It's always worse to look back and compare the actions of someone 100 years ago to what we would consider normal today. I'm not forgiving the guy, but you'd have to look around at some of his contemporaries and see if this type of behaviour was normal. Going further back, a lot of well-regarded American had slaves, for example.

A lot of people were friendly with the Nazis in the early-mid 1930's. They did turn Germany around and get it going in the early stages.