Are you suggesting most Germans didn't know about holocaust or that it didn't happen?
We've created the perfect "bad guy" to fuel our need for a good vs evil narrative in which we can justify all our evil actions by acting for the "greater good" because we are the "good guys", we won! Remember?
Conveniently it's exactly that kind of mindset which allowed the Nazis to do what they did, they told people it was for the greater good and these Jews are the bad guys and they'd need to do bad things to win against these bad guys.
It's not like SS officers thought to themselves "Yay I'm such an evil person, I just love killing people, it's so much fun!", only very few humans are actually broken like that.
In the same way, no normal human being willingly tortures other people, you need to give them a bigger cause, like protecting their country from evil terrorism, to give them the motivation to get over their consciousness.
Maybe I'm naive, but I simply don't think there's such a thing as "evil people" or "good people", there are just people. A few of them might be very broken but still smart enough to manipulate many other people, but they don't represent anything or anybody but themselves.
Hypothetically, if 95% of a country was 'evil', does that excuse killing the nice 5%?
Further, as an American I recognize America historically committed genocide, that does not mean everyone in that time period was evil.
(1) Historically a commonly accepted definition of 'evil'.
PS: I am in no way supporting the horrors humanity has produced. Just commenting on how easy it is to apply labels and then by your own words kill millions of innocent people.
Herein population can be understood to mean any group of people from a small band of individuals up to the population of a continent.
This isn't morally reasonable because I would in fact probably sacrifice any number of people who are not close to me for those that are however I tend to think that the majority would make the same decision. This is why having individuals make such life and death decisions would probably be a bad idea.
I don't think I could reasonably on the other hand punish the guilty 1% and also the innocent 99%. I guess everyone probably has a line but I don't know if you can ethically define and what point it becomes right or wrong because I don't think most people consider even the mundane choices they make logically.
I think most such choices are actually made emotionally.
I would go so far as to suggest most choices are made emotionally. Brand advertising and propaganda are used because they work.
Also, I must complement you for honesty, and I think most people share your views. I can only comment that very rarely is a population a meaningful direct threat rather than at worst a dangerous tool, but those terms will be banded about to leverage our natural responses.