The SS in "Inglorious Basterds"

It is hard to comprehend the sheer numbers victimized and the constant atrocities that the Nazis committed, because we have nothing to compare them to. I think movies are important in order to provide visual representations which allow the viewer to quantify the Holocaust better. For example, before seeing the first chapter of Quentin Tarantino's fictional WW2 film, "Inglorious Basterds," I had no idea how SS soldiers acted. The SS officer in this movie is a smooth-talking, polite but forceful, and extremely craft individual. Although he orders the deaths of fugitive Jews in the first "chapter" with a cold and dismissive tone, he did not strike me as particularly barbaric. Although this film is fictional, I believe that this demotion is historically accurate: Nazi officers would hunt and kill Jews as if they were rodents, and instead of "murdering" them, an action after which one might feel remorse, these SS men would exterminate them like rats. This speaks to the dehumanization of the Jewish people by Nazi propaganda, that human beings could kill Jews as if they action was no more significant than the squashing of a bug.