next. Germany was Austria-
Hungary's chief- really, only- friend(& Wilhelm & FF were good friends too). The Black Hand could
quite logically conclude that if Wilhelm was removed the AH-Germany alliance could be weakened
& maybe even destroyed. This would weaken A-H- & as far as TBH was concerned, anything that
weakened A-H was good. So they try to assassinate Wilhelm but fail(I'm sure his security was a LOT
better than FF's), the would-be assassin(s) are caught, talk, & implicate Serbia. Enraged Wilhelm- who generally did not have a very calm tempermant- either invades Serbia outright or does what IOTL A-H
did to Serbia in July 1914- present them with a # of demands that are so extreme Serbia cannot
agree to them & must refuse, even though doing so means war. This of course enrages Russia, which
in this ATL as well as IOTL, regarded itself as Serbia's protector. They would tell Germany to cease &
desist. Germany would refuse, A-H would stand by her, Russia's ally France would regard a German
attack on Russia as an attack on her and--- Well, the rest is obvious.