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I’ve been re-reading all my history books about the Nazis. One thing that strikes me is how hard it was to fight back against Nazism from inside. The normative culture is so strong and everybody is just going along. Ordinary folks, with denouncing their neighbours to the Gestapo. The Gestapo was tiny only 32k. It was the ordinary people that were informing on their neighbours. Ordinary people enabled Nazism.
The other thing that strikes me is how viciously the Nazis went after their “enemies” as soon as they got into power. They attacked leftists, communists, church leaders & intellectuals (as well as Jews). They had lists of people they wanted gone. And they ticked off those lists assiduously. Nobody expected this in a “civilised” nation.
@kcarruthers They also culled their own such as the purge of gay Nazis in 1934. No dissent or difference must be allowed and strength must be projected at all times, not just to make people think they are undefeatable but to turn people into those who police themselves.
@RustyBertrand @black_flag @kcarruthers Fucking hell. I have no words. 
@aral @RustyBertrand @kcarruthers Paragraph 175 wasn't a "Nazi law". It had been German law for many decades prior to the Nazis even existing. Germany was very much a country where homosexuality was illegal and civil activists like the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld had fought for repeal of Paragraph 175 for decades. That said, Hirschfeld's own sexological institute was one of the first buildings trashed, its library burnt, by the Nazis in 1933.