I mean…. The Treaty of Versailles after the capitulation of their government in 1918 is your starting point. German population held responsible for a war started by the Austro-Hungarian empire, followed by hyperinflation and the market crash of 1929.. These were the antecedents to the rise of the Nazi party and WWII, history will come to see it as the second half of WWI. The lessons were so obvious that after the war, the various governments didn’t punish the German population with crippling debt - they then became the strongest economy in the EU.

If your reading of history is just that German men suddenly ‘went evil’ - then I don’t know what to tell you. The preconditions were right for the rise of a demagogue and one duly shows up, a man with an abusive childhood, strong oratory skills, who felt slighted by the establishment, and who had a burning hatred of both communists and Jews. He wove a tale of nationalism about the rise of the Third Reich and sowed hope in the population, he was elected and then removed the democratic scaffolding that got him there.

Some Nazis were committed, most were swept along by a story. Do they have some responsibility? Of course. Everyone chooses, but human brains are pliable and people are more easily manipulated than many imagine. Most people believe they are ‘the goodies’ without stopping to think what that means in practice. That’s what many in the German population thought.