There’s an old German joke and the gist of it is “Who were the Nazis” and the punchline is “someone else’s grandfather.” The joke is that clearly many, many people’s grandfathers were Nazis, but never yours!
It wasn’t like everyone “woke up” and realized they’d been evil Nazis and stopped thinking those things, they just didn’t have power any longer because they were literally destroyed by foreign armies.
They never stopped being Nazis they just lost the ability to be public Nazis. Maybe some of them changed their minds after seeing the results of the war, maybe a lot did, but plenty didn’t too and they didn’t go anywhere.
Hi Everyone,
I’m going to have to lock this post. I know people hate that, and fairly so. ELI5 is an objective and impartial community, we literally have rules specifically banning soapboxing and any non objective topics.
It is very clear that this topic has both a. been addressed well, and b. is a topic that people cannot restrain themselves from veering into modern politics, particularly US politics. This is not the place for it.
I hope you all enjoy the learning that is still here, and you can let us know in mod mail if you have any questions (but please don’t message us because you had a comeback you really wanted to make to someone on the other side of america’s bizarre team sport version of politics).
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