I really don't think so.
To be honest, Nazism became so popular among Germans only because it appealed to views that had already been well-established and ingrained in your average German's psyche long before anyone first heard about Hitler. I think it has been described by Modris Eksteins, Daniel Goldhagen, Theodore Kaufman and others. David Solomon also mentions it in his lecture on Jewish History:
^^^ The excerpt quoted below starts at 0:55:50 and ends at 0:57:10 of the video:
"(...) The Shoah is not an isolated event. The project to exterminate the Jews of Germany happens here [pointing at the timeline of history], and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. And so people say - so why did Jews keep going back to Germany? Why did Jews keep going back? And I say - look at your own generation. Only half a century after the Holocaust, and what is the largest growing Jewish community in the world outside of Israel? It's Germany. And yet surely the lesson of this entire wall [pointing at the timeline of history] is that Jews should not be living in Germany. (...)"
Blaming World War I is the politically correct whitewashing that is quite popular today. But read Modris Eksteins, "Rites of Spring" - Germans were already fanatical in 1914.
Right, so a bunch of politically motivated leftist Jewish-American historians who are the second generation after the Holocaust peddle a moralizing narrative where the Germans are perpetually the bad guy, selling it mainly to an American audience. Quelle surprise. I hate this psycho-analysis masquerading at history, with the historian playing "doctor" to understand "what's wrong". It's ahistorical, and undermines the ability of the historian to feel empathy with his subject. It is one thing to have certain convictions or biases and be honest with them (I for one absolutely loathe horse nomads of all kinds, as I repeatedly point out), but this dishonest political moralizing that is pretending to be a historical search for the truth rubs me the wrong way. If they feel the Germans are guilty and think that Germans and Germany is barbaric, say it and don't hide behind this veneer of false objectivity. Honest and upfront hatreds are much better than weasely ones. Personally, I think the Germans should be cut some slack. Having to - understandably - answer for the Holocaust in perpetuity is enough punishment, you don't have to pull down their entire history (essentially saying they don't deserve to exist as a people) while you're at it.
Anyway, if I am to try to take what they say seriously... I've heard this narrative before, and I'm still not convinced. You are right that there was anti-semitism among much of the Prussian conservative elite and no doubt among many other Germans as well, but anti-semitism =/= wanting to put all Jews into camps and kill them. Another question is also how different was Prussian anti-semitism from their aversion to Catholics for example? Perhaps there were other political factors at play, such as the fact that Germany was in 1914 still a kind of federation on paper. If you look at diplomatic cables between Berlin and the various local embassies in the constituent
länder it becomes quite clear that many of the Prussian Junckers felt threatened and backed into a corner. There was serious fear that Germany might break up as a nation among some. You and I think this is hyperbole and nonsense, but it wasn't necessarily so to the understandably paranoid conservative leadership at the time. Anyway, I think equating Kaiserreich anti-semitism with what the Nazis did is just plain wrong.
Take one example: Kaiser Wilhelm IIs best buddy Philip of Eulenburg. He was a wholehearted conservative, he was anti-semitic (in the pseudocharming, gentlemanly 19th century kind of way) and very homosexual. One of his principle lovers was a viennese Rothschild scion I believe.
To take another contrasting example: The Dreyfus affair in France. There was nothing like that which I am aware of in Wilhelm IIs Germany, despite it being more conservative and arguably more anti-semitic. The closest similarity was the Harden-Eulenburg affair implicating the same man I mentioned earlier, but it was a scandal for the conservative establishment and doesn't seem to have had much to do with Jews one way or another the way I've understood it. Why not, if the Germans always had this latent and germinating desire, like a 500 year old bowel movent going back to Martin Luther to exterminate the Jews?
This whole German
sonderweg idea is overplayed I think. You only need to change something really basic, let's say Wilhelm II's dad Friedrich III doesn't die after a couple of months on the throne. What then? He was demonstrably
not anti-Jewish, and wanted to implement something similar to the British parliamentary system in Germany. John Röhl has an essay on pre WW1 German anti-semitism in his book "The Kaiser and his Court" from the 90s. It is quite enlightening, and nuances the picture you are painting by a lot.
