Bomber boys - bbc one

[kendo65]

A reply to (and maybe criticism of !) my own post.

I may have a naive impression of the German populace in WW2 as being unaware of the scale of the slaughter being perpetrated on the Jews? (I realise that there was obvious awareness of the discrimination and removal of Jews from daily life (ghettoisation, etc). I think there may be differing opinions amongst historians on how actively involved the general populace was. Indifference, ignorance or fear-driven inaction versus general complicity?

Question to those in the know - which of the above is closer to the truth?

(the above was written before, but posted after CSThor's response )
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding Heydrich and specific individuals - there will always be particular people with combinations of sociopathic or psychopathic personality traits, and extreme political views that will allow them to balance and reconcile brutality towards chosen targets with civic duty and normal family activities. My argument above largely stands or falls on the reasons why the Nazis were able to get away with it. Ie how many people like Heydrich, Hitler does it take to pull a whole society along behind them? Obviously not everyone is complicit. How many then need to keep quiet and just follow orders? What happens to those who oppose but feel powerless to intervene?

I suspect some of the above questions could be applied to some Allied airmen who may have had deep misgivings about what they were doing to German cities. I was struck in the Bomber TV programme by the crewman who cracked up during a mission. 'Lack of moral fibre'. One expressed reservations but justified his participation with 'They started it'. That's not meant as a criticism of the individuals, more a comment on the near-impossibilty of maintaining any kind of normal judgement of behaviour in such an extreme situation as a war.

How much personal responsibilty do ordinary individuals carry when they are basically 'caught' in situations of deep powerlessness with few or no ways out?