Hitler was raised with these ideas about the Jews. Heck, everyone hated the Jews. A plague comes about and "Hey, let's blame the Jews! We'll torture them until they confess of dumping poison in the water!"

And let's face it: Hitler suffered from "Short-Man-High-Voice Syndrome" or SMHVS. (Sorry, a joke my friend and I have about the short men in the world always being ready to fight and to take over the world. Really just a joke.)
Hitler I think comes pretty darn close to being evil, but most of his outrageous evil acts came about when it's very safe to say he became insane. I agree with Ragnar in that Himmler and Hitler's closest confidants take the same or more blame. Hitler would have remained the "nutter in the pub" as Ragnar put it if the German people had not bought in to vocal tricks (never mind that they were desperate for a bit of patriotism and pride - the same thing could happen easily here and I would say that the American people had done the same with Bush except he has no vocal talent whatsoever... that is except making up new words).
I think the fact of the matter is that we all can fall into what we now would see as evil pretty easily. In a time and/or place where murdering someone for stealing your goat would be acceptable, it would not be seen as bad. It's a little different than murdering 6 million Jews, I admit, but it was seen as acceptable by Hitler and the officers doing the killing and those in support of Hitler's "grand plan." In Aztec times you captured your enemy and you killed him to appease the Gods. I forget how many they killed and why exactly, but there were natural disasters and they sacrificed many thousands (may have been millions but I do not have my facts on this

Okay jeez this is long enough ><