Yeah, Gareth. In terms of inspiring a tremendously courageous and effective armed forces and civilian population the Nazis most certainly brought out "the best" in their troops and citizens, performance-wise...but aimed it toward terribly dark purposes. This, needless to say, was not evident to most of those troops at the time or they would not have fought so willingly and so well. As always, the ordinary many in uniform were duped into fighting and dying for the powerful few at the top. I'd say this has been the case in most, if not all military conflicts...although there are cases when those at the top sincerely believe they are defending all that is good and decent. I think Hitler believed that in fact! (But it's no excuse for what he did...)