I think you've got a slightly simplistic view of history here.... and I don't blame you, because it's one that many people have. Whilst I wouldn't be advocating for anyone to fight for the Nazi Party, there is a difference between being committed to the ideology of the Nazi Party and fighting for them - and fighting alongside the Nazi Party against the red army.

If you get a chance to visit places occupied by the Soviets before WWII, what you'll find is that there were already 'disappearances' going on before the Nazis arose. Ukraine, as an example, had already experienced Holodomor in the early 1930s and that loomed large in the collective imagination.

So, instead of seeing this objectively from the point of view of a well fed 21st Century Canadian, consider it from the point of view of a Ukranian family in 1941. They have seen many of their family and friends starved to death - their towns have been expunged of anyone who poses a threat to the Communist regime and society functions on betrayal, secrecy and hidden torture rooms.

For those people, the German SS were liberators. I recently visted Latvia and many people in the Baltics joined the Nazis not because they were ideologically aligned with the worst excesses of the Nazi Party - but because they were fighting Russians. And yes we know what the Nazis were doing but they didn't hand out pamphlets about it at the time. They fought the Russians. If you'd been kept for a decade under an oppressive regime that starved your family, wouldn't you want to fight back given the chance?

The second world war and issues like what happened in Ukraine and the Baltics cannot be seen as 'goodies' and 'baddies' - that is too simplistic a post-hoc lens to put over your eyes. The world is more complicated than that. These people were choosing between two flavours of awful - and based on the stats, going with the Nazis was likely the better choice - at least at the time. You don't have to like it, but it's important to acknowledge it.