Being duped into hating your fellow in the proletariat and seeing killing them to “protect your nation” is very easy to do in times of war, and people there, from the communists-in-hiding to the Nazi bozos Sieg-heiling on the frontlines get to experience the horrors of war.
Many can’t deal with it and go abroad to a safer haven.
Here, you have not just thousands - millions of Bozos for whom you are also merely an instrument for advancing that state’s interests. Be it working at shit jobs for shit-euro-pay or getting sent back to die in a WW1-Style-trench. Who hate you if you are too much of a loser to fulfill their ever rising demands, who hate you if you dare existing too obviously.
The Europeans eagerly march into the same hatred as above, millions supporting the military, Sabre-rattling, even open warfare! All to show strength, even if it causes WW3!
Willing to FUCKING DIE for the nation, for its interests, economic and/or political, to own the evil barbarians (the same is highly likely to be said in Russia)
Proletarian Internationalism? But have you considered everyone but me us (and they say humans are selfish by nature) is morally evil!
And anger against all this doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, just into people who are considered better managers of nationalism - the fash.
let’s not pretend like your average Germans didn’t know about Jews being persecuted and murdered during the Nazi regime, and that many were fine with it.
Germans in 1945 be like “No we don’t know what happened to our Jewish neighbor, yes we immediately took their house and farm, don’t ask us if those are connected”
I doubt the “not knowing” thing was even actually common back then. It feels more like a bullshit narrative that got invented by nationalists that got accepted by liberals too to avoid personal negative consequences.
Italy for example had people going “Mussolini was good actually” people from the start and they were never punished - though those wanting fascist rule were unpopular, since most simply supported the Christian democrats. After all, they fulfilled what they wanted anyway - have a stable and well-run capitalist state that repressed anticapitalist dissent and protected their class interest through means like class collaborationism.
I doubt the “not knowing” thing was even actually common back then.
They knew. They all fucking knew.