Observation 1. The Nazis really sucked. I mean they really really really really sucked. (OK, as I said, observations may not be all that original.)

Not news to me either, but what has struck me more freshly was the overriding -- brazenness -- to their evil. They didn't much worry about the restraints demanded on evil by ordinary hypocrisy that even totalitarians feel the need to honor, what with hypocrisy being the classic tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The Nazis were far too brazen to perform hypocrisy too much, except under duress or opportunity. Sure they did practice hypocrisy in indoctrination and propaganda to cover their crimes and inspire the less malicious within the home population. And they manufactured false expressions of goodwill or smoke-and-mirrors to entice cooperation among their victims.

But they really could be rather open about the fact that they ulitmately esteemed sadism, hatred, and violence, and regarded their fellow humans as beasts ripe for slaughter, servitude and rapine. Such is never far from the surface and often just shallowly buried, with transparent smirks, under or amidst self-righteous and dishonest pleas for peace or justice. (These tended to occur when protesting the victimization of Germany in the past or of ethnic German minorities elsewhere. Or falsely challenging generally factual allegations of atrocities. )

In this regard one can also see the problem with those -- and to be fair they are not typically pro-Nazi apologists at all, though some are -- who want to demonstrate or contend that the Communists were as bad or worse.

Those holding that view usually do so by citing the genuinely massive totalled-up hard numbers of victims of Stalin's rule, or perhaps Mao's, in comparison to Nazi Germany's in the long run. But aside from the time-duration problem -- one would have to extrapolate Nazi crimes out to multiple generations to make a real comparison -- the qualitative problem remains. Stalin and his ilk always felt a need for more fervent hypocrisy and deception. They felt compelled to explain or portray themselves in light of the purported humanism in their Marxist creed.

The Nazis ultimately cared not a whit for outside approval or vindication, except when tactically necessary in times of weakness.

Stalin was a cautious and opportunistic expansionist at best. The Nazis, however, lived and died, for the murderous aggrandizement of Germany and the dehumanization of much of the rest of homo sapiens, and in order to commit the mass slaughter of Jews and, with less enthusiasm but similar effort, a few other classes of people.

Violence and genocide were the Nazi goals, not just their means. Slavery was the just and natural order for them, not merely an opportunity to perpetuate power, ideology, or economy.

One shouldn't downgrade the failed comparisons too much -- after all if Hitler has had any criminal competition on a global scale, Stalin is a fair candidate to offer; perhaps Mao even more so. And in more local scenarios, Pol Pot would be a possible direct match, or the non-Communist Hutu nationalists of 1990s Rwanda.

But on the whole, the brazenness, made compelling by the core evil of the National Socialist German Labor [Worker] Party worldview, sticks out. The Nazis did not merely practice evil, they cherished it with an open satanic eagerness.

Even on the Axis side, in relative comparison, Mussolini was a mere hobbyist, and the Japanese militarists just very strong minor leaguers.