Obedience to authority and the authoritarianism of culture. Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience to authority showed that many ordinary people can be induced, even by someone with limited authority, to administer what they believe to be extremely painful and life-threatening electric shocks.18 Milgram suggested that people can enter an “agentic” mode in which they relinquish individual responsibility and act as agents of authority.
While obedience is an important force, it is not the true motive for mass killing or genocide. The motivation to obey often comes from a desire to follow a leader, to be a good member of a group, to show respect for authority. Those who willingly accept the authority of leaders are likely to have also accepted their views and ideology. Guided by shared cultural dispositions, the shared experience of difficult life conditions, shared motivations that result from them, and shared inclinations for ways to satisfy motives, people join rather than simply obey out of fear or respect. We must consider not only how those in authority gain obedience but how the motivations of the whole group evolve. Milgram’s dramatic demonstration of the power of authority, although of great importance, may have slowed the development of a psychology of genocide, as others came to view obedience as the main source of human destructiveness.
The role of authority is also stressed by Erich Fromm and Alice Miller. According to Fromm, individuals who grew up in the authoritarian culture of Germany would have trouble assuming responsibility for their own lives.19 In trying times they could escape from freedom by following a leader, a group. Fromm identified an intrinsic desire for submission that arose from an inability to cope. In Alice Miller’s view, children who grow up in punitive, authoritarian families do not develop separate, independent identities.20 They cannot stand on their own but need guidance and leadership. With modification, these views can be incorporated into my “evolutionary” conception. A society’s strong respect for authority is one source of genocidal violence. A tendency to like and obey authority is one characteristic of perpetrators.
Psychosocial consequences of World War I on German youth. German youth were influenced by war experiences, the deprivation of food and fathering, and chaotic conditions after the war. Children old enough to be influenced by authoritarian fathering before the war must have experienced a vacuum upon the return of their defeated, powerless fathers from the war. In this view, Hitler had extraordinary influence because he fulfilled important needs.21 Erik Erikson suggested that he served as a rebellious older brother, with whom young Germans could join in rebellion.22
This thinking is congenial to my conception. The special needs of young Germans, which became part of their personality, may have made their problems especially difficult to bear. These needs may have joined the even more crucial long-standing characteristics of German culture to intensify the need for authority and the security it would provide.
The soldiers also suffered long-term effects from their experiences on the battlefield. The traumatic aftereffects of extended combat have long been recognized. Research on “posttraumatic stress disorder” in Vietnam veterans uncovered persistent personality changes. In many Vietnam veterans these changes are still evident in 1989, fifteen years after the end of the war. It was also fifteen years between the end of World War I and Hitler’s rise to power. Posttraumatic stress probably made German veterans more susceptible to Hilter’s appeal.
Anti-Semitism in Germany. Germany’s long history of anti-Semitism has been offered as one reason for the genocide. Although of great importance, prejudice and even discrimination against a group can persist for a long time without resulting in large-scale violence. How devaluation and negative image produce extreme destructiveness must be explained.
The role of the family. One focus of Israel Charny is the role of the family, and the child’s experiences in it that make him a “genocider.”23 I also stress the profound importance of the child’s experience, in the family and with people in general, in shaping his or her personality and moral values. However, the nature of society and what happens in it are also highly important: the historical events and conditions that affect the whole group, the group’s culture, and its motivations. How children are raised – for example, with severity or with benevolence – and family organization are among important aspects of the culture.
Hitler’s personality and psychopathology. Hitler’s illegitimate birth, his hatred of his father, his belief (probably false) that his paternal grandmother was Jewish, his belief that a Jewish doctor caused the death of his beloved mother, his difficulties with women, his unusual sexual practices, and the suicides of women he had relationships with have been examined in great detail.24
The psychohistory of individuals is a worthwhile contribution to the understanding of human personality and the disposition to cruelty. However, as an explanation of genocide it has limited value, for two reasons. First, as I noted earlier, there will always be people with extreme views who offer themselves as leaders. It is more important to understand followership – what leads a group to accept such a person as their leader. Second, fanatical devotion to an ideology has more direct influence on the actions of perpetrators than childhood experience or psychopathology. Hitler created a radical ideology out of building blocks in his experience and personality and developed a fanatical devotion to it (for a discussion of fanaticism, see Chapter 4). Knowledge of the childhoods and personalities of leaders and followers can inform us about their susceptibility to fanaticism but cannot explain mass killing and genocide.
The role of victims. That the victims played a part in their own destruction has been suggested, mainly by Arendt but also by Hilberg, Dawidowicz, Bettelheim, and others. The Germans set up Jewish councils, which maintained order and helped organize the transportation of Jews for “resettlement,” which really meant murder or slave labor ending in death. There
