[Skybird]

Hitler is not unique in using unscrupulousness and gifted rethoric to claim power when the opportunity arose, and to kick countries into wars. Nor is he unique regarding the police dictatorship he established. Genocides there have been before and afterward as well, which also counted hundreds of thousands and even millions of civilian victims.

What makes him unique and what the real unique horror of the crimes of the Third Reich represents, is the industrialization of genocide in the camps. KZs may have been a British invention, and abuse of POW may have been practiced by many war-waging countries before and afterwards (as we know by now, all factions in WWII did that, even all Allied armies), but the art of industrializing the killing of people like cattle in a slaughterhouse, the complete transformation of turning human victims into things, into animal like cattle on a ranch, was what got perfected by the Nazis. The massacre and mass raping in Nanking can be explained from a human level. The drop of the atomic bombs. The bombing of cities. The abuse of POVs by soldiers of all participating armies, axis and Allies alike. All that can be explained as being one reflection of this human nature that is made both of light and shadow. But industrialized killing farms - that breaks the limit of what was and is imaginable for a sane mind.

One could of course say: humans did it, so it is one reflection of the dark side of human nature as well. But I admit: irrational or not, at this point I hit a wall.