Are henchmen worse than their masters ?

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I don't think it's that simple. After WWII there was a massive debate over culpability for war crimes committed by the German troops and Japanese imperial forces. The vast majority (I suspect > 95%) of foot soldiers, militia and others who carried out war crimes were never prosecuted. This same debate emerged after the Rwandan genocide. Others like the genocide of Cambodians by Pol Pot's followers, Bangladeshis by Pakistani or Burmese troops or Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sinhalese army go completely unpunished.

Prosecuters can only go after readily identifiable individuals with some level of notoriety (like camp guards) or prominent leaders or leaders who gave orders. In the layers of heirarchy those middlemen who gave orders go unpunished.

To quote Star wars - "Good soldiers follow orders". There is one train of thought that when orders are given by those in authority you have no choice but to follow orders.

So...? You are agreeing with me that the commander in charge is at least as guity as the henchmen, if not worse?

In fact you're going beyond what I said to use "the Nuremburg Defense" that the henchmen were just "following orders".

Just trying to quantify the henchmen Vs master - which one being worse
According to the Nuremberg trials it's master

By "the Nurmeburg Defense" I was referring to the failed argument used by the defendants at Nuremburg that they "were only following orders...only doing my duty".

What I mean is, is a henchman more responsible for doing terrible things than their master. I have read plenty of books and other sources of information on dictators and the henchmen in the secret police who enforce the rules and do their dirty work for them. I remember watching a video about the Night of the Long Knives in Nazi Germany in which Hitler had many of his real or imagined opponents shot in 1934 and in it, a historian was explaining how it was people like Goring, Himmler and Heydrich who fed Hitler with information on his opponents that was completely false and many were loyal to him anyway but still got shot. It even reminds me of when I watched the TV series The Tudors where Henry VIII (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers) had thousands of people executed including two of his wives and there were people in his court who were probably more bloodthirsty than he was and feeding his paranoia with false information about people who might oppose him.