by Ervin Staub
Dismissal from jobs in all fields followed; many businesses initiated their own dismissals; and after 1938, government rules led the remaining firms to dismiss their Jewish employees. Aryanization, the takeover of Jewish businesses, also proceeded. Jewish businesses were bought by Germans. Various mechanisms were used to limit competition, so that the amount paid to Jews would not be high. Boycotts and limiting supplies began to ruin Jewish businesses and force their sale. In the late 1930s laws were passed forbidding Jews to own businesses. They were allowed only menial and very low paying jobs and were heavily taxed.
Meanwhile, steps were taken to separate Jews from the rest of the population. An elaborate definition of Jewishness based on the number of Jewish ancestors was created. The Nuremberg laws prohibited marriage and sexual relations with Jews. Breaking these laws could result in persecution and severe public humiliation for Aryan Germans. Germans who did not follow these laws and developing mores were labeled – for example, as friends of the Jews (Judenfreunde) or as desecrators of the race (Rassenschänder), the name for people who had sexual relations with Jews. Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David in public and eventually were collected into restricted living areas.
Large numbers of people participated in this process, taking Jewish jobs, boycotting or taking over Jewish businesses, breaking off family contacts and love relations, designing and executing anti-Jewish laws, and disseminating anti-Jewish propaganda. Why did they participate? Fear of Nazis had to be a reason, but the attitude of the population makes this an insufficient explanation. Besides, there was opposition to the Nazi euthanasia program, but not to the persecution of the Jews.a7 An important reason must have been a cultural tilt, an inclination that perpetrators and the ordinary members of society shared as a result of shared culture, and a societal tilt as this joined with life conditions and resulted in shared needs and a shared openness or inclination for responding to them in certain potentially destructive ways. Self-interest must also have influenced some: profiting from jobs, from business takeovers. Christians to whom Jews had given their property in an attempt to protect it from the Nazi state would have a stake in actions that made it unnecessary to return the property.
Another source of support for persecution was the desire to be part of the group. Interviews with rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe show that many were “marginal,” separated from the mainstream by religion, background, or experience; this enabled them to reject the system’s views about Jews.b8 For people tied to the group, the cultural devaluation and the climate of hostility generated by the Nazis made passivity or limited participation in action against Jews relatively easy.
Even passivity changes bystanders. But Germans had a semiactive role as they participated in societal actions against Jews. Devaluating Jews even more, regarding them as blameworthy, would make it easier to watch and passively accept their persecution and suffering and one’s own involvement. This, together with a changing self-concept, a view of themselves as capable and willing to harm others for “justified” reasons, prepared some people for increasingly active roles as perpetrators. As people participate in harming others, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop and break the continuity. The personal changes make a new vantage point, a new decision, even less likely.
For example, some members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute remained in Berlin after the Nazis assumed power. Self-selection and acceptance of the Nazis probably played a role in who stayed. They passively accepted Nazi influence at the institute and the dismissal of Jewish colleagues. Some of them began to adapt psychoanalytic theory to fit Nazi ideology.10 Some later participated in the euthanasia killings and even in the extermination of Jews.11
Empathy can be affected by simply telling people to take different perspectives when observing what happens to someone else. Observers feel empathy and concern when told to imagine what it is like for someone to experience distress or pain – intense heat or an unpleasant personal interaction – or to imagine what it would be like to be in that person’s place. When observers are told to take a more detached, impersonal view, to simply observe what is happening, they feel less empathy and concern.12
Differences in perspective can result from external influence or from the enduring characteristics of individuals or whole groups. The greater the differentiation between “us” and “them,” the less likely it is that others’ fate is observed empathically and that observers will imagine what it is like for “them” to experience distress and suffering. The German people were exposed to extensive propaganda – “evidence” of the Jews’ evil nature and the danger they represented to Germany. For example, at a Nazi mass rally in Berlin in August 1935, photographs show two huge signs painted with slogans directed against Jews. One warned German girls and women about Jews; the other was the often-used statement “Die Juden sind unser Ungluck” (the Jews are our misfortune). Past anti-Semitism, learning by participation, and propaganda led Germans to see Jews as unworthy of moral considerations or empathy.
When firms began to refuse to pay Jews for holidays (an action they took voluntarily and one of many instances of the population initiating action against Jews before the government demanded it), the courts upheld this action, reasoning that Jews had no “inner tie” to the performance of labor and no loyalty to their employers.13 Participation in anti-Jewish actions and propaganda reinforced each other. People easily accept propaganda or reasoning that helps them explain or justify their own actions. When children are told about the effects of helpful acts on other children, for example, they are influenced more if they receive the explanation while they engage in the helpful acts.14
A cycle began in which the population reciprocally influenced Nazi leaders. Increasingly, “unregulated” anti-Jewish actions took place – looting Jewish stores and raping, torturing, and killing Jews. It is impossible to know which of these actions were truly spontaneous and which were ordered or instigated by the state. These actions, even when instigated by them, probably reinforced the leaders’ beliefs. In any case, they gave bureaucrats a justification for passing anti-Jewish laws to deal with popular sentiments in a “legal” and orderly way.
The chances of reversing the progression were lessened by lack of contact between Jews and the rest of the population. Social psychologists have shown that although contact between different groups (for example, blacks and whites in America) does not guarantee a loss of prejudice, separation and segregation maintain it.15 Positive relations that counter a negative image cannot develop.
Progression along the continuum of destruction was also facilitated by acts that made violence and murder commonplace, for example, the killings of political enemies and the “euthanasia” program (the killing of the physically handicapped, mentally retarded, and mentally ill Germans). As the murder of some categories of people becomes acceptable, group norms change, making violence against others easier as well. This is especially so when institutions are established for the purpose. In Nazi Germany, the ideology of race was open-ended. Over time, more and more “genetically inferior” people were found. After “asocial” prisoners were removed to concentration camps, the killing of ugly prisoners ("outwardly asocial") was contemplated.16 “Better-world” ideologies are usually sufficiently loose or open-ended to allow a broadening of the circle of victims.
The evolution of ideas, actions, and the system: euthanasia and genocide
Human beings are creatures of ideas, which often provide impetus to action. The continuum of destruction involves a progression of ideas, feelings, and actions. The Soviet practice of treating political dissidents as mental patients has a background in such a practice during the Tsarist era, which served as a cultural blueprint. The theory of schizophrenia developed by Russian psychiatrists also lends itself to a view of dissidents as mentally ill.17 Robert Lifton’s book on the Nazi doctors and other works show the significance of ideas and their evolution in the euthanasia program. Two ideas supportive of the euthanasia program were a v
ision of killing as healing and the notion of life unworthy of life.18 This biomedical vision and the scientific racism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – as well as German intellectual traditions like Nietzsche’s philosophy – contributed to the Nazi ideology and, eventually, to killing those who were “genetically inferior.”
It began with a concern about eugenics, the vision of improving the race by improving its gene pool. Sterilization was advocated and limited practice of it was actually instituted in Germany and elsewhere, including the United States, prior to Nazi rule. “Mercy killing,” the killing of physically or mentally extremely impaired individuals, usually children, was also advocated, and views on mercy killing were expanded by several German theorists. Lifton notes a stress on the “integrity of the organic body of the Volk – the collectivity, people, or nation as embodiment of racial-cultural substance.”19 Robert Proctor shows that in discussions of racial hygiene, which had a long history but became the official policy of the Nazi government, curing the “folk body” took precedence over healing persons.20 This sacrifice of the individual for the group is consistent with German tradition, with the view that the state has superior rights.
One influential writer, Adolf Jost, in a book published in 1895 called The Right to Death (Das Recht auf den Tod), argued that control over the death of the individual ultimately belongs to the state: for the sake of the health of the people and the state, the state has the right to kill. An even more influential book, The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, was published in 1920 by Karl Binding, a retired professor of law, and Alfred Hoche, a professor of psychiatry. They described large segments of the mentally ill, the feebleminded, and the retarded as unworthy of life: to destroy them was a form of healing. They spoke of “mental death,” “human ballast” and “empty shells of human beings.” Putting such people to death was an “allowable, useful act.” They argued that “a new age will come which, from the standpoint of a higher morality, will no longer heed the demands of an inflated concept of humanity and an overestimation of the value of life as such.”21
The Nazis adopted, elaborated, and spread such ideas, and the ideas evolved further as they were put into practice in the euthanasia project. Lifton suggests that they also gained support from the prevailing psychiatric attitude toward mental patients: cool, distant, “objective,” emphasizing physical forms of therapy. However, as I noted, even some members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute who remained in Germany participated in euthanasia.22 Individuals with impaired functioning of varied kinds were devalued and their humanity denied. In the framework of the reversal of morality by the Nazis and to a degree the whole society, there was a reversal of medical morality. Killing became a kind of healing – of the nation, the group, the collectivity, the race.
A bureaucracy was established. Questionnaires haphazardly filled out, at times hundreds of them within a few hours, were used to select victims. Overdose of drugs, injections, starvation, and eventually gassing were used. Doctors filled out the questionnaires, made the selections, and did the actual killing, establishing many of the procedures later used in killing Jews. The procedures served both practical and psychological ends. For example, medical leaders of the euthanasia project praised doctors for sacrifices demanded by the killing process; later on Nazi leaders praised the SS killers for the sacrifices and hardships endured in fulfilling their “task.”
The medical system was placed in the service of killing. A submissive orientation to authority was even stronger among doctors than in the rest of the German population. Their training and organization were authoritarian and they had a long tradition of seeing themselves as servants of the state. Medical training and practice may have made them believe that they had power over life and therefore the right to decide about life and death. The belief in euthanasia and the authority orientation of German doctors created an affinity for the Nazi ideology. The doctors who killed were self-selected or selected by the authorities for their reliability as Nazis.
Systems tend to be self-prepetuating. When a system is well established, members stop questioning its basic assumptions. The relatives of people killed and then the whole population became aware of the killings, and in response to protests by people and institutions, the program was officially terminated. Nevertheless, some killings continued, with the killing of children relatively widespread. Instead of being gassed, they were now starved to death on “special diets” or given drug overdoses. The ideas that justified the killings were unchanged, and the perpetrators were still in their jobs. Nothing happened to eliminate the motivations for the killings or to counteract the personal evolution of the perpetrators. They evidently came to believe in eliminating “genetically inferior” and “incurable” people. Continued killing expressed their investment in this goal and perhaps also provided a form of self-justification.
As I noted, several paths leading to destruction converged. Together they made the extreme destructiveness of genocide possible and, for many of the perpetrators, perhaps even relatively easy (see more about this in the next chapter). The methods of the euthanasia program were directly transferred to the extermination camps, along with the facilities for gassing and many of the personnel, including doctors.
It is important to note that all this took place in a framework of Nazi ideology and a cultural ethos that served it. Ideas and methods were created that moved, in their indirect but far from haphazard way, toward the fulfillment of the ideology. Not only medical doctors but also many other intellectuals, academics, and scientists elaborated a vision that ultimately served genocide. In 1940 Konrad Lorenz, the famous ethologist, wrote:
[I]t must be the duty of racial hygiene to be attentive to a more severe elimination of morally inferior human beings than is the case today.... We should literally replace all factors responsible for selection in a natural and free life.... In prehistoric times of humanity, selection for endurance, heroism, social usefulness, etc. was made solely by hostile outside factors. This role must be assumed by a human organization; otherwise, humanity will, for lack of selective factors, be annihilated by the degenerative phenomena that accompany domestication.23
As group consciousness moves in a certain direction, a generative process may emerge that serves this movement.
The power of giving oneself over to a group, an ideal, or a leader
As I have noted, people may find great satisfaction giving themselves over to a group, an ideal, or a leader. Deprivation, distress, a search for solutions, and an environment that creates high levels of excitement and emotional contagion can lead to the abandonment of self, as in the miraculous cures at Lourdes.24 People attracted to movements (or to contemporary cults and extremist groups) are often people searching for solutions to basic questions about who they are and what life is about, often in response to difficulties in their lives.
The Nazi mass meetings were also occasions for conversion. The Nazi marches, street fights, and rituals both expressed and bred commitment. Proselytizing was an important duty of party members; persuading others also furthers commitment. Feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, failure, and uncertainty gave place to a sense of comfort, comradeship, shared destiny, admiration of a leader, and unquestioned certainty.
Commitment to the group, whether the result of conversion, evolution, or both, gives it great power to guide the interpretation of events, the definition of reality. As I noted, people are powerfully influenced by groups even in their perception of physical reality, which is more objective and verifiable than social reality. Values and “facts” about human beings (such as the evil nature of a minority) are much more subjective. Therefore, conformity is easier to bring about in the social realm. Sometimes people conform to others’ definition of the meaning of an event just to avoid conflict or social embarrassment. Extensive research findings indicate that bystanders often accept the definition of events offered to them and act accordingly.25 They may calmly disregard, without apparent conflict
, calls for help seemingly arising from serious physical distress once someone says it is not real and does not require attention, or they may respond speedily when spurred on by words or actions of other bystanders.26
If this happens even among strangers, the mutual influence of members of an authoritarian group will be even greater. To people who intensely identify with the group or who seek its acceptance (like those who joined the Nazi Party late, after Hitler came to power), deviation from the group in action will seem highly risky, and inner deviation difficult to resolve. An inner alignment reduces conflict. Even though they set the direction, leaders will also be affected by group ideology and group norms and find it increasingly difficult to move in new directions. Giving oneself over to the group and acting in unison with others result in a loss of independent personal identity and individual responsibility and in the loosening of moral constraints.
The role of the totalitarian system
The totalitarian Nazi system was difficult to resist, either physically or psychologically. It used force and propaganda. It indoctrinated children. It induced people to participate in activities that committed them to the Nazi world view: political meetings, youth groups, mating to create “pure Aryan” Germans, the boycott of Jewish stores. Learning by participation resulted in increasing acceptance of and identification with the system. The system offered carrots as well as sticks. Followers could experience both the specialness of being a member of a superior race and the earthly wellbeing offered to “good” Germans.
