One of the shocking realizations about the Holocaust and other campaigns of genocide around the world is that these atrocities were perpetrated by seemingly ordinary individuals rather than monsters. In his book \u201cOrdinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,\u201d Christopher Browning (1992) explores how average middle-aged German police officers became mass murderers. The author\u2019s \u201cmulticausal explanation\u201d (Browning, 1992, p. 215) includes a wide range of factors that include propaganda and dehumanization of the Jews, conformity and peer pressure, deference to authority (however tentative), gradual desensitization and routinization, division of labor, assertions of fear of punishment, career advancement, and the context provided by the war.<\/p>\n
Another book features similar themes but appears only as a footnote in Browning\u2019s tome. Hannah Arendt\u2019s (1963) \u201cEichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil\u201d discusses Adolf Eichmann, the mid-level bureaucrat who managed the logistics of deportation of Jews to death camps. This man did not consider himself to be evil, found concentration camps revolting, and could not stand the sight of blood (Arendt, 1963). Yet, this was the man who directed the deportation of Hungarian Jews described in Elie Weisel\u2019s \u201cNight\u201d (2006).<\/p>\n
Arendt reveals how the context of living in Nazi Germany shaped the non-Jewish citizens\u2019 thinking about the Jews. Through executive action, Jews were excluded from public service work in Germany beginning in 1933 \u2013 nine years before the events discussed by Browning (Wikipedia, 2019). Jewish students were not accepted at universities, and Jewish doctors and lawyers were gradually driven from those professional communities. Nazi troopers habitually vandalized Jewish businesses with total impunity. By 1935, Germany had a separate set of laws for Jews (Wikipedia, 2019). As a result, it was not just propaganda but facts of German life at the time that contributed to the perpetrators\u2019 dehumanization of Jews.<\/p>\n
Arendt notes that Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the \u201cfinal solution,\u201d framed the extermination of Jews as a necessary evil that had to be shouldered by the current generation to secure Germany\u2019s future. Himmler told SS leaders that they must be \u201csuperhumanly inhuman\u201d (Arendt, 1963, p. 104). In fact, participation in atrocities was framed not in terms of inflicting horrible things on people but rather in terms of having to shoulder the weight of witnessing the horror (Arendt, 1963). This framing allowed the perpetrators to view themselves as tragic heroes making a short-term sacrifice in the name of a thousand-year Reich.<\/p>\n
Another linguistic tool for addressing the potential trauma was the elaborate system of euphemistic language that helped obscure the reality of Eichmann\u2019s and others\u2019 actions. Arendt states that documents where the words \u201ckilling\u201d or \u201cextermination\u201d appear are extremely rare. The Nazi government instituted strict \u201clanguage rules\u201d (Arendt, 1963, p. 83) that replaced the above-mentioned terms with code words such as \u201cfinal solution,\u201d \u201cevacuation\u201d and \u201cspecial treatment.\u201d This consistent use of euphemistic terms removed perpetrators from the reality of their actions and was strictly adhered to throughout the entire Nazi government, even in interagency cooperation.<\/p>\n
Consistent with Browning\u2019s findings, Arendt notes that breaking the process of genocide into small, ostensibly benign steps was another key mechanism employed by the Nazis. The officers from Reserve<\/p>\n
Battalion 101 arrived at this idea by trial and error, but in the upper echelons of the Nazi government, this was part of the design. Arendt illustrates this through Eichmann\u2019s role, which primarily involved managing the logistics of deportations. Eichmann viewed himself not as a facilitator of mass murder but as a transportation expert solving complex problems. In fact, prior to the introduction of the \u201cfinal solution,\u201d he applied himself to making it easier for Jews to emigrate to Palestine with equal zeal. Wading through Eichmann\u2019s revelations, self-delusions, obfuscations, and lies, Arendt arrives at the image of Eichmann as a middle-class, not supremely talented man whose thoughts were primarily occupied by finding ways to excel and build a career. By focusing solely on the tasks at hand, whether they resulted in saving people or killing people, Eichmann avoided considering the moral dimension of his actions.<\/p>\n
The Nazi government’s systematic approach to enabling atrocities is a frightening reminder that ordinary people can become complicit in morally reprehensible actions. Through gradual dehumanization, manipulation of language, framing terrible actions as necessary sacrifices, and breaking down the process of genocide into small, seemingly benign tasks, the Nazis created a system that enabled and facilitated moral disengagement. Browning’s and Arendt’s writings show that we are all vulnerable to the influences of authority, social pressure, and ideology. They remind us that we need to remain mindful and actively resist the forces that push us towards dehumanizing or devaluing any group of people.<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Penguin Books.<\/p>\n
Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper-Collins.<\/p>\n
Wiesel, E., & Wiesel, M. (2006). Night. New York: Hill And Wang. (Original work published 1958)<\/p>\n
Wikipedia. (2019, May 2). Nuremberg Laws. Retrieved from Wikipedia website: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nuremberg_Laws<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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