This is why the right-wing preference of the government not being a strong institution and controlling the economy is ridiculous and always ends up in corruption without fail.

I know you intended this to attack liberals and their urge for freedom JOe, but sometimes things backfire. :)

I think one of the most fascinating attributes of almost any genocide is that relies upon the involvement of average, unremarkable people. While the circumstances surrounding the European Holocaust during WWII were unique to the nations and their peoples at the time, the people were in no way fundamentally different than we are.

Hitler manipulated the fears and desires of people, just as any successful political leader does. One may argue that his ends were atrocious but nevertheless the mechanisms he used were nothing special, nor were the people he engaged with them. The Nazi party worked because enough people supported it, either overtly or implicitly.

People like to claim that those who participated in the imprisonment and killing of millions of Jews, queers, and political dissidents only did so because they felt they had no choice. Certainly this is the case for some of them, and undoubtedly it is the best and probably only defense of those who participated. However, there are numerous events wherein people acted without any plausible threat of violence; the prevalence of pogroms preceding Nazi incursions is maybe the most striking example.

The European Holocaust (and it was European, not exclusively German) is remarkable not because it occurred, but for its sheer magnitude. Genocide itself is neither a new nor culturally unique phenomenon, which further underscores the likelihood that these acts engage people not dissimilar from ourselves in terms of their base instincts. We like to think that we are above that, but that is a dangerously naive sentiment.