> I agree we shouldn't let "regular Germans" from that time escape the responsibility for WW2. Be it through voting for Hitler, supporting nazis in other ways, or simply ignoring the threat and not uniting and voting against Hitler before it was too late.

I did not say any of this, ever. Read my comment. Don’t put words in my mouth.

> After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany, and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge.[33] Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934.[34] In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht

The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.

Have you taken any history courses on this subject, or have any sort of academic experience that would make you qualified to take the position that you're taking here with such confidence?

> I did not say any of this, ever. Read my comment. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Sorry, my bad. I assumed you were reasonable.

> The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.

And forced hundreds of thousands of innocent people from occupied countries to join it.

> Be it through voting for Hitler, supporting nazis in other ways, or simply ignoring the threat and not uniting and voting against Hitler before it was too late.

You seem to be ignorant of how badly democracy worked in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic never had an elected government, every attempt to form one failed. While the elections had an effect on the composition of the Reichstag all positions of power ended up getting assigned round robin style. The Nazis established their control of the country through emergency legislation passed to deal with terrorism, which let them bypass the Reichstag almost entirely. When the Nazis called for a vote in the Reichstag at gunpoint to establish Hitler as the Fuhrer they had to fudge attendance records because most elected members of parliament where either dead or in prison.

> You seem to be ignorant of how badly democracy worked in the Weimar Republic

And whose fault is that? If you fail to fix your country political system for long enough - you get dictatorship and eventually war. There's nobody responsible for it other than citizens of that country.

Whose fault is it that USA democracy is turning into oligarchy? Politicians - sure, but these politicians keep getting elected despite gerrymandering, taking billions in "lobbying" for tax cuts, openly lying, ignoring obvious systemic problems, etc.

Whose fault is it, that Putin could invade Ukraine and kill hundreds of thousands of people? Regular Russians had a faulty democracy and decided to do nothing as it was dismantled step by step. Now they are sent to die murdering innocent people.

Ultimately you can't escape the responsibility for your country. If you did nothing - you're an accomplice.

> for long enough

The German empire underwent revolts during the end of WWI. They just missed the mark a bit. Instead of Willhelm II they should have gotten rid of Hindenburg, who starting 1916 was singlehandedly in charge of the German military and refused every peace offer until the empire was left without allies and struggled with countless internal revolts. Instead of taking the blame for prolonging the war he walked away smelling like roses, helped establish the Weimar Republic and played a key role in it to its end where he got cosy with the Nazis, directly aiding their rise to power.

In short, people tried to fix things, they got rid of Willhelm II and got Hitlers best buddy instead.

> The German empire underwent revolts during the end of WWI

By communists and far-right :) Where were the pro-democratic mainstream protests? It was the communists (USSR) and nazis (3rd Reich) who started WW2 after being unchecked for 2 decades.

> Instead of Willhelm II they should have gotten rid of Hindenburg, who starting 1916 was singlehandedly in charge of the German military and refused every peace offer until the empire was left without allies and struggled with countless internal revolts. Instead of taking the blame for prolonging the war he walked away smelling like roses, helped establish the Weimar Republic

Is this view mainsteam in modern Germany? Considering how popular the Stab-in-the-Back theory was in interwar period I would think prolonging the war more, letting german cities be occupied etc. - would have resulted in nazis losing popularity not gaining it. So if anything - Hindenburg mistake was the opposite - saving German infrastructure and lives at the cost of making Germans conspiracy theories and nazis.

But nevermind the peace treaty. Nazis could have been stopped at many points. If socialists managed to work with communists for one thing (but then again - Germany was already training their army in secret in USSR at that point after Rapallo, so it's probably not realistic).

The problem is that Germans seemed to protest in favour of extremes more often and more violently than against them. So extremes won.

BTW it might seem like I single out Germans. But in my country - Poland - democracy failed in a very similar way in 1926. And people were at fault too. Keeping the country democratic is the responsibility of citizens.