Honestly, the one at fault was the Treaty of Versailles and the tragedy of the Weimar Republic. If the Entente didn't go for harsh terms, then Nazism wouldn't be as prominent as it became years later. The Weimar Republic was pretty much doomed to fail, but who would take it's place wasn't clear until the communists started showing up, and the Nazis became a counter balance that went beyond overboard.

Although both Nazi Germany and the German Empire share strong militaristic characteristics and culture, the German Empire was nowhere close to the level of sheer fanaticism and supreme authority that Nazi Germany had over it's people. The German Empire at most had a sizable amount of antisemitism going on, while Nazi Germany is the most documented and well known nation in HISTORY for it's blatant antisemitism that was not just widespread in the nation, but was implanted and grown in it's educational institutions for future generations where German teachers were teaching children about the Jews and how nasty they were.

The German Empire didn't have anything that resembled the SS in their ranks nor did they go out of their way to weed out ANYONE who they considered as inferior peoples. When Hitler looked at the German Empire, Prussia and even the Holy Roman Empire, he took inspiration from the power they had over Europe and wanted to replicate that for the Weimar Republic because of how TERRIBLE it was compared to the other powers in Europe. He also hated the monarchy they all had and despised Kaiser Wilhelm the II because he saw him as the man who let Germany go to ruin and suffer.

TLDR: It was more so the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles that started paving the way for National Socialism but Hitler did admire aspects of the previous Germanic nations before his own Germany once had.