re: #547 Obdicut

Well, they were. Germany wasn’t a nation of madmen. That’s the challenge we have to face. Ordinary people are capable of evil. Hand-waving it away as insanity is excusing them.

I’ll have to look it up, but one of the “de-Nazification” actions taken by the Allies once the war ended was to take politicians from all ranks of German life, men who’d turned a blind eye to the atrocities, and haul them to the death camps to witness first hand the things Hitler had done in their names. And while viewing it, they were forced to listen to long speeches given by Allied commanders, detailing exactly how much they sucked for having allowed it all to happen. That none had spoken up, none had protested, all had just “followed orders,” even as millions of fellow human beings were tortured, starved, beaten, shot, stabbed, and so forth.