“I know you told me a year ago that the Nazis believed these things and that I ought to take them seriously. But I thought it was the usual campaign rhetoric and didn’t mean a thing. And I still think so. Now that they’re in power they’ll have to learn that one can’t do such things. After all, this is the twentieth century […] You can’t imagine the things some of the higher-ups say to us when no one from the outside is listening"
This quote is disturbing for two reasons. One, it sounds exactly like what thousands of Americans are saying right now to excuse and downplay the same radicals they’ve voted for or work under. And two, the person who said this almost innocent, almost rational sounding spiel about his own party, Reinhold Hensch, still went on to become known as “The Monster” who was in charge of the extermination campaign against Jewish people and other “enemies of the Nazi state.”
Adventures of a Bystander - Peter F. Drucker
yeah that’s literally what they were saying at the start of the nazi regime