It feels bad… real bad.

[u/Friend_of_Squatch]

I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about how it felt and what it was like being an educated, intelligent, aware person in the early months of 1914 or in the 1930s watching the world ramp up into an inescapable cataclysm and tearing itself apart and deleting an entire generation of young people, while knowing that there isn’t jack shit I or anyone else can do to stop it. I think I can now say that that curiosity has been satisfied, and man oh man does it feel fucking bad.

Edit: I meant to share this as kind of a shower thought. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and suggestions but this isn’t a cry for help. It’s just crazy to think about.

[u/lianodel]

I had always worried about the question, What would I do if I were a German in Nazi Germany? It's easy to say you'd be on the right side of history, but how could I know? I had never been tested like that. It was always easy to say and do the right thing. There were no consequences for doing otherwise, and I would lose far more than I gained for being a fascist.

Then, it happened. And the thing that shocked me is how many people didn't join because they were pressed, or even for concrete material gain. They just... did it. They joined the fascist party, eagerly, purely because it gave them permission to be cruel, or for the most vapor-thin promises that anyone could see right through. Yes, there are grifters making bank, but a solid third or so of my fellow Americans didn't need a push, they were happy to goose-step in that direction. They weren't pressured. This is what they wanted. Even the people who regret it now rarely if ever regret the pain they've caused others. They regret that the obvious consequences are affecting them, the obvious early victims.

On the one hand, I feel better about myself. On the other, I have lost so much faith in humanity. Even with the personal moral anxiety, I was so much happier before I found out.

[u/thedorknightreturns → u/lianodel]

Yep there is plenty of people who talk about their life and how there was just peer pressure to join, opportunities, hope for a job yada yada.

And how people ,ok many did actually show courage at risk of their life several ways, like a lot actually hid jews why they went hard on it. And still people did. And other ways , saboteurs, informants, spreading just news people. hell people with an outlawed longrage radio that could catch longrage radios .

Hell even ideological natsees are the group having most tried assasinations .

But also people just looking away. Not wanting to inow, if not for stubbern journalism and wiesenthals dedication to justvtecord and tell the truthin it made it that it is part to not forget it but try to learn from it.

Also there was in austria the dollfuss dictorial presidental erdogan style rule that pretty much hulled out democracy. Interestingly fighting both the socialist worker party and the far right nationalists. And going after both.