The mentioned books by Clark and McMeekin are very enlightened.
Niall Ferguson in his book "The pity of war" also challenges some historic dogmas about WW1.
As far as I know, today the Fischer Thesis is no longer regarded as valid in Germany since it concentrated solely on Germany and neglected the actions of other Great Powers. (see
Fritz_Fischer)
Public Opinion on WW1 even today is largely influenced by dominance of allied/anglo-american newspapers/press in the world at that time (war propaganda).
Read Clark about Serbia in 1914.
Serbia in 1914 was something like a rogue state. I would compare it with todays Sunni Islamic State (IS). They doubled their territory in the
balkan wars and now targeted Austria-Hungary. Serbia's success was mostly based on support by France and Russia which provided free modern weapons (rifles, artillery) and ammo. The practically non-existant serbian economy would not allow aggressive expansionistic wars on base of their own alone. Clark writes about anti-muslim progroms by Serbians killing many thousands of muslims in conquered territories (ethnic/religious cleansing). Serbian nationalists in 1914 had big plans for a
Greater Serbia (later called Yugoslavia), a nation where de facto a serbian minority would dominate (rule and suppress) other even smaller slavic minorities (and by the time transform them to serbians). Yugoslavia was founded after WW1. The German occupation of Yugoslavia during WW2 unleashed a deadly civil war between serbs and croats, between religious groups like orthodox, protestants, catholic, muslim as well as left, right and pro-german, anti-german groups. The
Yugoslav_Wars finally proved that a Greater Serbia never was a stable nation nor that serbian dominance was ever accepted by other peoples/nations like croats, slovenes, bosniaks, kosovars, ...
In 1914 serbian government knew about the preparations for the assassination of the arch-duke (organized by members of serbian secret service) but did not try to stop it, since a likely resulting Great War would destroy Austria-Hungary and add new territory to Serbia. Russia knew about this and they agreed to supply another 100.000 rifles with ammo to the serbians.
About the German situation in 1914, read Clark and especially McMeekin.
In August 1914 Germany had no territorial claims against France or Russia. Austria had declared war against Serbia but was slow on mobilization since soldiers were on vacation (harvest-season). Austria did not mobilize against Russia.
Germany solely reacted on the secret mobilization of Russia and France against Germany. Germany was the last to mobilize. When completely mobilized Russia and France would have a 3:1 superiority against Germany which was regarded as a sure victory at that time. (With the almost sure secret english support for France and Russia the chance of success was seen as above 100%.) Germany's only chance of defence was to prevent mobilization of France and Russia by diplomacy or to mobilize faster than them and strike first against France, before Russia was fully mobilized. Waiting for both to be mobilized was regarded as a sure defeat (national suicide). Diplomacy failed in August 1914 ... I'm sure that many politicans even today would decide the same way in a comparable situation. Mobilization meant War at that time. Defence was underrated. Waiting for your neighbours to mobilize against you without reaction would be a crime against your own nation ... (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War for a modern example.)
You can compare the situation of Great Powers with a group of outlaw gunslingers. There is no law or Sheriff above the Great Powers, but they can make their own laws based on group interests, e.g. England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, Serbia, USA, ... against Germany, Austria, Turkey ... if you are attacked and loose, you have to bear the consequences ... Outlaw gunslingers are at peace while all weapons are holstered. Mobilization is drawing weapons, shooting is war ... however if you already have drawn your weapon, you don't wait for the other side to draw, you shoot ...
So the pictures has three gunslingers : the german in the middle, the french and the russian to his left and right ... If the french and russian gunslingers manage to draw their guns before the german can do, one of them can shoot him from behind (2-Front-War) or force him to surrender and plunder and maybe kill him and nobody would care (no law) ... the german gunslinger knows this and in the moment when the french and russian gunslingers start to draw their guns and do not intend to stop the action, he has no alternative than to draw and open the shooting ... it is a psychologically terrific situation ... (read McMeekin!)
(Today with all the knowledge about WW1, you might design a defensive plan with trenches and machine guns for Germany, but in 1914 the decisions were based on 19th century war experience, where the offensive was regarded as superior.)