I believe Schindler's list portrays the whole concept quite effectively. By the time it was obvious what was going to happen, it was too late for most to offer any sort of resistance, short of stepping up and taking a bullet.

In school we discussed it and we were all fairly adamant that we wouldn't let such be done to us; that we would've fought them, but watching the movie, it's easy to see how, over a long period of gradual escalation, people could allow such a thing to be done to them.