(Let me just preface this by saying I am in no way pro Nazi. This is just a general question with no other motives whatsoever. I feel the need to say such because people always assume the worst online unless you explain away every scenario although I am quite certain I will get flamed and trolled for this question)
That being said, were the Nazis really the boogeymen historians lead us to believe? I know that history gets told by the victors, so given the allied victory over the Nazis, did we engage in a little historical revisionism? It just seems so hard to believe an entire nation would jump on-board and commit so many awful atrocities with unquestioned obedience and loyalty. I find it difficulty to reconcile such unabashed hate with the modern world and its interconnectedness.
It's difficult to answer whether the Nazis are as bad as "historians lead us to believe." They weren't comic book supervillains. They weren't out to conquer the whole world. But aside from people assuming they wanted to conquer the planet, I'm trying to think of how their actions were exaggerated (on a widespread level), and all I'm coming up with is the kind of occult silliness you find in Castle Wolfenstein.
It just seems so hard to believe an entire nation would jump on-board and commit so many awful atrocities with unquestioned obedience and loyalty.
This, to me and many people, is precisely what makes Nazi Germany so frightening, because it's essentially exactly what happened. Probably the best work on this would be Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. This books traces the history of one Reserve Police Battalion 101 (analogous to a unit of National Guard MPs). RPB 101 was a group of men that were, as the title suggests, completely ordinary. Civilian reservists called up to active duty. The duty they were put to was as part of the Einsatzgruppen: their job was to follow along behind the Wehrmacht during the invasion of the USSR, and round up Jews, Communist officials, and other undesirables, line them up, and shoot them in the head, one by one. This includes children and the elderly. They weren't SS, and didn't receive any special indoctrination or training. Their commanding officer said anyone who couldn't do it, didn't have to. But they did it. They might have seen it as a distasteful duty, and it certainly took a psychological toll on them, but they did it.
Some other things to look at are a few postwar psychological studies you may have heard of. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, a group of student research volunteers was divided into two groups: guards, and prisoners. They fell into their respective roles very quickly, and the experiment was called off after only six days because things were getting too sadistic.
The other notable psychological study to look at is the Milgram Experiment at Yale, which examined obedience to authority figures. The volunteer under study was told to push a button, which would administer an electric shock to another volunteer, out of sight of the first (but not out of earshot). The second volunteer was in fact an actor, and not receiving any shocks, but would respond with increasing screams and pleading as the "voltage" was increased. The subject with the button would almost always continue to push the button when told, even when the actor was begging them to stop, even when they believed they were administering a lethal shock.
From the FAQ on the side board over to the left...
What are you asking exactly? Whether the Nazis did less killing than is generally accepted? Or that they did the generally accepted amount of killing, but that doesn't make them evil?