Thank you, Snowball. Also check the
Stanford prison experiment and the
Asch confomity experiments for other famous studies on the subject. There are many more where those came from.
Ordinary people do horrible things under the right conditions. Even if this guy
had killed people, the circumstances would be almost impossible for us to understand.
Training guard dogs at a facility that he may have known nothing about isn't much of a "crime," and the justice system should never be used to enforce moral views, much less vengeful fantasies. And some of us like the "innocent until proven guilty" idea, and there's a reason for the statute of limitations (which would obviously apply to anyone whose greatest crime was serving as an accomplice by training dogs). But none of this should be necessary.
Hitler was perceived as the legitimate authority at that time, and what we know about psychology shows clearly that alone would be enough to have regular people doing all kinds of awful things. Indicting the whole country of Germany because they followed a charismatic leader who seemed like a responsible figure at the time is absurd. And there's no country in the world that wouldn't fall for similar tactics.