Are Nazis bad people?

[deleted]

Nazis are not a race...

Wheee vere just carrying out ze orders of ze Fuhrer




Oh and Captain_Augustus_McCrae shut up you wanka

Racist? Good Lord.

Nazi's were a political party, much like Republicans and Democrats. They had beliefs founded by the party organizers, one of whom was Hitler.

Their actions can be attributed to multiple rationales. First and foremost, the influence of their leader can never be understated. Branching out from there, you have to consider that all people react differently. The best example of this would be Hitler's district leaders. When Poland was divided Hitler gave control to three separate Nazi leaders. He told them to do away with the non-German population. One leader decided to "Germanize" each citizen by making them pledge their affiliation to Germany. Another leader murdered as many Poles and Jews as he could. An order from Hitler taken in two different directions by two different Nazis. This happened all of the time.

Some could be driven by pride in their race or country, while others could be pushed by fear and trauma. Some were overachievers, proudly shooting innocents the same way a school bully would kick a student in the ass, hoping to gain recognition or approval of their community of soldiers. Some tried to fly under the radar, doing as little as possible to contribute to the massacre. Some went out of their way to hurt, others went out of their way to help. Some smile when thinking back to the events of WW2, others cry.

Based on what they partly stood for, which is that other humans are inferior, I feel that they are bad people. "Bad" is of course a vague description, but it works in the context of this reply.

I realize some Nazi's are regretful of their actions; some were caught up in the moment and propaganda and have come to feel remorse for their deeds. I don't hate them because I sympathize with them for being a part of a war machine, driven by a misguided and egotistical leader with hidden and private agendas. American soldiers recently experienced this. They were harming innocent citizens while thinking they were doing good. It's easy to be caught up in that storm, and it's difficult to realize it when it's happening.

Some of them were given power and they used it for unimaginable evil. The Nazi's who ran the prison, labor and concentration camps are the personification of evil and deserved a slow, painful death.

All it takes is some convincing. Also, Germany was in a very bad place after WW1.

"Bad people" is too loose a term for this.

They are guilty of genocide; worse than murderers. But as you say, every human being has the potential to become a murderer, it's the simple matter of planting any available household tool in the skull of your fellow man.

What I'm saying here is that crime ranges from "the passive bystander of a crime", to "the actual perpetrator". Being passive can be a crime in the sense of the law.

But if you are asking for my personal opinion; yes, if you fail to stand up to Nazi Germany / North Korea / Mordor / Whatever, then my species doesn't need you anymore. And many people agree with me.

EDIT: But then again I'm danish (hint; episode 4).

All people are capable of horrible acts. Most, if not the majority of us, have a conscience the rest do not act on their baser animal instincts. The Nazis had no remorse, mercy and conscience. Adolf Hitler was probably the most evil man ever to inhabit this planet.

You can't generalize that way. Not all nazis approved of genocide. Most, in fact, refused to believe that such had taken place. Had they approved of it, they should have had no problem owning up to it - both during the war and after. "Nazi" is not defined as "someone who wants all Jews dead", but someone who agrees with the party line. This meant that they thought "Germany for Germans", but does not necessarily imply they are willing to do violence to that end.

Then there is also the famous example of John Rabe, who famously saved maybe as many as 200 000 lives during the Japanese Rape of Nanjing. He was officialy "de-nazified" by the Allies after the war, but he himself never signed out of the nazi party.

My grand-uncle was a warden after the war, guarding German POWs and organising labour. He often mentioned how brutally nazies were treated in this time immediately following the war. One incident involved a local man in his 80s who was forced to run back and forth carrying buckets of water. He said to the people who were forcing this man, "you can't treat old people like this." Their reply was quite simply that he was a nazi, implying that this was reason enough. This old man had never done anything to anybody, but he was a nazi.

In my family, there are two people who are openly racist. However, "racist" does not sum up who they are. One of them is a family man; he has a wife and three kids, and he is both a good and conscientious man. He is on the complete opposite political spectrum from me, however, but we solve that by simply not discussing politics. Bottom line, you can be a good person no matter what "-ism" you are.