Nazis were always like “normal people” in my mind. You might say any single one was nice, loved their family and pets and neighbors, made funny jokes and beautiful art, they’d give you the shirt off their back, invite you to a BBQ, stubbed their toes in pain like us, etc. They just had these certain traits where when stressed, they felt relieved by populist, xenophobic, masculine/warlike rhetoric, which snowballed.
With that I’m probably more lenient towards people being called Nazis because I’m not looking for a literal 1:1 match anyways.
I agree that we’re simplifying that era, feels like we’re taking a snapshot of a continuous process. Nazis (or other groups from other eras) are like the extremes or model specimen of how we perceive the period. Nazis were green as fuck in a green era, America was emerald, UK was lime, Japan was chartreuse, it just blends out to a spectrum.
Nazis were always like “normal people” in my mind. You might say any single one was nice, loved their family and pets and neighbors, made funny jokes and beautiful art, they’d give you the shirt off their back, invite you to a BBQ, stubbed their toes in pain like us, etc. They just had these certain traits where when stressed, they felt relieved by populist, xenophobic, masculine/warlike rhetoric, which snowballed.
With that I’m probably more lenient towards people being called Nazis because I’m not looking for a literal 1:1 match anyways.
I agree that we’re simplifying that era, feels like we’re taking a snapshot of a continuous process. Nazis (or other groups from other eras) are like the extremes or model specimen of how we perceive the period. Nazis were green as fuck in a green era, America was emerald, UK was lime, Japan was chartreuse, it just blends out to a spectrum.