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

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

1.Attraction to and enjoyment of military or pseudomilitary roles.

2.Mercenary-pragmatic interests: they were attracted by tangible benefits and wanted to improve their lives.

3.Belief in Nazi ideology.

4.A wish to be a professional soldier, which was impossible to fulfill because of the limit placed on the army by the Versailles treaty.

The interviewees often said they were ignorant of the true nature and purpose of the SS. This could be the case with later “tasks” but is not likely with regard to earlier ones, the violent promotion of the Nazi movement.

Many of the early followers said they saw few alternatives to the SS, since they had little training or education that would have helped them secure employment. However, many other Germans were in a similar position during the depression. Those who joined and remained in the SS had to have some special predisposition for the SS role. Moreover, many joined during the economic expansion under Hitler’s rule, when other opportunities did exist.

On a questionnaire measuring authoritarianism (conformity and pronounced authoritarian-antidemocratic attitudes) former SS members scored substantially higher than former members of the German armed forces. This may have resulted from self-selection or experience or both. Both SS members and armed forces members shared certain, possibly common, German cultural characteristics: loyalty and honor held in higher esteem than justice; Mein Kampf read before 1933; past military or semimilitary activity regarded with satisfaction; and preference for dictatorial or monarchic government. SS members tended to see a great historical threat to German institutions and ideals.¹⁴

Steiner suggests an explanation of SS violence:

We propose to advance the concept of the “sleeper” who lies dormant until circumstances or specific events will activate him or her and produce behavioral traits not apparent before. Extreme deprivation coupled with powerlessness at one end of the spectrum and the assumption of considerable power, causing elation or ecstatic joy on the other, tend to produce the necessary conditions and thereby passions which can activate the sleeper. As Erich Fromm pointed out, “people with a sadistic character wait for the opportunity to behave sadistically just as people with a loving character wait for the opportunity to express their love.” Fromm’s findings are supported by this writer’s observations of former members of the SS during and after the Third Reich. The shifts occuring in the display of personality characteristics when social conditions change radically is absolutely striking. The sadistic-prone – or authoritarian – character, who may have played a meek or even friendly role under one set of circumstances, may become an absolutely destructive individual in a totalitarian terroristic society in which aggression is rewarded. By contrast, such behavior may be discouraged in a democratic society and therefore less aggression may be expressed.¹⁵

Steiner’s account suggests that self-selection as well as changed circumstances were especially important. The changeability implied by the sleeper concept is a matter of degree. Most persons are sleepers to some degree, inasmuch as they have a violent potential that can be triggered by specific conditions. Only a limited number of SS members were likely to have sleeper characteristics to a high degree. Others had to evolve more. Early joiners had to like or feel comfortable with confrontation and violence and with authoritarian structures and the Nazi ideology: they required less change. To different degrees, changes in their environment – difficult life conditions, membership in the SS, Nazi rule, and changes in Germany – brought forth motivations and aspects of the selves of the SS that previously might have been dormant. This is consistent with the principle that different environments or circumstances activate different motives. The environmental changes, whether self-selected or imposed, also led to new experience, “resocialization,” and personal change. Thus, self-selection does not mean that most who joined the SS were ready to become mass murderers as soon as their environment allowed it.

Learning by participation

The SS training required and inculcated extreme willingness to endure danger and submit to authority. Fighting and occasionally killing were demanded from the start.^c The training, shared experience, and privileges created a strong group tie. Ordinary rules and prohibitions did not apply to the SS either legally or psychologically. Deindividuation resulting from their group membership and joint actions further broke down moral prohibitions. Ideological indoctrination made killing Jews the fulfillment of