That's a perfectly pointless and tautological argument, then. Because anything anybody ever did was considered by that person to be useful to themselves at that

That's a perfectly pointless and tautological argument, then. Because anything anybody ever did was considered by that person to be useful to themselves at that point of time. It has nothing to do with the cliché about "good intentions", which rests on a theory of using some universally accepted "good" as cover or argument for some action, or even as the true motivation for actions that end up having unwanted side effects. The Nazis did not use anything like that to advertise the Holocaust. In fact they did not advertise the Holocaust at all: while any thinking German had an inkling, official communications only ever spoke of "resettlements". There was very little virtue signaling with the Nazis, in other words. Much like their brethren today, they very much knew they were the baddies and embraced that status with a certain sense of "so what?", hence skulls as insignia: it's an open acknowledgement that you reject common concepts of virtue with full knowledge, and that you enjoy using raw power to do so. "Owning the libs" 1.0, so to speak.