"Had a good reason" does not mean that he could not have done it otherwise. There are levels of power between "royal fiat determines everything" and "Willy is having a temper tantrum again, ignore him."
Yes. But I would argue that Germany was closer to the latter than the former. When Wilhelm II gave explicit instructions on extremely important matters of national policy relating to the war, he was ignored. He wasn't utterly irrelevant (see: Naval Laws) but "royal fiat determines everything" is so far from the truth as to be ludicrous.
My own explanation of affairs is that Wilhelm II started off with much more power than he later had, and that the reduction of his
de facto power was a direct result of his various indiscretions.
The German Emeror had a lot more powers than the British Monarch. He could de-facte - rather than merely de-jure - sack the government.
Earlier, perhaps yes, but what do you think would have happened if he'd tried to sack Hindenburg in 1916?
There would have been a third option: Play for time. They still could attack Serbia for not complying.
I would think that the better option would be to attack Serbia
immediately, rather than issuing ultimata; that would leave lots of people on Austria-Hungary's side. As it is, with their ultimatum and their attempt to consider things carefully, the Austro-Hungarians made it look like a bigger power bullying a smaller one.
The strategic initiative was lost when Russia started to mobilize, and the German France-first strategy required a convincing pretext for declaring war to France.
Yes. The moment Russia ordered a general mobilisation, war between Serbia, France and Russia and the Central Powers was inevitable. Even if the Central Powers won such a war it would be a huge and immensely damaging war, not a peaceful one.
IMHO the breakup of the ties between Germany and A-H would have been the solution to Germany's problems: The disputes with Russia and Italy had a dispute with A-H, not Germany, so no reason for either of them to remain hostile.
I'm afraid I disagree in regard to Italy. Italy was enormously dependent on and vulnerable to the Mediterranean; with France, the United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire on the same side, the Mediterranean is utterly in their pocket. Italy
cannot go to war against them all, not unless the war is already very nearly over.
On Russia, however, I agree.
So the alliances in TTL's WWI are:
Russia, Germany, Italy
vs.
Britain, A-H, France
More like:
Russia + Germany vs UK + Austria-Hungary + France + Japan + Ottoman Empire
doesn't sound that bad for Germany, does it?
I disagree here, however counter-intuitive it seems. Russia will be under major pressure on several sides, fighting the Ottoman Empire in its own territory, the British Empire all across South Asia, both the Japanese and the British in the Far East and perhaps Austria-Hungary in Eastern Europe too. Especially given how poor Russia's infrastructure was in many of those areas, that's not going to be easy for Russia to fight, unless they receive massive German support, which would greatly weaken the German effort in Western Europe.
Given how few troops Germany sent to the Eastern Front compared to the Western Front IOTL, I don't think the lack of a Russian front would help it very much on the Western Front, especially since Austria-Hungary's armies would no longer be on Germany's side and Germany would be cut off from its enormous trade with Austria-Hungary. The German initial offensives in France might do slightly better than they did IOTL, but they'll still bog down, and in time the USA will still enter the war and as soon as that happens Germany is doomed.
Counter-intuitive though it seems (given how much more powerful Russia was than Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire put together), I actually think OTL's scenario was better for Germany than this.
OK, I'm not saying I know this would have worked let alone that the German government should have known that. However, I do blame the German government for not ralizing that the OTL strategy was not gonna work, and that they do have to do SOMETHING about the web of alliances in Europe.
The Germans did realise that things looked bad, but they couldn't guarantee that they'd get a new ally in the form of Russia, they only knew that they'd lose their old ally Austria-Hungary. They didn't know what we know about the terms of the Franco-Russian Alliance which required France to mobilise if Austria-Hungary did (even if Germany wasn't involved) and about how unwilling France was to do such a thing, so they didn't know that a German abandonment of Austria-Hungary would be likely to break up the Franco-Russian Alliance which was such a threat to them.
What I blame the German government for was failing to force the German Army to understand that military practicality was much less important and that an invasion of Belgium was a really bad idea for political reasons. Had Germany not taken that step, it's possible (not certain, but possible) that the UK would have stayed out of the war, and in that case Germany and Austria-Hungary would have won the war by 1917 at latest and 1914 at earliest (the BEF was very important to France's eventual success in halting the initial German offensive).