Talk:Little Hans/@comment-29788669-20170205225547/@comment-4487748-20180519135710

Well, he is the protagonist of the short, so technically, he's not the villain. However, for historical purposes, the answer is a lot more complicated. Like many young soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, Hans was never truly his own man. Nazi Germany wasn't just a country run by an autocratic dictator where if you keep your mouth shut and do as you're told, you wouldn't get into trouble, it was a totalitarian society. Hitler and the Nazi Party injected themselves into every single facet of German life, both public and private. They wanted absolute obedience and devotion, and what better way to achieve that than to use the kids? This short is clearly propaganda, but in this case, they were not that far from the truth. Kids like Hans and their peers were never truly their own people, and that's why even historians are asking themselves to this day, "Can we truly call every single regular foot soldiers of Nazi Germany 'evil'?" I say the short answer is no. The long answer is that even though the Germans of the time did not share a common guilt, they did, however, share a common responsibility.