I believe that the white washing of Nazi crimes, particularly by the Wehrmacht, the rehabilitation of many war criminals and Nazi collaborators by the US government and media, and the fast tracking of them into the US are contributing factors that brought us to where we are today in the US.
The criminality and complicity of the army in the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes escalated most clearly during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Well before the attack, the High Command issued three “Criminal Orders” which explicitly rejected the laws of war and encouraged soldiers to commit atrocities.
The first, the “Jurisdiction Order,” stated that soldiers would not be prosecuted for crimes in the Soviet Union as they would elsewhere in Europe.
Second, soldiers received the “Guidelines for the Behavior of the Troops” which instructed that “this war demands ruthless and aggressive action against Bolshevik agitators, snipers, saboteurs, and Jews, and tireless elimination of any active or passive resistance.” Thus, Jews became almost immediately a target for the German army.
Finally, the Commissar Order directed that all captured Soviet political commissars be immediately executed. Political commissars were Soviet Communist Party officials who oversaw its military units and reported directly to party leaders. The order was in direct violation of the treaties Germany had signed. Nevertheless, 90 percent of German units carried it out.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-military-and-the-holocaust
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