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

may accurately describe some perpetrators. It suggests, however, that human beings are incapable of such evil while acting out of their “ordinary” selves. It suggests that the killers acted independently of or contrary to their ordinary selves. But SS doctors sent to Auschwitz were not innocent, uninvolved persons thrown into an extreme environment to which they had to adapt to ensure their own physical and psychological survival. They were ideologically committed Nazis who had undergone substantial resocialization. Their devotion to the Nazi cause and exclusion of Jews from the moral universe prepared them for Auschwitz.

The psychology of perpetrators: individuals and the system

To understand the psychology of perpetrators, we must consider their personality, the forces acting on them, and the system they are part of.^g All Germans shared the life problems and culture that gave them a common inclination, a societal tilt, to experience certain needs and to find certain ways of fulfilling them. The earliest Nazis probably had characteristics that intensified these needs and desires – a wish to relinquish a burdensome identity, authority orientation, anti-Semitism – and that made the means of their satisfaction offered by Hilter especially congenial. Doctors in particular may have been attacted to the “biological” aspect of Nazi ideology and its scientific racism.

Once the Nazis came to power, average Germans were led to become semiactive participants. The internal and external forces acting on those who joined the Nazis were even greater. Their experiences resocialized both average Germans and perpetrators. Dramatic changes in the system led to substantial personal changes, which made further change in the. system possible. The system required devotion to Nazi ideals. The people, especially Nazis, were to become “autonomously” moral in Durkheim’s sense; adopting Nazi values and ideals, they were to pursue them as their own. The world view, ideals, self-definition, and motivational hierarchy of people who joined the Nazis changed substantially over time.

The characteristics and functioning of perpetrators

According to the conception of motivation and action discussed in Part I, human motives can be arranged in a hierarchy. This hierarchy includes personal goals and even unconscious wishes. As a result of their experiences, the motivational hierarchy of the Nazis, and especially the SS, changed substantially. The importance of old motives declined and new motives emerged. Very high in the hierarchy was the desire to fulfill the goals of the Nazi system. Subordinate goals and values included “dealing” with the Jews, “hardness” (dismissal of human feelings for the sake of the cause), and being a good member of the group. Personal advancement was tied to success in working for these group goals. There were also negative goals. For example, the doctors led a privileged life in the “anus mundi” environment of Auschwitz. A transfer would force them to relinquish it and risk being sent to the Russian front. This happened to the only doctor who asked for reassignment.

There are two types of common moral values: a personal, or prosocial, morality focusing on human welfare and a rule-oriented morality stressing obligation, duty, and the necessity of living by rules.³⁶ The latter was dominant in the authoritarian culture of Germany. The former value was weakened in perpetrators by their experience in the Nazi system and became inapplicable to Jews and other devalued groups.

People do not always act to fulfill goals high in the hierarchy. What goal is actively sought at a particular time also depends on the nature of the environment. The environment may activate – call attention to, call forth, or offer the opportunity to satisfy – goals lower in the hierarchy. Moreover, circumstances may activate several conflicting goals and values. To resolve the conflict, people often use rationalizations and justifications that strengthen one motive or value and weaken the other.

The Nazi system and subsystems such as Auschwitz were strong activators of motives that had already moved high in the hierarchy of the perpetrators. People function best when they can integrate their goals by living and acting in ways that combine the fulfillment of important motives. The Nazi doctors in Auschwitz combined old personal and medical motives with Nazi motives, even when this required denial or other psychological maneuvers. They focused on their professionalism and devoted themselves to improving medical care even while camp inmates were being starved to death and murdered. They performed cruel and often useless experiments on inmates to further “medical knowledge.” They preserved their sense of importance and high status by wearing impeccable, elegant uniforms and carrying themselves with dignity.

Behavioral shifts

There was strong overall consistency in the personal motives of the SS and the motives called forth by the camp system.³⁷ Because certain stimuli were too powerful or an SS member had not been completely resocialized (or both), occasionally a conflicting goal or value was activated. The starving, skeleton-like inmates and the naked bodies of the dead sometimes activated feelings of responsibility. Seeing naked bodies, especially, made it hard to maintain the discrimination between human beings and “subhuman” Jews.

As I noted, motives lower in the hierarchy become active when events or circumstances make them important and offer their fulfillment. Certain stimuli can also break down learned discriminations. This explains some of the seemingly out-of-character behavior of SS men – their occasional human response to Jews. In the example cited earlier, a Jewish prisoner’s self-assertiveness activated motivation not usually called forth.

Lifton describes an incident in which an inmate made a request of an especially cruel Nazi doctor, and the request was granted. Apparently the inmate’s unusual behavior activated some motivation low in the hierarchy – politeness, correctness in responding to a request, perhaps even compassion. A book of “Hassidic tales” of survival tells the story of a man who hears a familar voice as he progresses to the selection. It is a German neighbor whom he used to greet customarily with a hearty “Good morning, Herr.. . . “ Automatically, he blurts out the same greeting, and (perhaps in response) the SS man sends him to the line of those selected for labor instead of gassing.³⁸ Perhaps a remnant of the