"To condemn every last person wearing a Nazi uniform to a brutal death is just about as evil as doing the same to those who wear a yellow star. You might say "but they were FORCED to wear the star." In some cases, there would be significant pressure to don a uniform."
Thucydides, I'm going to ignore the surreal comparison between wearing a uniform in action and getting herded at gunpoint into a train here and stick to your point, which essentially seems to boil down to the question, "but what about 'the good german?'"
And I say "there weren't many," and you say 'but there were some!' Which is why earlier, I replied to one of your (?) comments by noting that *enough* Germans were pro-Nazi by word, deed or omission that generalizations could be made, and still can be - and even, still *should* be if we're going to avoid repeating the mistakes Germany made as a nation.
Of course there were exceptions, and bless them for their efforts. Really, I mean that. But there were SO few, Allied soldiers and nations had no moral choice but to shoot every German in uniform, and many out of uniform, as if that German represented the worst of Nazism because for practical purposes the entire German nation was doing precisely that. You could, for example, have a very nice, kind German family man in a garrison unit in the Loire Valley. And you know what? No matter how nice he is, he's still an agent of forcible occupation, and short of off taking his uniform and deserting or actively assisting the resistance from within, said sample German did make, had made, and was making the moral choice to participate in the actions of a deeply immoral state engaged in deeply immoral actions. Short of his own surrender at the first sight of the enemy, the only moral Allied course was to kill him as the agent of Nazism he in fact and deed was. Period.
In the midst of a total war started unprovoked by a lethal enemy, it isn't our responsibility to stop, pluck out, and forgive or protect the (tiny) moral minority, especially if the moral minority happens to be occupying the same territory, wearing the same uniform, and shooting the same rifle with ammo made from the same munitions factory as the 600 other amoral assholes in his battalion. For all intents and purposes, enough was wrong, by enough of Germany, that we can make generalizations about its national behavior because German actions and support for Nazism made those generalizations true enough to stick.
Ok, so what if there was "pressure" to join, or enlist, or conscription? What if fighting to conquer a dozen countries was "the law." Well, so what? To the point earlier (warsprite, I think) that Germans were living under duress, oh well - so was half of Europe. The risk of life and limb didn't stop tens of millions of Allied soldiers and civilians on either side of the front line taking extreme risks - how can we laud them on the one hand, and then say "it's cool, no big deal" to the German who shot back on the other side of the line as though he's some sort of victim? Millions took risks and died doing it, yet strangely, in the face of those same risks, the German underground, such as it was, was a microscopic speck. Not incidentally, in Japan, it was nonexistent. German actions during the war speak for themselves, and speak rather more loudly than post-war words.
It's a stain and an insult to the memory of those people who DID those risks - and often lost life, limb or family to do it - to apply some sort of weepy moral airbrush as if millions of Germans spoke out or objected when nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the contrary was true: millions of Germans risked their lives repeatedly to maintain the occupation, to plunder their conquests or accelerate the Holocaust. Such is the ledger of history.
Move question
for a 150 or so pot game... It was forever ago though.
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