The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence

by Ervin Staub

  A lack of protest can confirm the perpetrators’ faith in what they are doing. Hitler saw the lack of response both in Germany and in the outside world to the persecution of Jews as evidence that the whole world wanted what only he had the courage to do. A refusal to cooperate can raise questions in the minds of perpetrators. According to Helen Fein, resistance in Denmark, Italy, and Bulgaria raised doubts in the minds of some Nazi functionaries in those countries.44 Perpetrators may question not only whether they can get away with it, but also whether what they are doing is right.

  Why then are bystanders so often passive and silent? Sometimes silence results from fear, but that is not the whole explanation. Everywhere people tend to accept a definition of reality provided by “experts,” their government, or their culture. Lack of divergent views, just-world thinking, and their own participation or passivity change bystanders’ perception of self and reality so as to allow and justify cruelty.

  Outsiders may also respond little, although they have less to fear. They too are subject to these processes of change. They too are affected by the propaganda or ideology used to justify mistreatment. Before World War II, for example, anti-Semitism increased in many countries.45 Hitler’s propaganda joined with an existing anti-Semitic base and just-world thinking and enabled people in economic trouble to blame Jews.

  Ideological conceptions and romantic notions of what is good can mislead us. Very few people, in retrospect, glorify the violence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But at the time, some voices in the United States celebrated this “rejuvenation” of the revolution.

  Another reason for outside indifference is that governments usually do not see themselves as moral agents obliged to endanger their interests by interfering in the “internal affairs” of other countries. With rare exceptions they protest only when they see their self-interest endangered (see Chapters 16 and 17).

  * * *

  a There was no control or neutral condition, so it is uncertain to what extent rewarding in itself led to a positive evaluation and punishing to a negative evaluation. The change in evaluation did not occur when participants only role-played rewarding or punishing another (imagined) person. But even under these conditions, the increase in rewards or punishments occurred.

  Part II

  The Nazi Holocaust

  7 Hitler comes to power

  Genocide and “insanity”

  The Holocaust if often called incomprehensible, partly because of the magnitude of the killings and partly because of the impersonal, technological methods used: the factories of death, which were new in world history. Any genocide might be seen as a form of insanity possessing normal human beings. That people would be gathered in great squares or on street corners, by force or by intrigue – with the promise of resettlement and a better life, or a piece of bread, or simply by threat of force – then herded into freight cars to be transported over hundreds and thousands of miles, taken to a camp and told to undress and go into showerlike chambers, where they were gassed to death, and their bodies burned in huge ovens; millions of people murdered in this way and tens of thousands devoted to the organized killings, in the midst of a losing war in a progressively, devastated country – all this seems like madness.

  But the people who participated in this mass murder were normal by conventional standards of mental health. Interviews and psychological testing found no evidence of mental illness or psychological dysfunction in the Nuremberg defendants and SS criminals. Large-scale murder and mistreatment are commonplace in human history. Understanding the sources is our task; labeling it madness does not provide such understanding. In this section, I apply the model offered in Part I to a detailed analysis of the Holocaust, extending it in the process.

  Life conditions: loss of war, the Treaty of Versailles, and economic and political chaos

  When Germany lost the war in 1918, the peace treaty imposed on it, the Treaty of Versailles, demanded substantial reparation, allowed Germany only a very small army, and took away territories. Germans experienced the loss of war and the treaty as great humiliations, and both were widely seen as the result of betrayal, a “stab in the back” by internal enemies: Red revolutionaries, republicans, Jews. This suited the Germans’ collective view of themselves as strong, superior, and militarily powerful. They could not accept the reality, given its discrepancy with their self-concept. A contributing cause was that the military and government had lied about the progress of the war. The collapse seemed sudden and inexplicable. Prussian officers and government leaders could not possibly lie; the legend of the stab in the back was the alternative.

  The Treaty of Versailles amputated Alsace-Lorraine on the west and a part of Poland on the east. Under military occupation Germany was humiliated and reduced to the rank of a second rate power. The new liberal regime was opposed on all sides and was openly considered to be a Judenrepubliq. For the ultra-conservative circles the burning question arose: How was the sudden cruel defeat and its consequences to be interpreted? The answer was quickly found: by a stab in the back. Accomplices of the Bolsheviks and the Allies, the Jews had fomented an immense plot against the Reich by disorganizing things behind the lines and propagating pacifist ideas. Thus reiterating in his own way the theme of the Dolchstosslegende, Marshal Ludendorff wrote: “Those who enjoyed and profited from the War were especially Jews.. .patriotic cricles felt that the German people, who with weapons in hand, fought for liberty, had been sold out and betrayed by the Jewish people.”1

  As the war ended there was a revolution, the social democrats proclaiming a republic on November 9, 1918. The revolution was relatively bloodless.a In 1922 the French, claiming that they were not receiving reparation shipments on time, occupied the Ruhr, the industrial segment of Germany. Subsequent sabotage and noncooperation by Germans severely reduced industrial output. In part because of the economic difficulties arising from the heavy reparations and the occupation of the Ruhr, severe inflation engulfed Germany, wiping out savings and diminishing livelihoods. While some were unaffected and a few even benefited (e.g., people with mortgages), most Germans suffered greatly. In the late 1920s the worldwide depression also severely affected Germany. By 1932, the year in which the Nazis received more votes than any other party, 7.5 million people were out of work and 17 million, almost a third of the population, were supported “by the dole.”3

  Material deprivation, social disorganization, the feeling of unfair treatment by the victors, and the psychological distress associated with them led to increasing political instability and violence. Many hated the democratic Weimar Republic established after the revolution of 1918-19: some because of the humiliating Versailles treaty that continued to be in effect; others because of economic conditions or the disorder created by the many political movements and their violence, which the government was unable or unwilling to control; still others because of the threat of communism; and many because they had never made peace with the idea of a democracy, particularly a liberal one. The kaiser’s abdication at the end of the war was a tremendous blow to many Germans; the new system conflicted with the value German culture placed on authority and strong leadership. Among the powerful dissatisfied elements were the army and the judiciary.

  Life conditions represented a threat to survival. For many Germans, inability to provide for their families was a special dishonor, given their respect for tradition, order, and the family.4 Their self-respect and social identity – their view of their group – were threatened. Traditional values were challenged by many experiences, such as middle-aged men dancing cheek-to-cheek in nightclubs. Events made it difficult to maintain the world view by which most Germans lived and equally difficult to replace it. The people lacked a predictable future to work for; there was no end in sight.

  Although Hitler and his followers greatly contributed to the anarchy and political violence of the later 1920s, they also promised to do away with it. They promised law and order, jobs, and ideals to live by.

  A state of virtual
anarchy prevails in the streets of Germany.... Brown shirts were everywhere in evidence again, and now four private armies, equipped at the very least with jack knives and revolvers, daggers and brass knuckles, were shooting in the squares and rampaging through the towns. Processions and meetings, demonstrations and protest, festivals and funerals, all wore the same face but a different uniform – except that the SS and SA of the Nazis, and the Red Front of the Communists marched more obstreperously, the Sozi Reichsbanner more fatly, the Stahlhelmers more sedately. The Reichswehr, the one legal force, was least in evidence, even though it was in a sense, the private political tool of Hindenburg.5

  The communists had acquired substantial strength, as Germans were turning to the two extremes. “In 1932.. .between them these two totalitarian parties had an absolute majority in the Reichstag.... They were both bitterly opposed to the System and without them the system was hamstrung . . . . ‘Better Nazi than Red’ was an argument which made many turn to Hitler.”b6 In the July 1932 election the Nazis emerged as the largest party in the German parliament. After a government led by von Papen and much political maneuvering, in January 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor; “the city [of Berlin] saw mass hysteria and jubilation without parallel in history.”7

  The guiding motive for the Holocaust: ideology

  The Holocaust had many causes, but the original motivation or guiding conception was crucial. Why was this conception accepted by the German people? How was it related to German culture and history?

  Hitler laid down the Nazi ideology in his book Mein Kampf, dictated to is deputy Rudolf Hess in 1924 while he served a prison sentence following the unsuccessful Nazi putsch in November 1923. In most respects, Hitler acted to fulfill the goals and plans described in Mein Kampf. According to Hitler the power of ideals is great. The Nazis had to overcome the views of life and ideals of the “calculating masters of the material Republic.” Totalitarian rule and propaganda, once the Nazis were in control, were aimed not only at maintaining power, but also at converting the masses to Nazi ideals.

  The core of these ideals was racial purity. According to Hitler, racial principles are fundamental to all life: race is the foundation of all culture. “In this world human culture and civilization are inseparably bound up with the existence of the Aryan. His dying off or his decline would again lower upon this earth the dark veils of a time without culture. The undermining of the existence of human culture by destroying its supporters [e.g., Aryans] appears as the most execrable crime.”8

  The cause of a higher culture “lies exclusively in the existence of a race capable of culture.” The Aryans possessed the highest spiritual level. Jews lacked culture and by their very being threatened to destroy the high Aryan culture. “All really significant symptoms of decay of the pre-War period can in the last analysis be reduced to racial causes.”9

  In these long years there was only one who kept up an imperturbable, unflagging fight, and this was the Jew. His Star of David rose higher and higher in proportion as our people’s will for self-preservation vanished. Therefore, in August 1914, it was not a people resolved to attack which rushed to the battle-field; no, it was only the last flicker of the national instinct of self-preservation in face of the progressing pacifist-Marxist paralysis of our national body. Since even in these days of destiny, our people did not recognize the inner enemy, all outward resistance was in vain and Providence did not bestow her reward on the victorious sword, but followed the law of eternal retribution.10

  As part of their plan for world domination the Jews were determined to destroy Germany and the German people. The struggle against Jews served both survival and racial purity. Jews symbolize all evil, but also serve a positive function: by spurring the Aryan to struggle against them, they make him increasingly conscious of his own race.11 Jews must be destroyed to preserve the higher Aryan culture.

  Racial purity was an overriding purpose; it was an obligation to destroy anything that interfered with it, whereas anything that promoted it had to be done. Jews were the most serious threat, but other groups like Gypsies and eastern Europeans were also considered inferior and a threat to racial purity. This was convenient because Hitler intended to provide the German people with Lebensraum (living space) through conquest in the east.

  Lebensraum was another central aspect of Hitler’s ideology. Aryans, the bearers of superior culture, had a right to a “place in the sun.” They had a right to take land from racially inferior people. This aspect of Hitler’s ideology was consistent with German nationalism and with the expressed purpose of Germany in fighting World War I. It had strong appeal for many Germans.

  Hitler’s race theories are sometimes discounted as a cause of his actions. Certainly we often discount politicians’ statements of good intentions; apparently this also happens with statements of bad intentions. Before, during, and since the Holocaust some have claimed that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was mere demagoguery, intended to gain the support of anti-Semites. The highly influential American psychologist Gordon Allport, author of The Nature of Prejudice, wrote in 1954: “Hitler created the Jewish menace not so much to demolish Jews as to cement the Nazi hold over Germany.”12 It is easier to see the generation of hatred and antagonism toward a group as Allport did – “The Macchiavellian trick of creating a common enemy in order to cement an ingroup”13 – to see it as having a pragmatic purpose that leads to a commonly understood gain, than to see it as being done out of hate or due to commitment to an ideology, seemingly for its own sake.

  It is true that anti-Semitism did cement the ingroup and helped it to gain followers – not simply because the Germans were anti-Semitic, but because scapegoating Jews helped Germans deflect feelings of betrayal by their leaders and feelings of personal and collective responsibility for their troubles. The ideology also provided a blueprint for a “better” world and elevated the Germans’ greatly threatened view of themselves. The Nazi movement fulfilled the need for connection and for relinquishing a burdensome identity. By the time the extermination of Jews began, the German people were devoted followers of Hitler. By this time the ideology and the progression along a continuum of destruction had lives of their own.

  The German historian Meinecke writes as if Hitler had been concerned only about power, rather than ideology.14 He points out that Hitler’s allies, the Japanese, were subhuman – according to National Socialist ideology. This is an oversimplified view. The evidence clearly indicates that Hitler would use and abandon people or countries or strategies in pursuit of his goals; for example, he entered into an alliance with the Soviet Union and then invaded it. His strategy is expressed in the following 1937 response to dissatisfaction with his speed of action against Jews:

  The final aim of our whole policy is quite clear for all of us. Always I am concerned only that I do not take any step from which I will perhaps have to retreat, and not to take any step that will harm us. I tell you that I always go to the outermost limits of risk, but never beyond. For this you need to have a nose more or less to smell out: “What can I still do?” Also in a struggle against an enemy. I do not summon an enemy with force to fight, I don’t say: “Fight,” because I want to fight. Instead I say “I will destroy you!” and now, Wisdom, help me to maneuver you into the corner that you cannot fight back, and then you get the blow right in the heart.15

  Thus the more successful the Nazi system became, the more it persecuted Jews and others, although many dictatorships become milder as their success and acceptance grow.

  In his early public speeches, and especially before the Nazis gained power, Hitler hinted at but did not explicitly state the extremes to which (according to earlier written statements) he was willing to go in his “treatment” of Jews. He knew that many of his potential adherents were not psychologically ready to support such actions or to publicly commit themselves to a group advocating them. Although he underplayed attacks on Jews in the last election campaigns before the Nazis gained power, he did not hide his views.

 
; Five Nazis broke into the hotel room of a young columnist asleep with his aged mother and murdered the man. He was shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned, receiving twenty-nine wounds in all. The five were sentenced to death, reprieved by von Papen, and later released by Hitler. Rosenberg, the Nazi ideologue, wrote this when the sentence was handed down:

  Bourgeois justice weighs a single communist, and a Pole at that, against five German war veterans. In this example is mirrored the ideology of the past 150 years, displaying the mistaken substructure of its being... .The unacceptability of this attitude explains the world view of National Socialism. It does not believe that one soul is equal to another, one man equal to another. It does not believe in rights as such: it aims to create the German man of strength, its task is to protect the German people, and all Justice, all social life, politics and economics must be subordinate to this goal.16

  How serious Nazi leaders were about their racial views is indicated by the many statements and actions taken to uphold them, sometimes at great cost. Horst von Maltitz wrote and cited the following in The Evolution of Hitler’s Germany.17

  “We are a master race which must remember that the lowest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here,” said Erich Koch, Reich-Commissioner for the Ukraine, in a speech in Kiev on March 5, 1943. (p. 53)

  The policy of utter ruthlessness of the occupation regime naturally resulted in deep hostility, even on the part of those groups of the native population who might otherwise have had some inclination to cooperate or to acquiesce in it, at least for the duration of the war. No one is willing to be stamped subhuman under the terror regime of a self-proclaimed master race. The native hostility immeasurably increased the difficulties of the occupation regime. Moreover, the mistreatment of the Soviet prisoners of war, which soon became known in the Soviet Army, greatly increased the determination of its soldiers never to surrender under any circumstances. More farsighted National Socialists, such as Alfred Rosenberg and even Joseph Goebbels, recognized these disadvantages and dangers, but their objections were useless. To Hitler, Himmler, and countless other national socialist leaders, the importance of asserting themselves as the master race and other ideological racial considerations had unquestioned priority. It was one of many instances in national socialist rule in which ideology took precedence over political and military expediency, (p. 54)