Most people are just happy to roll with the flow. Especially in German culture, switching off empathy is still quite commonplace. So a lot of people who were deeply involved in Nazi atrocities werent necessarily ideologically convinced, they just saw an opportunity to make a career in the new order and were willing to commit any crime for it. A lot of these people were preserved as useful and made careers again in Western Germany, as the US wanted to quickly reestablish Western Germany as a strong country to have a fighter against Sowjet communism.
a lot of people who were deeply involved in Nazi atrocities werent necessarily ideologically convinced, they just saw an opportunity to make a career in the new order and were willing to commit any crime for it
I’m starting to think there were fewer Germans that were NOT Nazis than I thought. That’s the way it seems now.
Most people are just happy to roll with the flow. Especially in German culture, switching off empathy is still quite commonplace. So a lot of people who were deeply involved in Nazi atrocities werent necessarily ideologically convinced, they just saw an opportunity to make a career in the new order and were willing to commit any crime for it. A lot of these people were preserved as useful and made careers again in Western Germany, as the US wanted to quickly reestablish Western Germany as a strong country to have a fighter against Sowjet communism.
None of that is unique to Germany, nor the 1930’s-40’s, but rather a core feature of capitalism, which is why it always decays in to fascism.
somehow that sounds worse than just being a nazi