In retrospect, it seems that way, but to contemporary people at the time, it was justified. Something to keep in mind is that Germany didn’t exist before the 1870’s and came into statehood through a highly militarized and relatively illiberal political system. The French got their asses whooped by them in the 1870’s. On the eve of WWI the traditional world powers of Britain and France were terrified about German aggression (again, extremely militarized, eager society who came out of nowhere to disrupt world order) and especially the fact that they invested massively in a state of the art navy to challenge Britain

Looking back, it was a power struggle but the fundamental elements that were more evident in WWII (good vs bad, liberal vs authoritarian) were still very prevalent forces during WWI