The difference that you won't or can't come to grips with, is that Germany - of all of the combatants - exhibited the most brutal and least moral conduct of the war. The German war plans started with an aggressive attack through neutral Belgium and into France - not a spirited defense of German soil. As stated earlier, Germany conducted the occupation of Belgium and France with cold brutality, including the summary execution of civilians. If you care to do some research, you will find that this isn't just "Allied propaganda".
Also as stated before, the Germans started the use of Phosgene, Chlorine, and later Mustard chemical agents in combat, the flamethrower, aerial bombing of cities using Zeppelins and the early Gotha bombers, and using long-range artillery on Paris. It was the Germans that were responsible for the ghastly massacre at Verdun and there are large tracts of France that are still dangerous and unusable, 90 years after the war. When Kaiser Wilhelm's much-heralded High Seas Fleet got bloodied at Jutland, the Germans resorted to unrestricted U-Boat warfare - which means that unwarned and unprepared civilian vessels were being attacked as well as legitimate vessels of war. The most famous of these was the Lusitania - which I would urge you to look at in more detail, to see the photographs of the infants that they found floating off the coast of Ireland. As I remember, the commander of the U-10 received a medal for that sinking.
I am of German ancestry and in 1916, many of our countrymen were sympathetic to Germany or at least unsympathetic with involvement in the european war but the above-mentioned evils drove the US to fully support the Allies and then into the war.
Germany wasn't "just one of the many evil participants" in the war - they were clearly in the lead when it came to brutality. Who started that war is immaterial. How the war was carried out and the cultures supported it is the pertinent point. Unless you face this truth, you will never really understand the changes in all of us that had to come about from those experiences. You're still looking at Germany as a victim - Versailles came about because the memories of German excesses were still so fresh in everyone's minds and so much greater than any other time in history.
The Second World War was just the first war continued and that characteristic indifference to human suffering magnified.
That´s the conflict here. THIS STATEMENT is what I challenge. This is nothing but BULL! And in case you agree with this statement, I´ll give you a more detailed answer your post desvers. In case you don´t agree with that, I don´t need to argue with you anymore.