I've been looking through this all, and I gotta say Wofford really has the best look at this (IMHO).
First off, let me say that I'm deeply affected by the Nazi atrocities, AND the Russian horrors, which don't come to light nearly often enough (if anyone hasn't heard of the massacre at Katin, please look it up. You'll never look at WWII the same way again). My great-grandfather was shot in the back by a stray Russian bullet and dumped in a mass grave in Russian-controlled Poland. We, to this day, have no idea exactly where. It HAPPENED. There's no viewpoint, it HAPPENED.
That said, I was a history minor in college, and that really taught me to look at things from multiple perspectives. History IS WRITTEN BY THE VICTOR. There is no good guy, no bad guy. No fact that one way of life is better than another, just opinions. I highly recommend the works of historian Howard Zinn to you all - what he does is look at the history of the US from the perspective of the "losers," the Native Americans, the South, the revolutionary poor. You may not agree with his views, but they show just how much is twisted in history classes today. We're taught black and white stories - Washington and Lincoln are heroes, Hitler is the bad guy, etc. The U.S. is never wrong. And that's a load of bull. Tell that to the Japanese-Americans who did nothing wrong, yet were put into Work Camps during WWII. And while they weren't death camps like the Nazis did, it was still taking people's freedom. And there's nothing OK about that. Not to mention the way the US treated anyone who had ANY communist sympathies in the 50's. Went to a meeting, even by accident? Get locked up by McCarthy's goon squad. The US supressed freedom in Vietnam, Korea, Cuba...all because we didn't agree with their viewpoints.
Was Hitler crazy? YES. But what the rest of the world did to Germany following WWI was wrong. WRONG. Oppressed an entire country, making it ripe for a psycho like him. Not to mention if you opposed the govt they treated you just like one of those oppressed peoples (Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc). You really think all Nazi's were bloodthirsty killers? I don't. A lot of them were just young men who felt like they had no choice. I feel bad for them, and the way they're depicted. A lot of them did horrible things, no doubt. But a lot more still just wanted to serve their country and didn't know what that entailed until it was too late. The same can be said for the Russians, including, perhaps, the ones that killed my great-grandfather.
I know I'm rambling here, but I guess what it boils down to is, history is history. We shouldn't forget it, but we should never say this guy is bad and this guy is good. Because you didn't walk in their shoes. You don't know what life was like. And you never will. It's easy in the movies to look at good guys and bad guys. But don't apply those rules to history, because REAL LIFE doesn't work that way.
