It is obvious and often mentioned that if the average German could have found away to set aside their dejection from the collapse of the Wiemar Republic and rejected the policies of Adolf Hitler, the lives lost in World War II and in the prison camps may have been spared. We see footage of the camps right next to sleepy little towns and the skeptical narrator without fail questions the veracity of the people that claim that they knew nothing about what was going on in the camps and they had no idea what that smell was.

It is easy in hindsight and as someone who was not there to admonish them for their impotence. I ask you to consider the economics of the time of the collapse of the Wiemar Republic. Germany was in shambles and the average German was suffering economically and emotionally disheartened by the failure of their efforts at liberal democracy. Adolf Hitler filled their stomachs. I am not justifying or condoning the failure of the average German to reject the Nazi party and challenge their actions. I am asking you to consider that what we expect them to have done is something that humanity has not perfected. We expect them to have set aside their own comfort and perhaps their own survival for the greater good.

When people are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, for a stranger, for posterity, we call those people heroes. A hero is someone who goes above and beyond expectation in goodness,courage and nobility. For most people, the hero is usually someone else. While it is understandable that the Americans, the British and the Soviets would have preferred Germany to be filled with heroes before the Nazis became their problem, do they ask the same thing of themselves?

Did the Soviets stop Lenin and Stalin from the travesties exacted under their reigns before they got outta hand? Did the British people rise up and force their government to stop the colonialization of distant lands and the mass destruction of distant peoples to make those acquisitions? Did the Americans, formerly repressed citizens of Great Britain, rise up during World War II and with one collective voice say internment is wrong release the Asian American citizens? No. None of them did.