[quote=@Vilageidiotx]
First you have the Holocaust, then you have My-Lai. Those had an interesting effect going forward. Really, the twentieth century in general had a fascinating effect on how we perceive these things. 
[/quote]

There was some interesting research done on the psychology behind receiving and carrying out immoral orders. I'm sure as hell you heard of it, but the name of the experiments escapes me.

But striking My-Lai from the list because that was more of a case of American GIs being pissed as hell at the Vietcong and they found an unfortunate victim of their anger: I shall proceed.

The general take-away of the experiments was that people do put the blame on doing "bad" shit on it being "just orders". But the overlooked result was that more often than not people only really ever carried orders out to their fullest in this case when they're convinced it's for the greater good. The Nazi party understood this fully when they carried out the Holocaust.

As reports from soldiers involved and what not confirmed for the experiment's results, the Nazi hierarchy made appeals to the men's moral compass to make them think it was a good thing they were doing. As they were led to believe, the Holocaust was an inevitability and if they didn't do it then and now, then someone in the future would do it. And when they go and do it then things would be worse in the conditions under which it was done. For the Nazis the Holocaust was the best possible solution to the Jewish question and made off to be the most moral option when it came to the Jews. They were made to know and think this when they went off to man the camps.

Carrying on in the same period, the rape and destruction of the Germans by the Soviets could be seen as the same thing. It was a horrible act perpetrated by soldiers who may or may not have been given orders, or was just ignored by the higher ups who could have stopped it. But to the Russians they had a reason to do it. They wanted, needed revenge on the many, many Russians the Germans killed and the level of destruction wrought on the Soviet Union.

Lesson learned: you can give immoral orders and get them carried out when there's a fundamental reason to do so that negates the immorality. IF you don't do X then Y will happen, we have to do X because Y happened, or X will lead to a better result than Y.