The Third Reich was a highly politicized environment. Everyone would have been immersed in cleverly crafted propaganda and few people would have had access to alternative sources of information - among other things, the commonly available Volksradio could not easily receive foreign broadcasts, and, in any case, listening to foreign broadcasts was made a criminal offense with the start of the war.
Of the military services, the Army and Navy both had traditions of independence, though there were certainly officers, such as Von Reichenau, who were committed Nazis, and others who were willing to tolerate, or even take part in, atrocities. Interestingly, the belief by Hitler that the army was politically unreliable was exploited by Himmler and Goering to set up their own competing armies. Moreover, when military necessity forced the reallocation of surplus Luftwaffe personnel to ground combat, Goering was allowed to set up the Luftwaffe Field Divisions instead of allowing the Army to use the them to replenish the depleted infantry divisions. Aside from this, Goering was closely associated with the Nazi regime and other Luftwaffe officers such as von Richthofen and Gollob seem to have been Nazis even if they may not have been official party members. At the same time, some of the officers exhibited independent thinking at times, but, this mostly seems to have been limited to disagreements about military issues such as strategy and tactics.
