No no, you see, the Germans were EVIL and were knowingly doing terrible things because they enjoyed them. Hitler was drinking the blood of children while the wehrmacht paraded guns around going "BLITZKREIG! BLITZKREIG!", and everyone supped from the skulls of slaves on a daily basis.
Sadly, this was the vision promulgated by western propaganda, as the notion that a civilised group of people could end up where Germany ended up was unconscionable, and incomprehensible to most - and this visage is still stuck in the mind of most as "how NAZIsm happened", rather than the very slippery, very real slope they found themselves tumbling down.
Exactly. Instead what should have been popularized were Stanley Milgram's obedience to authority experiments that were performed to answer the question as to why many otherwise well meaning humans would collectively engage in horrible acts like extermination of a race of people. That experiment and Soloman Asch's experiments in conformity pretty much show that Americans are just as capable of the same acts as Nazi Germany.
Sadly we really don't even need those experiments to show we are also capable of such atrocities. Abu Gharaib, Guantanamo Bay, Extraordinary Rendition, WWII Japanese Internment camps and other examples from our history show that we already have.
Godwin's Law is well rooted in basic human nature.
Sadly, this was the vision promulgated by western propaganda, as the notion that a civilised group of people could end up where Germany ended up was unconscionable, and incomprehensible to most - and this visage is still stuck in the mind of most as "how NAZIsm happened", rather than the very slippery, very real slope they found themselves tumbling down.