We can get into the weeds about German (or more accurately, Prussian) militarism. Prussia dominated the day-to-day politics of the united German Empire (for good reason, it essentially led the unification), but didn't necessarily represent the rest of the country. Even today, German culture varies a lot by region.

I remember reading about the post-war reconstruction of Germany, where a handful of anti-nazi German politicians (in particular Ludwig Erhard) tried to rationalize how the German people, that gave the world Beethoven and Bach, fell to the evils of Nazism. The oversimplified answer could just be it depended on who was in control. There are evil people everywhere.