People tend to forget that the reasons behind WW2 go back to how Germany and her people were treated by what became the Allied nations after WW1. I would say that the average German was fighting to bring Germany back as a country. Most of the officers fought in WW1, and everyone remembered the way they were treated. Germany was basically destroyed economically following WW1 and was stripped of its military.
Mind you, WW1 was not a war they started either.
You do know why the rest of the world hated Germany after WWI, right? Issuing a blanque cheque to Austria, indiscriminate submarine warfare, BELGUIM...yeah. A shit load of stuff that seems mundane today (well, Belguim is still considered pretty low even by today's standards), but pretty unreasonable by the standards of that time. Versailles was, indeed, a cock-up, but it isn't a complete explanation for why the Germans decided to elect Hitler.
Another part of the reason would be the extreme left and right movements within Germany, and the previous Imperial government. Both Communist and Nationalism were pretty big concerns for most European Nations by the early 1900s. By the 1920s, both of these movements were vocal enough to unbalance the moderates...the ones in charge of the Weimar Republic. Without enough support, plans to rebuild Germany (like the Dawes Plan) simply couldn't gain enough backing to really get off the ground. Hitler and his party simply continued to unbalance the centrists, and promised action against communism. The old Imperial model of government still held a lot of appeal to voting citizens...so, extreme nationalism. And the election.
None of this, of course, even begins to address the situation in Japan or Italy; Germany isn't the War. Italy's fascist model seems to indicate that Germany's choice of Hiter had less to do with Versailles than the Depression, or simple phobia.
Of course, none of this excuses the various pleasantries committed by Nazi Germany during the war.
So I think that, at the beginning, the people were fighting for what they saw as the liberation of the German people as a whole, including those of Germanic descent in other countries.
Yeah, they merely didn't listen to Hitler's speeches, didn't see the yellow stars, didn't notice the "disappearings", didn't find the book burnings, didn't regard the brain drain, didn't see the T-4 euthanization program, didn't read
Mein Kampf...most of them knew perfectly well what the "liberation of the German people" meant. But, hey, that's apathy. As long as it's only happening to them...I've heard that somewhere, too. Strangely enough, it was on the subject of repression against
Nazi Germans, not against Jews.
Als sie mich holten, or something like that.
As for the armies of liberation, yea, because the United States, Britain, and the Soviets were all lovely people, who never took land from anyone, and never in recent history....oh wait, they did. The Brits were finally losing their world wide Empire as slave states managed to gain freedom, the Soviets had just started their expansion, and the US took an interest outside its own borders again leading us to where we are now.
...If that's all you can name, than I can top that list. But none of it has to do with Nazi Germany. It doesn't put anything into perspective. One way or another, that's still 12 million
cleansed in less than six years, not counting the other atrocities. And, if Germany had
won...if you are comparing the "armies of liberation" to Nazi Germany, enough said.
History is always written by the victors. But sometimes, the victors don't need to vilify their opponents. The opposition does that just fine on their own.
