> This is not an academic distinction at all, and is extremely important if one is to understand how the dictatorship and the Final Solution actually worked.

Exactly. And understanding this is vitally important—labeling every member of the German military a "Nazi" can create the dangerous illusion that the ratio of nut jobs to normal people in 1930s Germany was dramatically different than it is in 2020s USA/UK/EU/wherever, but it's not. The ratios were about the same, and most people who were complicit in the Nazi atrocities were complicit in a very passive, "don't stand out" kind of way.

Exaggerating the number of true Nazis ironically makes it more likely that something similar will happen again because it creates the false impression that you need some sort of overwhelming consensus in favor of pure evil to end up with a Hitler in charge. It allows us to let our guard down because we know that we aren't surrounded by Nazis, so such a thing must be very far away indeed, right?