I wonder how much the average German soldier knew about what Hitler was doing. On the other hand, so much of what they did in the ghettos and the concentration camps can't be justified, no matter how you cut it. And it took a whole bunch of willing accomplices to carry out those abominations.

I was recently at a dinner with several people, most of whom were only barely acquainted. One of the people at the dinner was a lady visiting from Germany. She was talking about the remote village where she grew up. You could have heard a pin drop when she said that she had been a member of the Hitler Youth. She said that the war was almost over by the time she and her family figured out that Hitler was a mad man. Propaganda is a powerful thing.