As one who lives among them and is married to one, I can tell you this is one of the most pacifist nations in Europe. They know what it means to have a leadership hell bent on running the world, and they remember the consequences all too well. If anything, the Germans have been criticized in the recent past for being all too detached from happenings on the outside. To get out of what was then compulsory military service, my brother in law went without sleep for four days and drugged himself up for his physical (it worked) and he was applauded by his dad, a farmer who was drafted against his will, and got a leg blown off at age 18 after being sent to Stalingrad as cannon fodder.
What can't be ignored any more is a potential tax revolt among the German populace, and the spectre of a rising extreme right wing that would go along with it. The Germans are already heavily taxed, especially with the 5% surcharge on taxes that once went to rebuild East Germany, but is now going to be made a permanent tax hike. If it's to build roads, repair bridges, improve schools, modernize airports, supplement health care costs, no one will yell too loudly. However, if they are being asked to pour their taxes down a black hole of a corrupt and inefficient economy of another EU country that cooked its books to join the Euro in the first place, hell yes, they want a say in what's going on.
Greece used to consider tax collection a joke, allow retirement with full pension at 55, and grant all sorts of wonderful things under allaghi that were to be paid for by some miracle. Before the Euro, they could just devalue the Drachma a little more each time and print enough to pay everyone. Of course, the Germans couldn't sell many Mercedes cars to Greece that way, so they were initially all for another country adopting the euro, so their exports could find a wider market. With a Greek euro, they figured less Greeks would be priced out of buying German goods, since their currency wouldn't be devalued any more. But membership in the Euro also meant adopting some fiscal discipline, and that had never been in the Greek dictionary. Now suddenly the Greeks find they had no money left in their account, and they are pissed at the Germans for not doubling their allowance.
If your kid at college asks you for more money because he needs to buy food, you try to cough it up. If he calls and asks for more money so he can pay the bill for a chauffeur-driven car he had take him to class every day for the past year, you might have a different reaction. The Greeks spent their food money on the chauffeur-driven car, and now want the Germans to pay the bill. Their people have no jobs because their government should have addressed these problems years before joining the euro, not years later when the cupboard is bare. The new government is saying give us some time, we'll REALLY get our house in order this time. Schäuble isn't my favorite person in the German government, but I don't blame him one bit for being skeptical. The fact that Putin hasn't rushed in to try to reclaim the Russian influence that Stalin nearly got in Greece after World War II indicates that the Russians aren't any more convinced than the West that the Greeks are serious this time. Tsipiras will have to be VERY creative to come up with some solution that will appease the West as well as his own people. He certainly seems to want it, but like the French say, "la plus belle fille du monde ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a."
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