What were the main causes of World War I? To what extent were the characters involved – the Kaiser, the Emperor, and the Tsar – crucial to the conflict’s outbreak and can they can be held directly responsible? Were they at fault for World War I? A renowned American specialist, John G. Stoessinger, has argued that it wasn’t the deep, historically-based causes of European tensions that led to what happened in the summer of 1914, but the personalities of the leaders involved. John G. Stoessinger is an American political scientist born in Austria a few years before the country was annexed to the German Reich. The Stoessinger family, of Jewish origin, managed to escape the Nazi regime with the help of a Japanese diplomat who offered them visas to travel to Shanghai. A specialist in international relations, Stoessinger believes that the war is neither impersonal, nor inevitable, arguing that the responsibility for a war cannot be shed only on certain events, because everything is, in fact, about the decisions that people make. He argues that many conflicts could have been avoided without the use of force or without going to war. One of the important theories attributed to Stoessinger is the theory of perceptions. Stoessinger believes that, in the eve of major conflicts, many of the political leaders involved have misjudged the situation and have thus led their countries to war. These false perceptions manifest on 4 levels: firstly, a false perception regarding the leader’s own person, of their role in the world and of their loyalty towards the possible outcome of the conflict. The second level regards the opponent and often includes demonising his image and the inability to objectively understand a situation. On the third level, we are dealing with the misperception of the opponent’s intentions and, on the fourth level, with misjudging the opponent’s abilities. Stoessinger