If this is about who should bear the blame I think "Nazis" is too narrow but "Germans" is too broad. Hitler won barely 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. Even after seizing power and after a violent campaign of intimidation Hitler only got 44% of the vote.
It is also doubtful that those who did vote for him expected him to kill all Jews and Romani people. The threats were certainly there but most people believe politicians to be hyperbolic and not follow through on everything they say.
At least I can say that my own ancestors who were murdered in Auschwitz did not expect that to happen.
Bush lost the election preceding the Iraq War, but, it was sure as shit the Americans who pointlessly invaded Iraq, not the Republicans.
I see both sides of the point being made here and we may have said all that needs to be said about it at this point but I just want to speak up and say that it's not in fact the norm to attribute a war to a political party, no matter what the electoral numbers.
I agree with you about the war. But I see it a bit differently when it comes to the Holocaust, not least because many of the victims were also Germans, Jewish or otherwise.
> Hitler won barely 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. Even after seizing power and after a violent campaign of intimidation Hitler only got 44% of the vote.
I wish there were polls for support for Hitler after the successful conquest of Poland and France. The accounts from that period speak of enthusiasm bordering on mass hysteria.
In George Kennan was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin from 1939 through 1941. In his Memoirs: 1925-1950, he writes of the Berliners that "they witnessed with a reserved, sullen silence the victory parade of the troops returning from the successful completion of the Polish campaign. Not even the most frantic efforts of professional Nazi agitators could provoke them to demonstrations of elation or approval. The news of the fall of Paris was received with the same inscrutable silence and reserve. I rode miles, that afternoon, on the enclosed upper deck of a bus, where practically everyone's conversation was audible. I heard no one as much as mention the event; the talk was all of food cards and the price of stockings." To be sure, he speaks of them as the least Nazified among the German population.
It is also doubtful that those who did vote for him expected him to kill all Jews and Romani people. The threats were certainly there but most people believe politicians to be hyperbolic and not follow through on everything they say.
At least I can say that my own ancestors who were murdered in Auschwitz did not expect that to happen.