No. that still makes no sense and really leaves the RP in a lurch. We're looking for a casus belli for the GREAT war, not for the Nikolian-Noord war.
Part of what would make this work is nations being dragged into war due to alliances, sort of like every cataclysmic war of the 20th century.
I think that Gaul will not be allied with Nikolia after all. Also, Kelonna, Nik never said he was remotely like Germany. I don't understand where that's coming from. Russia or Serbia, or even Austro-Hungary, maybe, but not Germany. While some of us have chosen to RP similar to nations of that era, we are ultimately NS nations. You don't have to have the same ethnic rivalries. You don't have to do the same exact actions as a RL WW1 nation, right when they did it. Really, we're just doing a PT era war with some similarities to that conflict.
To be clear though, I just don't think this RP will work if we don't have at least a couple strong alliances from the beginning.
I may rethink even doing this now. I can't believe how much effort I've put into arms and orbats for this. Can't we just get together here as a region and make a logical flowing RP?