Boris Johnson calls for Tristram Hunt's resignation, Hunt finds Michael Gove's views shocking, Gove slams leftwing historians who produce history to "belittle Britain and its leaders". What next? Duels at dawn as the combatants hurl history books at each other and demolish each others' myths? Who could have imagined that nearly a hundred years since the outbreak of the first world war it would be rousing such passions?

The trouble in this debate about the first world war is that one person's myth is another one's incontrovertible truth. Either the generals were all donkeys or they were sensible men doing their best. The war was either a colossal mistake or a struggle for important principles. Such polarisation may make for a good spectacle but it doesn't do what history should – and that is help us to understand the past in all its complexity.

Can I suggest that we start by keeping in mind that there is a key difference between myths, which can be disproved by looking at the evidence, and interpretations, which take the evidence into account? Myths about the war that historians have helped to put to rest are, for instance, that all Europeans welcomed war with cheering and flowers. We now know that across the continent, the public mood was much more a mix of apprehension, resignation, fear or, in some cases, exhilaration that the storm so long anticipated had finally broken.

Another myth: that the generals on both sides were heartless effete aristocrats who sipped champagne behind the lines while they pondered, unsuccessfully, the challenges of modern industrial war. Historians such as Gary Sheffield and John Terraine have shown that the generals were well aware of the challenges; the technology was simply not there – or not until late in the war – to overcome them. Nor were they all from the upper classes. General Erich Ludendorff, one of the most successful of the German generals, was middle class, while General Arthur Currie, arguably the most competent of the British empire's generals, was an unsuccessful insurance salesman.

Interpretations are of another order. People can take the same evidence about an event and come up with widely different views of what it meant. In December 1912, at a time of considerable tension in Europe as a result of a war in the Balkans, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany summoned his favourite military advisers to his palace at Potsdam to talk about the situation and what Germany's chances were if a wider war broke out. Nothing was decided and his chancellor, Theobald Bethmann Hollweg, was furious that he had not been consulted.

So was it, as some, including the German historian Fritz Fischer, have argued, a war council that demonstrates Germany's leadership was determined on a war of conquest, or was it – as I am inclined to think – yet another example of the kaiser shooting off his mouth? Wilhelm often sounded belligerent, yet when it came down to it, usually opted for peace. His own beloved army officers took to calling him William the Timid, something that stung and may have made him determined in 1914 not to back down. We have to accept, in my view, that both interpretations are valid and it may be impossible ever to determine which is most plausible.

History is all about disagreements and both schoolchildren and the public should be made aware that the first world war from beginning to end is the subject of much debate. Let us embrace that, rather than fearing it. Encouraging discussion of the past can only enhance and deepen our understanding. This year we will be talking a lot about the origins of the war and who or what was responsible. Unlike the second world war, we do not have a clear consensus on how it started and we never will. Yes, we can assign more or less responsibility – I blame Austria-Hungary and Germany for their mad determination to destroy Serbia knowing that a general war might result – but there is still plenty of room for disagreement. We need to look beyond individual players or states and take into account the overall context. There was a dangerous mood in Europe by 1914 that war was an option – that it was probably inevitable. (It helped, of course, that many in the military assumed, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that a future war would be short and decisive.)

Indeed, many believed that conflict was deeply engrained in human society, and that nations that survived did so because they were prepared to struggle. Gove has accused the Germans of adhering to such social Darwinist ideas, but he should know that these were widespread across Europe, and that one of their fullest enunciations came from Herbert Spencer, an Englishman.

We should also be careful not to attribute ideas and motives retrospectively in order to suit our own needs. Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, has said that the battle of Vimy, where Canadian troops carried a crucial ridge in the face of a strong German defence, showed Canadians' "unwavering commitment to defending peace and freedom". I doubt soldiers at the time would have put it like that. My Canadian grandfather and his cousins were fighting for the mother country. I also doubt that the British soldiers thought that they were defending, as Gove claims, "the western liberal international order". Like my ancestors and, it should be remembered, soldiers on all sides, they were fighting for their country, and their own families and friends.

What is so dispiriting is how our memories of a catastrophic and monumental event in modern history are being dragged into current political debates. It will be a great pity and a waste if we don't take the occasion of the anniversaries this year as a time for understanding and for sharing an experience that affected all of Europe, and indeed much of the world, including my own country, Canada. Let us respect the dead, who are so frequently summoned into the debates, by trying to understand what happened, and not use them to score cheap points.