Just replying to my own shit to add here:

I think the Nazis were the first instance of this kind of behavior that got caught on video. Just like the Vietnam war was the first war US citizenry saw on TV, I think the Third Reich and whatever the term is for the whole campaign of land grab invasions, and the Holocaust, is a pattern that’s been going on for thousands of years, and it’s the first time the whole world was witness to it.

For the majority of history a king or emperor or whoever could march out armies, destroy, use a ton of his own internal political enemies as slaves and work them to death, then just murder the rest of them … and cover it up almost effortlessly by telling the town criers to announce whatever horseshit they want the farmers to believe.

We know historically this happens. But the Holocaust is the first of the pogroms that everybody around the world saw, and in the greater set of genocides. It was the first time (I think?) that absolute mass atrocity on civilians was televised.

But it’s not a unique event is the key thing. It’s the most well-known example of the eruption of evil into the world, but it’s a recurring part of humanity to do this kind of thing.