Britain and France conquered the world. Russia was the most brutal slave state in Europe. Hell, even poor little Belgium created hell on earth in the Congo. These powers were empires in the true sense of the word, subjecting countless millions to their will. Militaristic? Pro-Conquest? They all were. This was a realpolitik war between a bunch of powers operating under the same basic philosophical assumptions.
I agree, the rose tinting of our glasses should be cleared up by looking at the British and French as they were pre-WWI, not the countries they became, there were few "good" guys in this war, it was the last war in a very long series between Kings backed now by modern industrial economies, WWI was the decrepit elite from another century in command of what would become modern nations of liberals, socialists and the technology revolution.
Although I can see German building the atomic bomb first, it would not be the Nazi-led Germany who wielded it, nor is this more or less dangerous than the British having it first. For all the propaganda the Prussian General Staff was very subordinate to its chain of command, Kaiser to Chancellor and ultimately the people, its taking control in crisis is no more aberrant than how Generals in every other belligerent responded to the perceived grid lock of parliamentary debate, it becoming a state inside the state under Weimar was a response to Versailles, in fact what we wanted was the Generals who would not obey the elected Hitler government in contradiction to our own notions of the subordination of generals to elected civilians, and sweeping away the convenient post-war finger pointing, Prussia become under Weimar an SPD led state with one of the most liberal constitutions in Germany, Berlin was no friend to the Nazis and a hot bed of free expression, so I am not convinced that a surviving Kaiserreich is destined to go right-wing conquer all crazy as is simplistic chauvinism, if anything the pressure cooker of reform would boil over with as many butterflies as can be imagined. Britain and France were quite unlike themselves post-war as victors once we get a few decades on, I suspect that the Liberals would finally shake off their kowtowing to the Junker class and the SPD would finally assert itself given the true power of the working class in numbers, the Weimar Republic shows us just how far the Liberals and Social Democrats were ready to go to build a democracy, one in many ways more progressive than the UK or USA or France, the modern FRG shows us the strength of the 1848 revolution and its legacy, there is just as much foundation to have a surviving Kaiserreich evolve in fits and starts to be anything but a dystopia despite the popularity of such fiction.
Now I am under no illusion that Germany would fail to misstep all over East Europe and the Poles especially, would resume to assert itself on the global arena, are there dangers of another war, yes, this would be no less dangerous or complex world, but I see it as remaining multi-lateral and less likely to settle into an American dominated versus USSR dominated paradigm, in some ways more stable and in some way less stable, but once the weaponry goes nuclear I see the same end to conflict resolution via direct warfare we accept as obvious, all sides maintain big military establishments as they fight proxy wars just as we saw through the Cold War. This Germany shed of its colonies moves to the same logic the USA did, the old Empires must die to break open markets and free trade to let the over productive domestic industry gain markets, a liberalized Reichstag would support independence movements globally and Germany would have our track record of dubious relations with right leaning despots the world over as the USSR pours on the support for the revolution, the USA and Kaiserreich have an oddly parallel destiny.