Keith, to my message

..."those reasons were true and the full story".
Only the last statement, not containing rank and file soldiers, is still disputed.

you replied

Still disputed by a couple of lefties on Mudcat.
Not disputed by experts in the field.

So here we are at the crucial point, most relevant not only for our judgment on history, but also for present-day politics, and political philosophy in general. Or even human behaviour in general: "X commits atrocities, Y reacts in righteous and adequate self-defence and defence of innocent victims" is very rarely the full story of anything. Wars are all the more suspicious as the gamble is with other people's lives; the risk for the gamblers is comparatively low. Think of Kaiser Wilhelm's comfortable retirement in Holland.

Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers" was considered news in the Anglophone world; I suspect continental historians knew the essence of it long before. Particularly, the "Rape of Belgium" never played the role in France that it played in the UK.