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

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 vision 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