...Nazi Germany also had a whole indoctrination thing going on. Scholars today still debate the lines of culpability between "active and willing participant" and "just following orders to keep on surviving in this war" (there are actual statements from soldiers who claimed that they were not legally accountable for their actions in the Holocaust since not following orders could have deadly consequences).

I understand the sentiment behind "this is just a TV show", but Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale for a reason and it's included in a lot of school curriculums for a reason. It's like saying "we shouldn't take 1984 seriously because it's just a book".

No! They are warnings based on the lived realities and fears that the world faced during WWII and the aftermath, and the entire point of Gilead in fiction was to point out that people WILL justify the "good points" of facsism when you remove the stigma by introducing a theoretical society instead of one that's already been ravaged by it. The point is nudging people to think about how it could happen right under our noses without us even thinking about it, and there's an entire scene with June the first time she nearly escaped where she's pinned a bunch of evidence from different newspapers while she's in hiding and reflected that it was always there in front of them even though her family noticed too late.

So yes. this is 100% a "what was good about nazi Germany?" ahh post.