No Stupid Questions

This is absolutely inaccurate and borderline revisionism. Germans were not held at gunpoint to heil Hitler or risk being shot, the average german was perfectly happy and enjoyed the comforts naziism brought them. This inaccurate portrayal does nothing but abstract naziism to be an entity that only exists under specific horrifying conditions and not the reality that for the vast majority of Germans they were happy to be nazis.

Please go read about nazi germany before you make up some fanfic about how it was just like the wolfenstein games. "They Thought They were free" is a book entirely centered around the experiences of the average German during the nazi regime and not one word of your description is in his book.

From Milton Mayer:

These ten men were not men of distinction. They were not men of influence. They were not opinion-makers. Nobody ever gave them a free sample of anything on the ground that what they thought of it would increase the sales of the product. Their importance lay in the fact that God—as Lincoln said of the common people—had made so many of them. In a nation of seventy million, they were the sixty-nine million plus. They were the Nazis, the little men to whom, if ever they voiced their own views outside their own circles, bigger men politely pretended to listen without ever asking them to elaborate.

Only one of my ten Nazi friends saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect. This was Hildebrandt, the teacher. And even he then believed, and still believes, in part of its program and practice, “the democratic part.” The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.

That's more or less what I've read.

In the movies it's portrayed as if Nazis made everything clean, orderly, "civilized", but the unfavorable people were removed and killed, slave labor was used and so on, and all of it in the atmosphere of "civilization and normalcy".

It's probably to communicate the shock, but in fact things were like you describe them.

Nazis would rule in a medieval way, so to say, minus divine right to rule. Random murders (again, without normalcy or formality, just so, and quite brutal sometimes), torture locations in buildings with windows always open amid crowded enough places, where sounds of someone being beaten to death were heard day and night, such stuff.

The other guy is right too, most people learned to perceive this as normal and not everyone was killed for being not loyal enough, just a few.

Like in today's Russia not every 16 years old schoolgirl gets into prison for 8 months for blowing up a petard in a public place, the number of whose who does is not big enough to imprint in the public that this even happens, but enough to spread non-verbal fear. Similar with posting a random protest text, or saying something about war, etc. That's called making an example.

OK, Russia's regime has that innovation of doing these things covertly enough for there to not be open intimidation. Cause open intimidation causes public reaction more than they need. They are more careful.

Thanks for sharing.

I'm guessing it felt a lot like the video games and books describe living in a fascist regime

Soldiers are everywhere, and you do your best to not stand out for any reason.

You are always worried about someone turning you in on false accusations.

You have to hide your joy, and save it for only the deepest parts of your home.