Several years ago, I substitute taught in a high school social studies class in which students were asked to write an essay on slavery from a pro-slavery point of view. I saw nothing wrong with it, since that sort of assignment would enable the students to understand the pro-slavery point of view. The teacher who assigned the Nazi essay may have had the same objective.
And what’s the point of such exercises? What’s the point of assigning a student, or anybody, even an educated person, to write from the point of view of, say, a slave, at a plantation in the South in 1800? An exercise in ignorance. Heavy duty literary writers struggle with such (self imposed) assignments, and come up short half of the time.
Read history books, you dummies!
I agree. The scariest thing about the Nazis wasn’t Hitler, there are madmen all over the place, the scary thing was about how the ordinary German could ultimately wind up embracing such a madman.
Think it can’t happen again? Don’t bet on it.