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

by Ervin Staub

  But many choices are made without awareness, either preconsciously or unconsciously. All of us have a wide range of moral values and rules at our disposal. Some have been superseded but remain in our repertoire and can be called forth. Some stand side by side, even though they are potentially contradictory. Facing a conflict between a nonmoral motive and a moral value, a person may reduce the conflict by moral equilibration, a shift to a different moral value or principle. For example, the moral principles that prohibit killing or harming other human beings are replaced by the principle of “social good,” defined as protection of the German nation from internal subversion and genetic contamination by Jews. Or loyalty and obedience to authority may become the relevant “moral” principles.

  Although this can happen consciously, moral equilibration often occurs without awareness: a person automatically selects values and standards that allow the expression of the motive in action. A preconscious or unconscious equilibration circumvents moral conflict. As people progress along a continuum of destruction, moral equilibration becomes more automatic. Moral conflict can still be reawakened by such sights as a heap of dead naked bodies; Eichmann and Himmler both felt sick, overcome. I noted the Nazi doctors’ initial shock in Auschwitz. Such emotional and bodily reactions can serve as signals to the self, even in people who have moved to the stage of automatic (and not conscious) moral equilibration. However, by this time Eichmann’s, Himmler’s, and the Nazi doctors’ commitment to the Final Solution and their embeddedness in the Nazi group made a renewal of moral conflict or change in its modes of resolution unlikely.

  Individual responsibility

  In the progress toward genocide, there were many choice points for each Nazi. The responsibility of individuals is partly a function of the culture and society in which they live. A group can foster psychological and moral differentiation between the group and its members to different degrees. A man raised in the society of Mundurucú headhunters is socialized into behavior that might be judged immoral by outsiders. Many groups require males to kill designated enemies. To the extent a group completely socializes its members into such conduct, we cannot expect them to have a separate perspective or to question its conduct or their own.

  But many groups, especially in the modern age, teach their members individual moral responsibility. To the extent that socialization clearly teaches this, it is reasonable to hold people responsible for their moral decisions and actions. However, there is usually ambiguous and conflicting instruction. Loyalty to the group is required and often defined as obedience to its standards and leaders. Loyalty and obedience are even taught as moral values. Part of the tragedy of Germany was that loyalty and obedience were exalted over individual moral responsibility.h

  Another requirement for individual responsibility is self-awareness: awareness of one’s needs, motives, desires, and psychological processes (see Part IV). For example, devaluation and scapegoating are often non-reflective psychological processes that arise without awareness and make moral equilibration easier. Even absorbing an ideology that helps one to comprehend a chaotic world can be largely nonreflective. Some cultures and modes of socialization enlarge the capacity to bring such nonreflective processes into awareness. German culture and especially German childrearing practices did not.

  Some people develop “processing mechanisms” that enable them to test their psychological reactions and consciously evaluate them in light of their goals, moral values, and beliefs. Such persons are less likely to be pushed and pulled by external forces. Who they are and what they believe and value still define both their initial reactions and how they process them, but their greater internal flexibility provides them with the opportunity for moral choice.

  Even in a society that fosters individual moral responsibility, there is no guarantee that individuals will oppose the group. Resisting is extremely difficult: it requires courage and strong motivation arising from moral values or from empathic caring. The capacity to choose and exercise moral responsibility requires an independent identity (which makes differentiation from the group possible), awareness of psychological processes, and moral values that are “inclusive” (applied to a broad range or all of humanity). Thus, moral responsibility is an ideal. How a society can foster it will be discussed in Part IV.

  The completion tendency: killing till the very end

  The SS continued killing Jews until the end of the losing war. Most of the Jews of Hungary were killed in the summer of 1944. Adolf Eichmann was still trying to transport Jews out of Hungary when Russian troops were at the gates of Budapest. In the extermination camps, the killings continued until near the end of 1944; then killing facilities were dismantled in an attempt to eradicate evidence. Cruel forced marches of inmates of abandoned camps killed more. Even in the last six months of the war, with the enemy closing in on many fronts, the Germans spent enormous resources on killing Jews. Inertia of the system is a partial but insufficient explanation. Are there others?

  As I have noted, Ernest Becker proposed that human being are incapable of accepting their animal nature and its corollary, mortality. Out of the need for immortality much violence arises. The practice of human sacrifice, widespread in ancient times, was an affirmation of godlike power over life and death. As the edifice of superiority the Nazis had built was collapsing over their heads, they reaffirmed their immortality and power by intensified killing.39

  My similar but less radical explanation is that power gives people a feeling of invulnerability that is especially needed at times of danger. The greatest power over others is the power of life and death. Threatened with the loss of the war, their sense of superiority, and even their lives, many SS men reaffirmed their power and invulnerability by continued killing. They could also find “rational” justifications: to complete the job and eliminate the traces of their actions.

  To many SS, the extermination of Jews was a clear, specific embodiment of Nazism. From this perspective, Kurt Lewin’s notion of the goal gradient is another useful explanation of the feverish murders at the end. According to Lewin, the closer people are to a goal, the more intense their involvement with it and their effort to reach it.40 The Nazi goal required the abandonment of ordinary human morality. To accomplish it the goal had to acquire great importance and special intensity. The SS went a long way toward fulfilling it, investing not only enormous effort, time, and resources, but also their identity. As Himmler said, they sacrificed much for it. The goal acquired a life of its own, and the motivation to reach it became even greater when, near its achievement, its fulfillment was threatened.

  Eichmann remained in Hungary until Budapest fell, continuing his efforts to kill the last large group of surviving Hungarian Jews. He even tried to hunt down individual Jews so that they would not escape. The goal of completing the extermination had supplanted even the elementary need for self-protection, for survival.

  * * *

  a Obviously, this version was used after Hitler became chancellor.

  b The Nazi essays collected by Theodore Abel indicate that many members of the Nazi Party before 1933, especially stormtroopers, enjoyed violence already before they joined. Of the 581 respondents 337 were stormtroopers, and probably a large majority were members of the less well trained and less deadly efficient, although violent, SA (see later in this chapter), which was much larger at that time than the SS. In looking at their youthful “postures” Peter Merkl put them into a number of categories. “Politically militarized youth” had a great urge to fight and to march and a desire for good fellowship, but little concern about the movement’s ideology (in his classification, 39.9 percent of the stormtroopers but only 6.2 percent of Nazi Party members in general belonged to this category). “Fully politicized youth” were highly ideological and politically oriented, more interested in organizing than fighting (10.3 percent of the stormtroopers, 9.8 percent of party members). “Hostile militants” showed intense hostility to certain groups and to societal authority and heavily engaged in violen
ce (12.8 and 7.2 percent, respectively). Authoritarians had an obsession with law and order and were attracted to the leadership cult (4.3 and 6.2 percent). Finally, there were two relatively undifferentiated groups, “prepolitical, parochial, or romantic” (10.2 and 22.2 percent) and “others, including people of no youthful association” (22.5 and 46.4 percent).8

  This classification is based on limited information that is selective in two senses: first, in that only a small group of Nazis responded to Abel’s essay contest, and second, that those who responded necessarily saw fit to provide only certain information. Its nature makes it difficult to judge personality dispositions, such as a potentially antisocial orientation. Nonetheless, Merkl notes an “openness” in the answers to the questionnaires, and they have great value in that they were collected before Hitler came to power and the large-scale Nazi violence.

  The last two groups are undifferentiated: their essays suggested no clear categorization. This may be due to lack of information. Or it may be that intense, persistent life problems lead young people without strong personal predisposing characteristics, especially when there are cultural predispositions, to join extreme movements that fit their cultural predispositions. Once they are members, a process of resocialization begins.

  c The pressure of authority can result in a relatively sudden shift of attitude, as exemplified in the story of a Vietnam veteran (personal communication from Seymour Epstein, who interviewed this veteran). Flying over a group of civilians in a helicopter, he was ordered to fire at them, an order he did not obey. The helicopter circled over the area and again he was ordered to fire, which again he did not do. The officer in charge then threatened him with court-martial, which led him to fire the next time around. He vomited, felt profoundly distressed. The veteran reported that in a fairly short time firing at civilians became like an experience at a target-shooting gallery, and he began to enjoy it. This story also demonstrates what may be a frequent phenomenon: a conversion-type experience in which a final inhibition against killing, in this case of a certain type of victim, is overcome. Prior training and prior steps along the continuum of destruction prepare a person for such “conversion.”

  d Education and a profession are sometimes thought to make people less inclined to such destructiveness. Some note with surprise and wonder that the Einsatzgruppen included highly qualified academics, ministerial officials, lawyers, and even a Protestant minister and an opera singer. In contrast, many of the SS auxiliaries were illiterate. People from higher socioeconomic classes may be less likely to engage in criminal murder, both because they can gain advantages by socially acceptable means and because they are more socialized into traditional rules and values. But this would make no difference in an ideologically based mass murder, especially when the fulfillment of psychological needs and “higher ideals” as well as the usual rewards of education and professional life – prestige, recognition, status, money – are offered for participation in repression, murder, and ultimately genocide.

  e This book is a fictionalized account of actual events, based on evidence from many sources, including interviews with former camp inmates and material at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem.

  f In the account that follows I summarize and recast information provided by Lifton, adding my own interpretions; for example, it is I who infer that the doctors made a speedy adjustment to the camp, suggest motives for the noncommissioned officers’ conversations with Hoess, and so on.

  g Personality refers to the enduring characteristics of individuals that differentiate them from others. I define personality broadly to include, for example, ideological beliefs, because they are important and usually enduring characteristics.

  h I am stressing the importance of separation and differentation from the group not to advocate an emphasis on the self and its needs and interests. To fulfill ideals such as concern about other human beings, connection, and community (see Part IV), people must develop strong separate identities so that they are capable of standing apart, of independent moral judgment, and if necessary of opposition to the group.

  11 The behavior and psychology of bystanders and victims

  The role of bystanders

  The passivity of German bystanders

  Germans accepted, supported, and participated in the increasing persecution of Jews. Resistance and public attempts to help were rare. Bystanders too were influenced by difficult life conditions, German culture, and the resulting psychological processes and motives. These gave them a shared societal tilt with perpetrators. Perpetrators probably differed from bystanders in personality and initial values. Some bystanders may have lacked opportunity and were unable to join organizations that became part of the destruction machinery. Some Germans who strongly opposed the Nazis were destroyed by them.

  The practice by the Nazi state of “legal” persecution, of creating new laws to disenfranchise and persecute Jews, contributed to the passivity of Germans (and maybe outsiders). Germans value law and order; the new laws helped create new standards of acceptable conduct. They must have helped Germans to distance themselves from the Jews.

  The Germans’ positive feelings for Hitler also shaped their attitude toward anti-Jewish actions. According to Fritz Heider’s balance theory and other theories of cognitive consistency, when attitudes are in imbalance, the motivation will arise to bring them into balance.1 If a person likes Hitler, given Hitler’s hatred of Jews, there is imbalance if that person likes Jews. To create balance, either the attitude toward Hitler or the attitude toward Jews has to change. In Nazi Germany, all the pressures acting on this person would favor Hitler over the Jews.a

  Deviation and resistance were dangerous, but not impossible. Some initially refused to comply with boycotts. Over time group norms changed, at least partly because cooperation was so common and resistance so unusual. Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s economic minister until 1937, exercised some influence by steadily warning against an extreme anti-Jewish policy – apparently because of his fear of repercussions abroad.

  In the few known instances where Nazi officials or SS officers expressed disagreement with anti-Jewish actions or refused to participate, nothing happened to them.2 For example, Sturmbannführer Hartl was not punished when he refused to take over an Einsatzkommando in Russia; Generalkommissar Kuber was not punished when he frustrated a killing operation against German Jews. When a Nazi doctor requested transfer out of the euthanasia program, he was simply reassigned.

  Even limited noncompliance by German officials saved lives. Georg Druckner, a high German official in Denmark, warned the Danish authorities about the impending deportation of the Jews and delayed execution of the order, allowing the Danish people to organize the escape of 6,500 Danish Jews to Sweden.3 As I have noted, protests brought the euthanasia program to an end, at least formally.

  Protest, resistance, and noncompliance at an early stage might have been highly effective. Hitler was concerned about popular resistance and feared the churches. Instead, the population often acted against Jews in anticipation of Nazi measures. Businesses often fired Jewish employees even before the laws required it.4 The monolithic culture and totalitarian system eliminated public discussion and protest that would have called attention to anti-Nazi values and conceptions of reality. A breakdown of uniformity and the expression of contrary views might have influenced bystanders not committed to Nazi ideology.

  Bystanders and perpetrators in Nazi Europe

  The percentage of the Jewish population killed in different European countries varied greatly. In countries occupied by Germany or allied to it, the behavior of the population, leaders, and institutions (the churches, the government) greatly affected the fate of the Jews. Local resistance decreased the effectiveness of steps leading to deportation in territories occupied by Germany (the identification of Jews; stripping them of rights, property, and jobs; and their segregation) and of Germany’s success in persuading its allies to deport their Jewish populations.

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bsp; Some areas the Germans conquered were incorporated into the Greater German Reich. Other areas were to become colonies and their inhabitants to provide labor; these areas had German military or civilian governors who ruled with the help of the SS and army troops; German and SS control was strong and harsh. In other occupied territories, mainly in the west, German authorities relied on existing government institutions and native collaboration. Some countries were German allies; here, the Germans incited anti-Semitism and used persuasion to get governments to deport their Jewish populations – to hand them over to the Germans. Germany invaded several of its allies late in the war, mainly to avoid their desertion, but with the effect that Germany gained direct control.

  Helen Fein has shown a direct relationship between prewar anti-Semitism in a country (the existence of anti-Semitic parties and organizations, discriminatory policies, and so on) and the proportion of Jews killed in the country.5 A related factor was the behavior of local church leaders. Another was the degree of SS control over the population. Some authors argue that SS control (which was often established or increased after 1941) was a primary determinant of the number of Jews killed. When a government in an occupied country was allowed to retain significant internal control through an independent army or police force, the chance of Jewish survival was greater.6 Fein’s work indicates, however, that the degree of preexisting anti-Semitism – and the behavior of church leaders, officials, and members of the population in anti-Semitic countries