There is this great German film Stalingrad from 1993, and in a scene early in the film infantrymen of the Wehrmacht are on a train heading east across the vast steppe, and there are scores of peasants with sickles hand harvesting grain. Sgt. Rollo, who was a farmer in civilian life, yells something to the effect of "You're going to be working for me!" at the Soviet peasants. Of course by the end of the film, all of the soldiers in the train car have either been killed in combat, frozen, or have starved to death.

But when Rollo made the comment, the Nazi Germans were winning, and winning big. Was the idea that he would have a giant farm in Ukraine worked by slaves stupid? At the time it seemed quite possible, I mean look where they were. The idea that all Germans were "stupid" rather than merely self interested is just false. Before WW II they had the most highly educated population in Europe. The 1936 Olympic Games were a triumph that impressed the World. They put the first man made object ever into space in the middle of the frickin' war. They built the first effective jet engined aircraft. Their leadership was well paid, and then there was all of the loot they took from all over Europe. They knew the value.

Even in doing the evil of the Holocaust, it was their efficiency that was most horrifying. They turned all healthy victims into slaves and basically worked them to death. The slaves built that space rocket. The danger is matching intelligence to good and stupidity to evil, because things don't work that way. Everyone does what they think is best for them, in that moment and time. Always ask how someone behaving in the way they did helped their self interests, not whether it was stupid or smart. It's an irrelevant judgement call.