Since at least the late 1980s, studies from respectable scholars have been cropping up presenting a more accurate portrait of policing under Fascism, and that the caricature promoted by centrists and neoliberals is nothing greater than an exaggeration. Michael Parenti’s Dirty Truths summed this up quite nicely:

The concentration camp was never the normal condition for the average gentile German. Unless one was Jewish, or poor and unemployed, or actively leftist or otherwise openly anti-Nazi, Germany from 1933 until well into the war was not a nightmarish place. All the "good Germans" had to do was obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, avoid any sign of political heterodoxy, and look the other way when unions were busted and troublesome people disappeared.

This is important for a couple of reasons: 1. it shows that Fascism was not as dissimilar from liberalism as the proponents of either would like to think, and 2. it can prepare us for recognising the institutionalization of parafascism or neofascism. (This is basically what Parenti said in Dirty Truths as well.) This criminologist’s paper confirm’s Parenti’s summary in good detail:

Third Reich authorities could be extremely and perhaps surprisingly lenient towards most Germans while at the same time acting with utmost severity against [Fascism’s] targeted enemies. Most Germans probably understood this and indeed committed an astonishing number of criminal acts by their own admissions, largely because they understood that [Fascism’s] organs of terror and justice were not interested in punishing them.

The evidence will show, furthermore, that most ordinary Germans, by their own admission, willingly supported the Third Reich, even though they may have disagreed with some of its policies at one time or another. Finally, this essay will demonstrate that most ordinary Germans during the Third Reich did not live their lives in an atomized state, constantly in fear of being spied upon by the Gestapo or any other policing organ.

Nevertheless, [Fascist] terror was extremely effective and often lethal to the [Fascists’] targeted enemies. For Jews, Communists and a few other minorities, there was every reason to live in fear and dread during the Third Reich. But this was not the case for most German citizens.

(Emphasis added.)