Perkeo
Banned
At practically every single step the War could have been prevented.
To name a few :
- Vienna not pushing for the de facto destruction of Serbia
- the German HQ not encouraging Vienna to strike even if Belgrade ceded on all A-H demands
- Russian FM not letting his old grudge with the A-H FM stand in the way of resolving the crisis
- France urging caution from Russia
- The German Kaiser not fanning the flames in the early stage of the crisis
- The Czar and the Kaiser being able to stand up to their own General Headquarters (making sure there's no general Russian mobilization and giving a red light the Schlieffen plan)
- Britain committing earlier (possibly deterring Germany or at least giving arguments to Bethmann-Hollweg to convince the kaiser to stop his Baltic cruise much earlier and return urgently to Berlin to stop what can still be stopped)
That would prevent THIS Great War, but do any of them mean no Great War at all?
IMO the main reason for the war is that nobody really wanted to avoid it. The July Crisis was just the trigger.