Chris

Exactly. And at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, this is a useful lesson in recent history. It has become quite fashionable over the last couple of decades to talk about WW2 in terms of what 'the Nazis' did, rather than simply 'Germany' as was more common throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

The idea that the conflagration was caused entirely by the aggression of a political party is nonsense. The Nazi Party could never have achieved what it did without the passive approval of the masses, especially in the early years of their rise, and the active participation of the ones who, as you put it, found it a boon to their own self-importance to be able to inform on their neighbours to the authorities and took joy in seeing their vision of order and discipline enforced by men in uniform.

It is mildly disturbing to see how vocal some people have become in that vein in this country, and it is not hard to see how, given a prolonged existential crisis, we could end up with enthusiastic little Hitlers in every community in the UK.