Lex Hornman said:
Nazi's where evil bastards. A Nazi was a member of the Hitlers Nazi party. Now granted few exceptions where there but most Nazi's where trailed for crimes against humanity. Also Nazi party members where always had higher functions where it be the army of commercial life.
The people who where not so bad where plain germans who where not part of the nazi party. Like Normal Whermacht soldiers, or Luftwaffe pilots.
Just to clarify: The Nazi party was a political party. Nazi Germany is Germany ruled by Nazis.
Nazi Germany, still has normal nice Germans in it. Even people in Germany itself where against the nazi's.
This is why the Nazi's where evil rule generally applies. Just look at a nice WW2 movie sometimes you see Germans wearing the swastika on a red band usually around the arm. But not every German is wearing it especially Generals don't. That's because most generals where not part of the Nazi party.
If you're gonna say that Nazi's were all "evil bastards" then you can pretty much include a rather hefty chunk of the members of academic circles even outside of germany at that time (that includes americans, the british, the french etc.), because the very same race-bigotry and positive views of eugenics and "racial hygiene" was, to put it bluntly, quite a big fad among the scholars of the world at that time.
It's just that Hitler and his cronies put these academic theories into full blown practice. That doesn't mean that all Nazi's knew much better though. I mean the Nazi party was (for a time) THE ONLY party in all of germany, and it included thousands of party members.
Do you really think that all of them was just "evil bastards" plain and simple? Have you no respect or consideration from where they were coming from?
I doubt you yourself would've formed any "less evil" opinions if you were in their shoes and with their social conditioning. We're talking about an era where the academic elite actually promoted and seriously discussed euthanasia and sterilisation of people with genetic defects and "racial inferiority".
I doubt you'd be in a position today to question or argue against the theories that, oh let's say, Stephen Hawking puts out in modern times. But what you have to understand is that the "Stephen Hawking's" of that time was actually promoting and condoning the very ideals that Hitler pursued. Hitler was even inspired by them to begin with. Back then, all this was "science".
And you mean to tell me that all those commoners who "bought into it" were "evil bastards" for doing so? Seriously, try to think of how it would be like in THEIR shoes, and not just see the situation through your historically biased and hindsighted views.
Writing something off as "simply being evil" is anti-intellectual and stupid. It doesn't serve to increase yours or anyone elses understanding of what actually happened. It's just a gross over-simplification with no intellectual merit.