This was the horrifying thing about the nerenberg trials, not that the Nazis were somehow inhuman shape changers who condemned millions to slavery, torture and death, but the fact that they were regular hamuman beings with regular families, thoughts and desires who condemned millions to slavery torture and death.

It is known as “the banality of evil”, the point of the concept isn’t to excuse the Nazis but to make people aware that ordinary people in the “right” environment can absolutely become evil.

If you believe Nazis aren’t people you are avoiding the work of ensuring you don’t act like them, more critically you are avoiding the work of ensuring your friends and family and other “people” you know aren’t acting like them. I don’t mean hats with skulls on them and building has chambers, but I mean the intentional “othering” of people, in the Nazis time Jews, homosexuals, gypsies etc. today probably some other groups. The root of the Nazis evil is that they considered these people sub human and therefore any actions taken against them, no matter how vicious were morally correct so long as they benefitted “real people”.

A similar root exists behind many of the worst institutional evils in the world today, e.g. the active genocides in Sudan and Palestine.

This is why the nerenberg trials were and are important.

It’s becoming more common where I am for a couple to move back to somewhere near one of their sets of parents before they have kids so they can rely on them for occasional childcare since both of the new parents usually have jobs