by Ervin Staub
Inner resistance was difficult to maintain while outwardly conforming and participating. Families were divided, spouses in conflict, and children set against parents. Children and adolescents in the Hitler youth groups were encouraged to spy on and report their own parents. The human need for consistency made outward conformity lead to inner change. It is difficult to maintain a divided self without support from others. Only within a resistance group or some other support network was it possible for most. The system also set a frame for action. Even Pastor Grueber, whom the court at Nuremberg lauded as one of the just men of the world, worked only to ease the Jews’ suffering while accepting the fact of their fate.
Nevertheless, resistance was possible: it stopped the policy of euthanasia, for example. Members of the Catholic church, relatives of victims, and other Germans spoke out. In the summer of 1941, certain groups – lawyers, church authorities – submitted a formal complaint to the government, and in August 1941 the bishop of Münster attacked these killings from his pulpit. After more than a year of rising public clamor and 70,000 to 100,000 dead, the program was discontinued.27 Few voices, however, were raised against the mistreatment of the Jews.
Perhaps the most profound effect of a successful totalitarian system is the lack of dissenting voices that offer a perspective different from that cultivated by authorities or engender inner conflict or sympathy with victims. Neither German citizens nor leaders were awakened to conflicts between their traditional values and the acts they observed or perpetrated against Jews and others. However, the reactions that stopped the policy of euthanasia suggest that even a totalitarian system is more effective when its actions are consistent with the culture, for example, when it turns against already devalued groups. Perhaps lack of preparation of the population through increasing mistreatment of victims was also a reason for the outcry against euthanasia.
Some writers make it appear that evil and its executors in the totalitarian state are basically different from evil deeds or perpetrators elsewhere. In discussing Arendt’s book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for transporting Jews to killing centers, Bettelheim writes:
This, then is a book about our inability to comprehend fully how modern technology and social organization, when made use of by totalitarianism, can empower a normal, rather mediocre person such as Eichmann to play so crucial a role in the extermination of millions. By the same incongruity, it becomes theoretically possible for a minor civil servant – say a lieutenant colonel, to keep the parallel to Eichmann – to start the extermination of most of us by pressing a button. It is an incongruity between the image of man we still carry – rooted though it is in the humanism of the Renaissance and in the liberal doctrines of the eighteenth century – and the realities of human existence in the middle of our current technological revolution. Had this revolution not permitted us to view the individual as a mere cog in the complex machinery – dispensable, a mere instrument – and the state to use him as such, Eichmann would never have been possible. But neither would the slaughter at Stalingrad, Russia’s slave labor camps, the bombing of Hiroshima, or the current planning for nuclear war. It is the contradiction between the incredible power technology has put at our disposal, and the insignificance of the individual compared to it....
. . . this is not the latest chapter in antisemitism but rather one among the first chapters in modern totalitarianism.... A more complete understanding of totalitarianism requires that we see Eichmann as basically a mediocrity whose dreadful importance is derived from his more-or-less chance position within the system.28
Bettelheim blames modern totalitarianism and technology for the Holocaust. But large-scale murder was not discovered by totalitarian systems, and human beings without special creativity and talent have normally been the instruments of destruction. Those who assembled Christians in ancient Rome to throw them to the lions did not need to possess greatness. In the Middle Ages, priests who identified witches to be burnt had no great vision or intellectual powers that made them and their evil deeds extraordinary. The disappearance and murder of thousands of people in Argentina was perpetrated by an “authoritarian” rather than totalitarian system. The “autogenocide” in Cambodia made limited use of advanced technology.
Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception. While Hannah Arendt’s views are consistent with this, her concept of the “banality of evil” is misleading: it lessens, or diminishes, evil. It is an expression of wishful thinking, in the same class as the concept of “incomprehensible evil.” The latter enhances evil by romanticizing it and giving it mythic proportions; the former diminishes it. Great evil arises out of ordinary psychological processes that evolve, usually with a progression along the continuum of destruction.
What is or is not acceptable to do very much depends, for humans, on the perspective they hold. The most kind of the most brutal actions can appear reasonable and justified to people, depending on their perspective. They can see other humans as trustworthy, wonderful, and infallible – as Hitler was to many Nazis – or as worse than animals, whose killing is not only justified but desirable.
In summary, a number of elements shaped the Germans’ perspective: (1) needs and motives arising from difficult life conditions, shaped by cultural preconditions including anti-Semitism and obedience to authority; (2) Nazi ideology and propaganda; (3) intolerance for dissent and lack of voices to remind them of the immorality of their actions; (4) learning by participation; and (5) giving themselves over to a group or system in which many of these elements were dominant. Enjoyment of the good life and admiration of Hitler also contributed. Most Germans, exposed to these influences, evolved a perspective in which the killing of the Jews was acceptable, for many even desirable.c In all of this the system was tremendously significant. Being part of a system shapes views, rewards adherence to dominant views, and makes deviation psychologically demanding and difficult. This will be further discussed in connection with the SS.
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a In my discussion with the older group of Germans I had the impression that they thought people would have had reason to fear deviation, but for most of them, including members of their families, the issue never came up, because they did not intend to deviate. Like most Germans, they did not even contemplate ways one might limit cooperation with the Nazis.
b The latest and most extensive study did not report that marginality was a significant characteristic of the rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe.9 The difference is partly definitional. The researchers stressed connection and reported the primary motive of many (52 percent) as “normocentric,” the desire to fulfill the norms of a significant group they identified with, such as a religious group, a resistance group, family, or friends. However, such groups themselves could be marginal; and once they began to help Jews and thus oppose the Nazis, they distanced themselves from the larger society, which not only in Germany but also elsewhere (e.g., Poland, Hungary) accepted if not supported Nazi persecution of the Jews.
c Late in my discussion at Trier with the group of sixty- to seventy-five-year-old Germans, I asked them whether they thought the German people had come to support the actions of Hitler and the Nazis against Jews – not the extermination, but what preceded it. After some silence two women expressed their belief that this was the case. The group then went on to other topics. As with a couple other points that raised important questions about the conduct not of the Nazis, but of the German people, after a while someone challenged this view. But several people believed that the German people had accepted the persecution of the Jews and even regarded it as desirable.
10 The SS and the psychology of perpetrators
The SS (Schutzstaffel, security echelon) was the organization that had the major responsibility for the Nazi genocide. SS men were the direct perpetrators. They also operated the bureaucracy that selected, assembled, and transported victims, activities in which many other people were also involved.1 They
were self-selected or selected by the authorities and trained for obedience, violence, and brutality. In its final form, the SS was not only the creation of a larger system but had become a system itself, and it served the purposes of both.
When the proper conditions exist, some human beings become capable of killing others as naturally as if they were animals to be slaughtered, without questioning the act. Some killers may even enjoy it, as they would not enjoy killing animals, because they exercise power over other people or are aware of the victim’s suffering, which fulfills their desire to hurt. Even those who willingly kill may feel distress arising from the sight, sound, and smell of dead or dying people, but this does not necessarily make them question the act. Their perspective determines how people perceive and experience what they do and what conclusions they draw from their own emotional upheaval as they commit murder. They may search for “better” methods of killing or convince themselves they are making “sacrifices” for a “higher ideal.”2
The creation, evolution, and the role of the SS
The SS was created in the winter of 1922-23 as an elite bodyguard for Hitler at political meetings and in street confrontations with the Left. Himmler became the leader of the SS in 1929 when it had 280 members, and he increased their numbers to 30,000 by 1932. By 1942 the SS had 250,000 members. It also commanded about 200,000 auxiliaries, who were members of dissident ethnic groups in Russia (who at least initially saw Germans as their liberators and who were also highly anti-Semitic). They were put to work on the mass killing of Jews.3
Himmler elaborated a special code for the SS. The primary criterion for membership was “racial purity": height and physical appearance had to correspond to the Germanic ideal. These criteria were discarded in 1944, when the SS was so desperate for manpower that it tried to attract Europeans from occupied countries and also forcibly inducted Germans and others.
Medieval concepts of loyalty and honor were part of Himmler’s code: the SS motto was “My honor is my loyalty.” Having been tested by various means, the new member took a ceremonial oath of loyalty: “I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Leader and Chancellor of the Reich, loyalty and bravery. I pledge to you and the superiors appointed by you, obedience unto death. So help me God.”a Himmler designed other rituals, to create a romantic and mystical atmosphere. The rules demanded complete subordination to the organization. Members had to ask permission for any major decision, including the choice of a wife.
All members of the SS received special training. Haussner, the general in charge of the officer training program that began in 1935, believed in a tough Prussian tradition and a superior aristocracy. The training combined iron-hard discipline and a romantic mystique, including
.. .exercises in total obedience, compulsive attention to detail, dangerous tests of individual courage, and ideological indoctrination – including Himmler’s brand of Teutonic elitism as well as standard National Socialist political and racial values. Only after an initial period of testing in this system was the cadet given the privilege of taking the dramatic SS oath of loyalty to Hitler.
The officers produced by this system were far from being simple-minded robots. Instead, they formed a corps of “true believers” who were effective leaders because, in addition to convictions about their own superiority to other men, they felt a common racial bond with their troops and were imbued with a medieval sense of noblesse oblige toward them. Furthermore, since most of these officers had virtually surrendered their sense of personal identity to Hitler and the SS, they were rarely troubled by any of the personal doubts which can divert men from putting total energy into their work.4
Members were eased out if they could not achieve the required discipline and fanatical zeal.
There were many reasons why members of the SS felt special and superior. First, they were selected for being racially “pure” and superior in appearance. Officer candidates in the 1930s had to prove an “Aryan” ancestry dating back to the 1750s. Second, many members were aristocrats or had advanced degrees, including doctorates; both titles of nobility and educational credentials were highly valued in Germany. Although most SS members had only a high school diploma – a more respectable degree in Germany than in the United States – they could feel that they were in select company. At the same time, the SS had a democratic quality. At least through the mid-1930s men without privileged family background could advance more easily in the SS than in the army.
There were other sources of prestige, honor, and power. The SS was Hitler’s private army and Hitler gave it unlimited support and privileges. Late in 1936 it was placed beyond conventional law. The SS were permitted any actions authorized by Hitler or his policies. Internal disputes and conflicts were resolved by its own courts of honor. A propaganda campaign presented the SS to the German people as the elite of Nazi institutions. Distinguished Germans were offered honorary command ranks and the right to wear the SS uniform.
Thus SS members saw themselves as an elite, with common values, common practices, a shared mystique, a sense of camaraderie, and devotion to their organization, ideology, and cause. After a detailed study, Tom Segev concluded that “joining the SS was to become part of an elite, an aristocracy, a religious order, a secret society, a gang, an army and a family all at the same time.... At times the SS was something of a mentality, a way of life.”5 An SS veteran who served as a concentration camp commander described the comradeship this way: “We were Germany’s best and hardest. Every single one of us dedicated himself to the others. What held us together was an alliance of comradeship. Not even the bond of marriage can be stronger. Comradeship is everything. It gave us the mental and physical strength to do what others were too weak to do.”6 Part of the SS identity involved pride in being able to do especially difficult, but necessary, important deeds – including murder on a large scale.
In place of earlier deprivation, uncertainty, weakness, and threat, membership offered many satisfactions and a strong identity. The SS was a total institution, the center of the lives of its members. Under such circumstances it was extraordinarily difficult to deviate from SS standards of conduct. The more a person’s life is centered in a group, the more a person derives identity, self-concept and self-esteem, rewards and satisfactions, conceptions of the right way of life, and ideals from membership, the more difficult it is to deviate and to defy the group. Men who joined the SS after Hitler came to power were shaped not only by personal characteristics (self-selection) and the “socializing” and guiding influence of the organization, but also by a strong need to prove themselves to earlier members who suspected them of opportunism.
At the same time, both the growth and functioning of the SS were complex. For example, there was financial corruption. In principle, all Jewish property belonged to the Reich. In reality, the SS members appropriated some possessions of Jews and others they rounded up. They were also open to bribery. Such practices, common among superiors such as Goering, many have been simply part of the system. Other groups of mass murderers, for example, military units involved in the disappearances in Argentina, were also allowed to “reward” themselves with the property of victims. Bribery in a system where all roads eventually lead to extermination, where it did not matter whether these or those Jews were taken to fill a cattle car going to an extermination camp, need not conflict with the basic policy. Personal enrichment may have been a legitimate reward. In fact, although Himmler issued an order against taking property without authorization, much of what the SS men took for themselves was “authorized” distribution of goods.7
Characteristics of SS members
The nature of the tasks the SS performed was a basis of self-selection. Initially created as Hitler’s bodyguards, their job was to fight political opponents. They progressively took on the jobs of rounding up people, transporting them to concentration camps, murdering opponents or former comrades, police work, torture, and the administration of concentration camps. Even before the war they enforced boycotts of Jewish stores
, destroyed Jewish property, burned buildings, and killed Jews. Some of these duties had to be known to those who volunteered. They had to be willing to do these things. Many probably had a taste for them. In addition to their anti-Semitism and ideology, many apparently enjoyed the violence. Early members especially were probably devoted to Hitler or to the National Socialist ideology; after all, they joined a powerless leader. Those who joined early were usually young. The SS offered them the opportunity to fulfill interests and inclinations for which they had no other outlets. It also served the powerful needs arising from difficult life conditions.b Studies show that SS members were authoritarian and followed orders without concern about their moral implications or the victims’s fate. Interviews after the war with concentration camp commanders showed that many of them were enthusiastic about their role in creating a new order and glad to do whatever was necessary.9 Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, presented himself as an idealist in an atuobiography he wrote while waiting to be hanged. He believed that killing millions of Jews was a service to his country.10 In contrast, Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, described himself in seventy hours of interviews as a reluctant murderer who wanted to abandon his position but did not have the strength to do so. He came from a family with a highly authoritarian father and a submissive mother, and he had much opportunity to learn by participation. He participated in the euthanasia program and directed the construction of the concentration camp at Sobibor, before he became commandant of Treblinka.11
Henry Dicks, a British psychiatrist, interviewed SS officers and men who were serving prison sentences for mass killing.12 He found that most of them had unhappy childhoods with an authoritarian father who freely used corporal punishment. The interviews showed them as people who committed atrocities with ease when ordered to do so. John Steiner conducted several studies of former members of the SS. As part of one study, he interviewed three hundred, and had fifty of them write or tape-record extensive autobiographies.13 He also sent questionnaires to former members of both the SS and the German armed forces, which included twenty-one translated items of the American original of the F (fascism) scale, a measure of authoritarianism. Outstanding characteristics of SS members were
