Indeed, realism is not always fun, and we're trying to walk a very fine line here between fun and not being able to suspend disbelief. I'm glad we're having a solid, argument based discussion here.
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If the excerpt quoted above is an incontrovertible fact, then why wouldn't this principle apply equally to every other nation in Europe- or anywhere on the planet, for that matter (barring the occasional unhinged, tin pot dictator)?
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Two points to keep in mind here: A) German contemporary history and B) the immediate geopolitical context.
A) Germany had lost two world wars in the 70 years before the Wall came down. This was well within the lifetime of individual person and if you're beaten twice, you draw different lessions from war than if you won both rounds and your homeland wasn't even touched (or hardly, as was the case of the US). The USSR equally drew completely different lessions, having formed in the aftermath of the Great War and being almost physically eradicated during the Second World War.
West and East Germany concluded that, since they were no longer masters of their own land and indeed their land had actually been split between the victors, any third round would spell doom on the very idea of having a German state at all. Unless of course, they were not loosing it. However, since any war conceivable at that time would certainly have one of the German states on each side, Germany itself would always loose. The bigger question in the background was thus the so called German question, which had been the governing question in all European great power politics. It basically boils down to: can Europe (and that meant most of the world, too) be stable, if a large and powerful Central European power exists (i. e. Germany) or is it better to have larger powers at Europe's periphery (France, UK, Russia/USSR) and leave the center politically weaker.
Word War Two answered that question until 1990 and Europe was very stable during that time. If that's a consequence or a correlation is hard to decide, but everyone was happy with it.
B) The immediate context was that Germany could not decide any of this on its own. Both states had these things decided for them. This isn't a question of being a purely rational actor, its about not having any agency.
Case in point, constitutional democracies to not wage more or less wars on the basis of them being governed like they are. The type of government is not responsible for the likelihood of warfare. Otherwise Canada, Estonia and the US couldn't be all liberal democracies sporting constitutions. What makes a state go to war are very diverse reasons, but mostly it has to be a credible option. In NATO, that only works for France, UK and USA, the rest cannot do it, so they don't. However, from this inability also roots a different way of thinking. If you know you cannot, you think about other options. So, if you're used to solve problems without force and then an opportunity arises where you could use force, you have different and proven instruments at your disposal.
This got nothing to do with risk-aversion either. War isn't the only risky thing to do. Not being able to defend yourself is risky too. Germany needed NATO to survive. There would have been no stopping the USSR without NATO. So Germany had to believe NATO would step in for Germans, despite Germany having waged war twice during the 20th century against most NATO partners. That was risky, but it paid off.
I have given several examples of how I could think a third world war could go down in Europe. I don't see a planned war anywhere on the horizon, however. Nothing planned by a conspiracy and certainly nothing planned by state governments. Unless we radically change the political landscape and give a new government a reason to try to reverse history. That's what v.2 and v.4 do with the August Coup in 1991 succeeding and a resurgent USSR going to war.
That seems the better option over v.1 since it is far more credible. It's similar to why Germany started the Second World War in 1939.