I think that societal conditioning can definitely turn people into awful people, agreed. I remember being a kid in junior high school and having friends pressuring me to participate in bullying other kids with them, and this to me seems like a similar thing. It is extraordinarily hard to resist one’s conditioning when surrounded by an entire culture trying to mold you into a monster on purpose.
I also don’t really subscribe to ‘A nazi is a nazi’ mentality, generally, because there are thousands of Nazis who were subversive in the ways they could be. Examples include Oscar Schindler and Wilm Hosenfeld. Both Nazis, both known to have helped people where they could or otherwise subvert the Nazi war effort.
Most, though, were just regular joes whose names (though not their stories) are lost to history. In the situation at the time it was often necessary, if you were collaborating with resistance forces, to use a false name or no name at all.
I think that societal conditioning can definitely turn people into awful people, agreed. I remember being a kid in junior high school and having friends pressuring me to participate in bullying other kids with them, and this to me seems like a similar thing. It is extraordinarily hard to resist one’s conditioning when surrounded by an entire culture trying to mold you into a monster on purpose.
I also don’t really subscribe to ‘A nazi is a nazi’ mentality, generally, because there are thousands of Nazis who were subversive in the ways they could be. Examples include Oscar Schindler and Wilm Hosenfeld. Both Nazis, both known to have helped people where they could or otherwise subvert the Nazi war effort.
Most, though, were just regular joes whose names (though not their stories) are lost to history. In the situation at the time it was often necessary, if you were collaborating with resistance forces, to use a false name or no name at all.