I'm thinking the German people gave themselves to a perceived greater good, allowing much more than war to come on the world.
What is
much more than a war that kills 80million people and damages all the survivors and their countries?
Not all the Germans 'gave themselves'. It doesn't even take a majority to take control of government: bullies tend to rule, even when most of the people only go along out of fear. And it was a whole lot more complicated and took a whole lot longer for the nazi party to gain power than just telling the people :"We're gonna make Germany great again!"
If they'd had the option of sacrificing themselves for whatever
they considered the greater good (which was not necessarily Hitler's idea of the Reich), most Germans might have said no. In wars, people don't get that option. Somebody else makes the decision to sacrifice them. It's nothing to do with altruism.
Some did get out before it was too late; some opposed the regime and were disappeared. The survivors mostly got their souls back, eventually, but half of them had to do hard penance under Stalin and his successors.
Obviously they were looking at hard realities and grasping for some form of order and dignity.
That, too. But they never voted for the outcome that was thrust upon them.
Judgment from hindsight, especially from a very comfortable distance, is easy... but not necessarily accurate.
Yet the ideology always breaks down into a regime.
No, it's the other way around. Regimes adopt, hijack and abuse ideals.
It starts out with the best intentions, yet history shows us that it doesn't work.
Which "it"?
The American revolutionaries were pissed at paying tax to the English crown. They picked a fight. They won. Then they concocted a constitution, with the underlying ideal of liberty equality and democracy. (So did the french revolutionaries a few years later. ) With good - if not the very best - intentions. They were partially successful, though they made some fatal errors. Of course it didn't work as they hoped it would.
But - What were the available alternatives, and which of those would have worked better?
Maybe it would be better to take him to McDonald's and make certain he's eating?
I had a friend once who did just that. It's a little way toward being one's brother's keeper, which was the philosophy he followed.
Or maybe I should buy him a quart of beer?
Your choice. Either way, the act of giving something for nothing is altruistic.
more so - in my ledger, anyway - if you don't judge.
