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

by Ervin Staub

  The Nazi propaganda about Jews emphasized three broad themes: (1) profound devaluation, (2) threat to racial purity, and (3) threat to German survival. (1) The Jews were pests, parasites, bloodsuckers, low and evil creatures. Jewish doctors harmed their Christian patients; old Jews molested and murdered children; all Jews exploited and abused the rights of Germans. (2) The Jews despoiled Aryan purity. Their very existence threatened contamination and therefore the inherent superiority of Germans, the Aryan race. (3) In an international conspiracy, the Jews plotted to acquire power. This notion, already a theme of anti-Semitism before Hitler, was expanded into the fantasy of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. First the internal enemy, after the German attack on Russia, Jews were linked to the external enemy. The Jews within Germany had to be eliminated before the external enemy could be defeated.

  All this was presented to the German people on radio, in speeches, newspapers, and plays; it became part of standard school education; and it was expressed in laws. The dehumanization of Jews became part of many aspects of group life and an important aspect of the German’s self-definition.

  Anti-Semitism was part of the deep structure of the German culture and was enlarged by the Nazis. At the start, particular Nazis need not have been more anti-Semitic than other Germans in order to join the movement; given the existence of culturally shared anti-Semitism, or openness to it, intense needs and the satisfactions offered by the Nazi movement could be sufficient motivation. A Columbia sociologist, Theodore Abel, by means of an essay contest collected 581 questionnaires from members of the Nazi Party before 1933. Peter Merkl later used this material to identify characteristics of the early Nazis, for example, different levels of anti-Semitism.12

  There was an extraordinary amount of prejudice and hatred. The material from about 33 percent of the respondents contained no evidence of anti-Semitism. It may be, as Merkl suggests, that they omitted expressions of prejudice because they anticipated a negative reaction from an American audience. Or it may be that within the Nazi group anti-Semitism was a given, it was the ground of the members’ experience, and for some not important to mention. The Abel collection does show, however, that the Nazis who were the most paranoid about the Jews, who were preoccupied by “the Jewish conspiracy,” were especially likely to hold Nazi Party, SA (Sturmabteilung), and SS leadership positions.

  Self- concept, self-esteem, and national goals

  People have not only individual but also collective self-concepts. Their “societal” self-concept includes shared evaluation of their group, myths that transmit the self-concept and ideal self, goals that a people set for themselves, and shared beliefs (e.g., about other groups).13 It may also include or mask uncertainties, insecurities, and anxieties.

  The Germans as a superior people

  Germans saw themselves as superior in character, competence, honor, loyalty, devotion to family, and civic organization. Groups tend to think highly of themselves; seemingly the Germans had an extreme positive view of themselves. They regarded German “Kultur” – literary, musical, artistic achievement – a further sign of superiority.

  In the sixteenth century, De Germania, by the Roman historian Tacitus, was rediscovered and read as a celebration of the rough and wild life of the German tribes. Some German intellectuals used it to argue the specialness of the German people and claim the right of the Holy Roman Empire to rule other nations. Early in the nineteenth century Germany was occupied by Napoleon. Afterward, upon the demise of Napoleon, nationalistic feelings intensified.

  The idea of Germanness became a special source of satisfaction and pride. Johann Gottfried Herder, writing around the time of the French Revolution, wrote of the common quality expressed in the behavior, thinking, values, and goals of people who belong to a nation, “a common ingredient, a Germanness, a Volksgeist that could not be abstracted and defined but represented the individuality of the nation.”b14 Gordon Craig of Stanford University explains the lethargy of the German middle class at a time when democratic revolutions took place in many European countries and in America as the result of their taking refuge in Germanness, “persuading themselves that, since they were imbued by the undying group spirit, they were already in a state of grace.”16 Following the failed revolution of 1848, the political activities of the German middle class were severely restricted, and this may have led them to console themselves further by contemplating the glory of Germanness. Whatever the reason, a set of ideas and images stressing the special quality of Germanness became widespread and highly influential. The Nazis were able to use this, especially the central idea of a volk, to rally the German people.

  A related idea was that of a romanticized, superior Aryan race, whose prime representatives were the Germans. This was an aspect of the racial thinking fashionable in Europe in the late nineteenth century. As developed, for example, by Houston Chamberlain, Richard Wagner’s son-in-law, it expanded the concept of German superiority and advanced anti-Semitic thought.17 Chamberlain admired Germans and described Semites (Jews) as enslavers of humanity. Not physical but psychological characteristics defined race. The Nazis later defined Jews by their supposedly inferior culture and habits. Although the Nazis had a physical ideal for Aryans, blond and tall, this nonphysical racial thinking allowed them to regard Germans as superior Aryans in spite of the tremendous variation in their physical characteristics. The physical ideal guided the selection of the SS, regarded as the real “superior stock.”

  This superior nation was seen as surrounded and besieged by enemies.18 From the ninth to the twelfth century the Holy Roman Empire was powerful, with near hegemony over Europe. This power declined, for many reasons, including the rise of princes who created disunity. By the middle of the fifteenth century Germany had lost many territories, and its borders were constantly threatened. During the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Germany suffered tremendous devastation and a population loss of 35 percent, or seven and a half million people.19 The settlement that followed the war contributed to its continued division among many states and principalities. The perception of Germany as a “Land in the Middle,” threatened from all sides, was realistic. Much later, Napoleon’s conquest of Germany and reduction of parts of Germany to the status of satellites resulted in profound feelings of powerlessness.20 The idealization of the state that followed had to be a defense of a wounded societal self-concept.

  Germans continued to have a sense of unfulfilled greatness and present unfairness. The German crown prince said in 1913: “It is only by relying on our good German sword that we can hope to conquer that place in the sun which rightly belongs to us, and which no one will yield to us voluntarily.” This suggests the idea of Lebensraum that became so important in Nazi ideology. Such feelings intensified the losses and humiliations that Germans endured during and after the First World War. German militarism and nationalism supported this sense of entitlement. Prussia, which dominated the newly united Germany late in the nineteenth and twentieth century, was a highly militaristic state in which the armed forces were greatly respected. The influence of the military pervaded most aspects of life. Nationalism, which had served to create a united German state, persisted.

  German academics and intellectuals strongly supported nationalistic aims. During the shock and uproar created by Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality in 1914, German intellectuals produced a Manifesto to the Civilized World, which denied Germany’s war guilt and proclaimed that it would have been suicide not to march through Belgium. They alleged that Allied rather than German war actions were contrary to international law and referred to the “shameful spectacle.. .of Russian hordes... allied with mongols and Negroes... unleashed against the white race.”21 The manifesto was signed by people like Röntgen, the discoverer of X rays, Max Reinhardt, the pioneer of the modern theater, Paul Ehrlich, the great biochemist, and Engelbert Humperdinck, the composer of the opera Hansel and Gretel. It concluded:

  Were it not for German militarism, German culture would have been wiped off the face
of the earth. That culture, for its own protection, led to militarism since Germany, like no other country, was ravaged by invasion for centuries. The German army and the German people today stand shoulder to shoulder, without regard to education, social position or partisan allegiance.

  We cannot wrest from our enemies’ hand the venomous weapon of the lie. We can only cry out to the whole world that they bear false witness against us. To you who know us, who have hitherto stood with us in safeguarding mankind’s most precious heritage – to you we cry out: Have faith in us! Have faith in us when we say that we shall wage this fight to the very end as a civilized nation, a nation that holds the legacy of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant no less sacred than hearth and home.

  In token whereof we pledge our names and our honor!22

  A noted German pacifist, George Friedrich Nicolai, responded with a Manifesto to Europeans calling for a united, peaceful Europe. Only three others were willing to sign this document (one was Albert Einstein), and as a result it was not made public for several years. In 1915, 352 of Germany’s most distinguished professors signed a Declaration of Intellectuals saying that it would be reasonable and just for Germany to acquire Belgium, parts of France, the Ukraine, and other territories.23

  It is hardly surprising, in light of this history, that university professors also rallied to the Nazis. Many proclaimed the greatness of Hitler and swore loyalty to him. Martin Heidegger, the great philosopher, proclaimed that Hitler and the German people were bound by fate and “guided by the inexorability of that spiritual mission that the destiny of the German people forcibly impresses upon its history.” The rush of converts to Nazism in the first days of Hitler’s rule included many university professors and intellectuals, who excelled in their efforts to “justify the new regime and establish its roots in Germany’s history and cultural tradition.” A highly distinguished political scientist, Carl Schmitt, devised theories to prove that all of Hitler’s actions were justified by a higher morality, which he called “the superiority of the existential situation over mere normality.”24

  How different was all this from ordinary ethnocentrism? It was especially strong and included beliefs in the right to acquire others’ territory and to rule others. Moreover, it was systematized in concepts like volk. (This perhaps expresses a German proclivity, a desire for a world view, or Weltanschauung.) The elevated German self-concept was especially dangerous when combined with militarism, unfulfilled ambitions, insecurity, and vulnerability. It intensified and shaped reactions to life problems.

  Respect for and obedience to authority

  A certain degree of obedience to authority is required in all social systems. The view that respect for the state and obedience to authority have characterized Germany to an unusual degree is not a post-World War II phenomenon, a result of so many SS murderers and war criminals claiming that they were following orders.25 Gordon Craig wrote:

  It is not too much to talk of a progressive bureaucratization of Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and a concomitant growth among the inhabitants of the German states of habits of deference toward authority that seemed excessive to foreign observers. These last may have had ancient roots – it was a medieval pope who called Germany the terra obedientiae – but there is little doubt that they were encouraged by the traumatic effects of the war. The daily presence of death, the constant Angst of which Gryphius speaks in his poems, made the survivors willing to submit to any authority that seemed strong enough to prevent a recurrence of those terrors....

  Acceptance of the authority of the prince assumed a willingness to obey the commands of his agents, no matter how petty their position or arrogant their manner. The willingness of Germans to tolerate the most offensive behavior from anyone wearing a uniform or official insignia was something that always surprised Western visitors.26

  Craig quotes the Württemberg publisher Karl Frederich Moser, who wrote in 1758: “Every nation has its principal motive. In Germany it is obedience; in England, freedom; in Holland, trade; in France, the honor of the King.”27

  One source of this proclivity for obedience, already noted, was the suffering from past wars and people feeling helpless and under siege. Subordination to authorities – the prince, the state – was seen as necessary to deal with external threat or attack. Bureaucratization and militarism also contributed to respect for authority, as they expanded into daily life. In 1781 John Moore described Prussian military life as an early totalitarian system.

  The Prussian discipline on a general view is beautiful; in detail it is shocking... .if the young recruit shows neglect or remissness, his attention is roused by the officer’s cane, which is applied with augmenting energy....

  . . . As to the common men, the leading idea of the Prussian discipline is to reduce them in many respects, to the nature of machines; that they may have no volition of their own, but be actuated solely by that of their officers; that they may have such a superlative dread of those officers as annihilates all fear of the enemy; and that they may move forwards when ordered, without deeper reasoning or more concern than the firelocks they carry along with them.28

  Influential German thinkers stressed the the role of the state not as a servant of the people but as an entity to which citizens owed unquestioning obedience. Martin Luther was one outstanding spokesman for the special status and special rights of the state. He viewed it as an organic entity, superior to any individual. Citizens owed unquestioning obedience to all constituted authorities. A Christian captured and sold into slavery by the Turks would not have the right to escape, becasue that would deprive his master of his property.29 (Alfred Rosenberg’s lawyer at Nuremberg claimed that Christian morality required first and foremost obedience to established authorities.)

  Fichte and Hegel also viewed the state as a superior organic entity to which the individual owed complete allegiance. “At the time the Anglo-Americans and French were starting to define the state as the servant of the people, Germans were accepting definition of the people as servants of the state.”30 Democratic values, the rights of the individual, were not evolving in Germany.

  Both obedience to authority and giving oneself over to a leader had positive value in German culture. Many Germans were shocked and dismayed by the kaiser’s abdication in 1918. Following and obeying Hitler became a source of honor and joy, expressed in the testimony of many Nazis before and after the collapse of the Third Reich. The French historian Michelet admiringly wrote in 1831:

  There is nothing astonishing if it is in Germany that we see, for the first time a man makes himself belong to another, puts his own hands in the hands of others and [they] swear to die for him. This devotion without interest, without conditions... has made the German race great. That is how the old bands of the Conquerors of the Empire, each one grouped around a leader, founded modern monarchies. They gave their lives to him, to the leader of their choice, they gave him their very glory. In the old Germanic songs, all the exploits of the nation are attributed to several heroes. The leader concentrates in himself the honor of the people of which he becomes the colossal archetype.31

  Erich Fromm argued that the Germans turned to Hitler to escape personal responsibility for their lives.32 The need to escape personal responsibility and the concomitant desire for submission to authority would have intensified in the difficult times following World War I.

  Authoritarian values also pervaded the most basic of institutions, the family. From varied sources, a picture emerges of a widespread tendency of the German father to be an authoritarian ruler of the family. Some of the evidence for this comes from interviews with Germans after the war, but there are also other important sources.33 The psychiatrist Alice Miller reviewed the child-rearing advice that German parents received in many publications from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.34 Children were seen as willful and potentially evil. Their will had to be broken early. Obedience to parents was the highest value and should be sought by any means: manipulation, threats, includ
ing the threat of God’s punishment or destruction by ill health and severe physical punishment if necessary.

  Two representative quotations are the following:

  It is quite natural for the child’s soul to want to have a will of its own, and things that are not done correctly in the first two years will be difficult to rectify thereafter. One of the advantages of these early years is that then force and compulsion can be used. Over the years children forget everything that happened to them in early childhood. If their wills can be broken at this time, they will never remember afterwards that they had a will, and for this very reason the severity that is required will not have any serious consequences.35

  Such disobedience amounts to a declaration of war against you. Your son is trying to usurp your authority, and you are justified in answering force with force in order to insure his respect, without which you will be unable to train him. The blows you administer should not be merely playful ones but should convince him that you are his master.36

  Miller believes that these practices result in a lack of independence in the child, and later, the adult. They also eliminate the psychological freedom necessary to experience one’s own feelings. Instead the wishes and commands of others guide the child and later the adult.

  It is inconceivable that they were able to express and develop their true feelings as children, for anger and helpless rage, which they were forbidden to display, would have been among these feelings – particularly if these children were beaten, humiliated, lied to, and deceived. What becomes of this forbidden and therefore unexpressed anger? Unfortunately, it does not disappear, but is transformed with time into a more or less conscious hatred directed against either the self or substitute persons, a hatred that will seek to discharge itself in various ways permissible and suitable for an adult.37