How the Nazis made Germans complicit in the killing of the Jews

How culpable are all Afghan men for the misogyny of religious zealots among them? How widely were Canadians responsible for the harm done to native children in residential schools? Were nearly all Rwandan Hutus implicated in the 1994 mass killings of Tutsis? Whenever the extent of group guilt is at issue, the ur-question lurking in the background is, How much did ordinary Germans know about the Final Solution? This review of recent breakthrough historical writing suggests a nuanced answer, perhaps best summed up as “enough to know that it was better not to know more.”

The Atlantic