Without getting into the weeds of what exactly we should say they are, I would argue there is such a thing as a set of universal principles that anyone should be held to (to take the trite, obvious example, we shouldn't excuse the Holocaust on the basis of some distinct German values).
No, there's no excusing the Holocaust. But it is useful to understand how the Nazis got to that point. Wars make people crazy. WWI was a horrorshow. And just a couple decades later, WWII. Germany felt beaten and cornered, and the Nazis offered hope. And then things got totally out of hand.
