> there are other groups as well that are often forgotten... in fact I can only think of the Roma. Shouldn't we all know all the groups the Nazis systematically murdered?
The Jehova's Witnesses come to mind, too. This is probably not complete, but it does give an indicator at least: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Kennzeichen_f%C3%BCr_Sch...
Top row, from left to right:
"Political", "Professional Criminal", "Emigrant", "Jehovas' Witness", "Homosexual", and "Antisocial"
Left column, top to bottom:
"basic color", "badge for repeat offenders", "prisoners of the punitive regiment", "Jews".
Then there are some more badges listed, for special cases if you will :/
> That's one lesson people don't seem to learn from this era-- its the mechanism by which a peaceful, tolerant society (as germany had) becomes fascist.
Having read Sebastian Haffner's autobiographical book about the time from 1914 to 1933, I have a somewhat different picture, in which both WW1 and the inflation played a huge role in fertilizing the soil for craving adventure and outside stimuli (that craving for example expressed in the sports craze in the 20s). The Nazis didn't have to transform all of society -- they just needed enough people willing to be brutal enough on their behalf, that's what they had and that's how they took over. I would say the Nazis chiseled more than they transformed, and then the others either rationalized and became willing Nazis, or were unwillingly in their power. But by the time resistance seemed like a good idea, it was pretty much too late, people could only save their souls by standing up, or save their lives by fleeing, but not really change the course of things. When that was still possible, people just looked on and hoped for the best. Seems familiar, huh?
Maybe my impression is totally wrong, but that's my impression. Here are some quotes form said book (the English title is "Defying Hitler")
> A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.
[..]
> To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
and:
> Indeed, behind these questions are some very peculiar, very revealing, mental processes and experiences, whose historical significance cannot yet be fully gauged These are what I want to write about. You cannot get to grips with them if you do not track them down to the place where they happen: the private lives, emotions, and thoughts of individual Germans…There, in private, the fight is taking place in Germany. You will search for it in vain in the political landscape, even with the most powerful telescope. Today the political struggle is expressed by the choice of what a person eats and drinks, whom he loves, what he does in his spare time, whose company he seeks, whether he smiles or frowns, what pictures he hangs on his walls. It is here that the battles of the next world war are being decided in advance. That may sound grotesque, but it is the truth.
