anecdote : my German teacher (same age as my mom) was a little girl in rural well off Germany during WW2. She said general people outside cities had no idea about the Nazis and holocaust till they started hearing rumors, about which they were in denial, for a long time...the persistence of the rumors was gradually accepted as a horror.

Saying "Germany carried out the holocaust" might be accidentally read as if it was a unified effort. It may not have been.