Then & Now
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What drives ordinary people to become mass killers? Propaganda, conformity, authority, rationalization — and the question of inoculation against genocide.
July 1942. Major Wilhelm Trapp — known affectionately as "Papa Trapp" — assembled his men at dawn, pale-faced, voice choking, tears in his eyes. The Jews in a nearby village were to be rounded up. Working-age men to the labour camp. Women, children, the elderly: shot.
Oh, god, why did I have to be given these orders.— Major Trapp, overheard by his men (Browning, Ordinary Men)
Trapp offered an extraordinary thing: any older man who didn't feel up to it could step down. One stepped forward. Then ten or twelve more. They were dismissed. Almost 500 remained.
When he shot, the entire skull exploded… brains and bones flew everywhere.— Testimony of a Battalion 101 policeman (Browning, Ordinary Men)
The Order Police were too old to be conscripted into the army. Predominantly working-class. Crucially, too old to have only known Nazi propaganda — they were raised in the democratic era of Weimar.
Nothing would be more misguided than to believe that the SS were a horde of sadists.— An Auschwitz inmate (cited in Browning, Ordinary Men)
Even Himmler struggled with the sight. His solution: division of labour. Some worked on trains, some were guards, others filled the gas, some did accounts. The shootings were divided too — some rounded up, others stripped prisoners, the actual shooting often done by Eastern Europeans under German command.
Look at the eyes of the men in this Kommando, how deeply shaken they are! These men are finished for the rest of their lives…— An SS officer to Himmler after witnessing executions in Minsk (cited in Browning, Ordinary Men)
Historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen argued the steps toward genocide were incremental: verbal assault → physical assault → legal measures (Nuremberg Laws) → emigration → ghettoisation → starvation → slave labour → extermination.
Participants were ordered to give supposedly painful shocks to actors screaming in the next room. If they hesitated, the phrase "the research requires that you continue" was enough to convince 64% to continue to the highest pain level.
Men are led to kill with little difficulty.— Stanley Milgram, conclusion of his obedience experiments
But there's a problem: Milgram's participants thought they were doing something right — a scientific experiment, a greater good. This isn't the same as murdering children. Yet the pressure to conform in wartime Nazi Germany was arguably far greater than in a laboratory.
Groupthink: a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.— Irvin Janis, psychologist (1970s)
Gustav Le Bon identified two forces: anonymity (shared responsibility shrinks personal guilt) and mimesis (actions are copied more readily in crowds). George Simmel showed how the desire to stay in an in-group motivates distancing from the out-group.
Most of the killers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out those who derived physical pleasure from what they did.— Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
Six psychiatrists at the trial all described Eichmann as "normal" — "a man with very positive ideas, who personally had nothing against the Jews." The defence argued he was simply following the law.
It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. It works the same in every country.— Hermann Göring, at Nuremberg
It was indeed a medical matter, since it was prepared by physicians; it was a matter of killing, and killing, too, is a medical matter.— Eichmann's lawyer, at trial
Anti-Jewish policies were portrayed as responses to Jewish aggression. Germany was the victim; the Nazis were heroes defending against Judeo-Bolshevik world domination.
The historical guilt of world Jewry for the outbreak and expansion of this war has been so extensively demonstrated that there is no need to waste any more words on it. The Jews wanted their war, and now they have it.— Joseph Goebbels, radio broadcast, 1941
Propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people behind otherwise objectionable ends.— Jason Stanley, philosopher
All effective propaganda must be confined to very few points which must be brought out in the form of slogans.— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
The Nazis were motivated by a conspiracy theory that Jews were plotting world domination. Every event was twisted to fit. An unknown author's book was presented as official US policy. Churchill hiring a leftist minister proved "the Jewification of the British government."
Roosevelt Main Tool of Jewish Freemasonry; Sensational Document Reveals Connections of the Warmonger with the International Clique.— Der Völkische Beobachter headline, 1941
The Jews are a parasitic race that feeds like a foul fungus on the cultures of healthy but ignorant peoples. There is only one effective measure: cut them out.— Joseph Goebbels, "The Jews Are Guilty!" (1941)
Where Christ-killers gather, the cross is ridiculed, God blasphemed, the father unacknowledged, the son insulted, the grace of the spirit rejected.— John Chrysostom, 5th century
Jewish people were stateless, had no allegiance to the nation or Church, lived in a culturally different way. Over centuries they became the easiest lightning rod, the eternal scapegoat. But it took Social Darwinism, eugenics, and racial ideology in the 19th century for antisemitism to develop into its modern genocidal form.
Working backwards from a murder by peeling layers: the trigger happened in a context of orders, authority, conformity, and rationalisation. But those weren't enough — deeper motivators had already been planted.
Staub's three stages: (1) Frustration of basic needs. (2) An out-group is identified as the cause. (3) The in-group is motivated by a utopian vision that excludes that group.
Through processes of authorization, the situation becomes so defined that standard moral principles do not apply. Through routinization the action becomes so organized that there is no opportunity for raising moral questions. Through dehumanization, the actor's attitudes become so structured that it is neither necessary nor possible to view the relationship in moral terms.— Herbert Kelman
The genocide early warning project currently considers at least 30 countries to be at high risk.
A concentration camp, for those on the outside, was a kind of labor camp. There were whispered rumors of people being beaten, even killed. But there was no comprehension of the tragic reality. We were still able to leave the country; we could still live in our homes; we could still worship in our temples; we were in a Ghetto, but the majority of our people were still alive. For the average Jew, this seemed enough. He didn't realize that we were all waiting for the end. The year was 1937.— Ilse Stanley, memoirs
It is always thought that warning signs would come well in advance. That there would be plenty of time. That it couldn't happen here.
Just as there is evil in the heart of every man, there is evil at the heart of even the most "civilised" human society.— Mark Bowden
What we've seen is not a philosophy of evil — a biblical tale of angels and devils — but a theory of the incremental development of evil. Evil is moulded and twisted into shape gradually. No person wakes up one day with hate in their heart — it has to be learned.