Zerodivider
04-24-2005, 04:22 AM
It takes evil people to carry out evil deeds - A social-psychological view on the Holocaust
The Holocaust - one of the greatest atrocities committed in human history, and certainly in the more recent one. The systematic killing of millions of Jews, Gypsies and other “Untermenschen” has stunned past and present generations alike. How can one whole nation turn against other groups so remorselessly, so viciously; subjecting men, women and children to such inhuman suffering? One would like to think that only evil people do evil deeds – or, as Diamond (1992, cited in Staub, 2002) puts it: “we’d like to believe that nice people don’t commit genocide, only Nazis do”. However, as genocide the events of the Holocaust - although unique in terms of method and scale - are not the only examples of such atrocities in modern history. The conflict between Turks and Armenians, the killing fields of Cambodia and the massacres in Rwanda are all dark examples of the attempted “extermination of a racial, religious or ethnic group” (UN definition of genocide). This essay will examine the current thoughts and theories in psychology that have surfaced in order to explain the atrocities committed by ordinary Germans during the Nazi regime. Cognitive explanations such as Goldhagen’s (1996) book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” as well as social-psychological explanations derived from inter-group dynamics as well as well known experiments by Milgram (1974) and Zimbardo (2000) will be considered and critically evaluated.
As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, it would be nice to think that the Holocaust was only a product of specific circumstances and preconditions at that point in time – an event that could and did only happen in Germany. Indeed this is by and large what the cognitive explanation offered by Goldhagen (1996) states. Goldhagen (1996) is not concerned with leading Nazi figures or SS guards, who are usually named as the main perpetrators - but with ordinary Germans who actively participated in atrocities against Jews and others. He argues that the Holocaust was the result of deep-seated anti-Semitism in the German culture, going back to the middle ages. Once the Nazis came to power, the Germans were given the opportunity to remove all restrains and act out their murderous hate against the Jewish population. Indeed, there is some evidence for these claims. Historically, there has always been animosity between Christianity and Judaism. One of the most influential opponents of Judaism was Martin Luther, whose vicious attacks against Jews were first published in 1543 and later picked up by the Nazis and incorporated into their propaganda. The century-old hate, proposes Goldhagen (1996), had simply reached its boiling point and the “final solution” was inevitable – and this hatred can be used as the sole explanation of the horrifying crimes committed by ordinary people.
Whilst this might seem to be a convenient and plausible theory to understand the compliance and actions of a whole nation, Goldhagen’s (1996) account does not explain later incidents of genocides. In addition, anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany – it was present in many other countries at that time. It also fails to explain why the German did not turn immediately against the Jews once the Nazis had seized power – it took seven years until the first organised mass killings. And, last but not least, Goldhagen (1996) dismisses any social-dynamic and situational processes – although there is substantial evidence that a wide variety of these processes contributed to the events leading to the Holocaust.
For example, Milgram (1972) investigated the factor of obedience – can ordinary people be commanded by an authoritarian source and led to “hurt” another person? The evidence derived from a series of experiments in which people where asked to administer shocks to a confederate subject as punishment for mistakes in a paired-word recall task seems support that notion. Following the instructions and, when hesitating and protesting, the prompts of the experimenter, over 60% of the “teachers” administered the maximum of 450 volts. Unknown to the naïve teachers, no actual shocks were delivered to the learner – but it is quite surprising that despite verbal protests and screams by the learner, a majority of people were willing to administer a potentially dangerous voltage. Milgram (1972) concluded that people will comply if they believe that the orders come from a source of authority – a source that “knows what’s best” and has overall responsibility. People come to see themselves as irresponsible instruments that carried out another person’s wishes. Being physically separated from the victim did also help to achieve compliance – the distance helped to “dehumanise” the learner. However, even when the learner was in touch proximity to the teacher, and the teacher had to force the learner’s hand on the shock pad to continue the experiment, 30% of the participants complied. And when the naive subject was part of a group and a confederate administered the shocks, over 90% of the participants went along without any protest.
Of course, an experiment like this is wide open to criticism, and obedience alone cannot be the only reason why ordinary Germans committed the atrocities of the Holocaust. For example, Milgram’s (1972) experiment depended to a large extent on the acting abilities of the learner and the experimenter. Maybe people sensed the unreality of the situation, and that is why many went along (although the video footage of the experiment shows participants rather convinced) – and how much relation does administering shocks in a laboratory have with shooting men, women and children? Nissani (1990) argues against the realism and relevance of Milgram’s (1972) study: the high compliance levels resulted from the immense trust people had in the reputation of Yale university, where most of the experiments were conducted – a high-status university would never risk to seriously harm people like that. Compliance levels in Milgram’s (1972) study did indeed drop to 48% when the experiments took place in an office building with no association to the university. But Nissani (1990) fails to realise that this criticism is de facto in favour of Milgram’s (1972) conclusion: if so many people believed that a reputable university would never do anything that was morally wrong, how must it have been for Germans who faced their entire government? In addition, a compliance rate of nearly 50% is still considerably high – and this concerns only actual perpetrators. As Milgram’s (1972) group variation shows, the majority of people will comply if they do not have to do the “dirty work” themselves – and not everybody of the Holocaust perpetrators was directly involved in the killings, but gave administrative and logistical support. The importance and effects of group conformity were also highlighted in experiments by Asch (1951; cited in Milgram, 1957): when groups of confederates were asked to pick one of three lines corresponding in length to a reference line, they consistently identified the wrong one – and naive subjects who were with them started to make the same judgments after a while, despite having the correct evidence right in front of their eyes. Goldhagen (1996) has used this point to support his line of argumentation: if (as many Germans have claimed) the majority of people were indeed against the atrocities, why did the few willing perpetrators not conform to the overwhelming group views? An obvious answer might be that they simply did not know what others were thinking, thus resorting to conform to the “official line”. But again, going along with a group when it comes to judging lines is quite different to accepting the killing of innocents – so there must be other factors.
An interesting point has been provided by Zimbardo (2000) and his well-known prison experiment. Although the experiment took place in a simulated prison on university premises, and there were no differences between the participants other than their randomly assigned roles, soon the behaviour of all participants changed considerably. “Guards” were abusing the “prisoners” on a considerable scale, and for all the boundaries between simulation and reality soon became very blurred. It seems that by simple being told that they were superiors and subordinates, people really started believing it – and acted accordingly. Staub (1989) proposed that people come to believe in a just-world – “prisoners” were prisoners because they deserved to be one, thus legitimating maltreatment and punishment by the guards. Similar parallels can be drawn to the Holocaust and its perpetrators. Staub (1989) also examined bystander behaviour, and found that they, like perpetrators, change their views of the victims over time. In order to reduce their own feelings of guilt, they too start believing in a “just-world” and distance themselves from the victims. Many become perpetrators themselves.
Both Zimbardo’s (2000) and Milgram’s (1972) account help to understand some issues of the holocaust – but they provide a rather simplistic insight into a complex situation. The Holocaust did not occur from one day to another, like the aforementioned studies. The Nazi regime had several years for portraying the Jews as the greatest enemy and threat to the German nation – an important aspect when it comes to social identity theory. Taijfel (1978) states that individuals define themselves to a large extent via their social group memberships; to achieve a positive identity the in-group needs to be perceived more positively than the out-group. If the moral value/identity changes on a group level, so it must on an individual in order to maintain a positive identity. Before the Nazis rose to power, Germans already valued a number of things that would later pave the way to the Holocaust. Being a “good German” meant efficiency, respect for authorities, honour and obedience – values that minimized critical thinking and resistance. The Nazi propaganda reinforced the already present hostile stereotypical beliefs about Jews; now being a “good German” meant also to dislike, or rather hate, Jewish neighbours. By artificially creating an enemy, a threat to the German nation, the Nazis strengthened the in-group bounds and increased the perceived dissimilarities with the out-group. In addition, the German public was subjected to a systematic desensitising and isolation with regards to the Jewish population. Not only were they told that Jews were the root of all evil, but over the cause of several years Jews were increasingly marginalised and physically separated from the rest of the population. They were removed from many occupations, and later resettled into ghettos. All these actions limited the possibilities of contacts between Germans and Jews (contact was forbidden by law anyway), and propaganda messages could not be easily contradicted. By following the law, the image of a “good German”, people became increasingly anti-Semitic, their repeated actions influencing their thoughts and believes. This notion of cognitive dissonance has been demonstrated by Festinger (1957): the only way how people can explain their changing behaviours and actions is by believing that they are doing it because they want to do it, because it represents their own believes. Thus, Germany moved along a “continuum of destruction” (Staub, 1989) that culminated in the Holocaust.
“It takes evil people to do evil deeds”- one would like to believe that. However, by accepting that the Holocaust could only happen in Germany, and caused by evil people, one relieves oneself from an immense responsibility. If people accept that something like the Holocaust can never happen again (because it was a phenomenon confined in time and place), they will ignore all the social-dynamic mechanism that have contributed to the Holocaust – and will risk that it happens again. The Holocaust, as an example of genocide, is by no means exclusive in human and modern history. However, as it was initiated by an entire government with immense resources and a well-organised propaganda machine, it gives researchers a unique opportunity to examine how people can be moved along a “continuum of destruction” without much resistance. There is no single or simple way of explaining the atrocities: the social-dynamic processes, intra- and inter-group relationships, propaganda, and last but not least the already present animosity towards Jews: they are all parts that contributed to the whole.
Can something like the Holocaust happen again today? On that scale probably not, although it is always easier to judge in hindsight. However, the Holocaust is not only about the mass murder of ethic groups – it is also about “brainwashing” an entire population and creating an artificial enemy; using fear and hate to generate a strong in-group bounding and justify governmental actions. And this is precisely what is going on today – and once again, the opposition is minimal. In times after 9/11, governments worldwide have justified their actions with the threat of imminent terrorist attacks – and created a new enemy. Over 60 years ago, Jews were accused of being a threat to German people. They were alienated, marginalised and demonized. Their freedom and everything else was taken away from them – before they were murdered. Today, Muslims are being demonised as a threat to the Western world, and their freedom is being taken away. Whilst they will not face the same horrible fate as the Jews 60 years ago, it still shows how easily people can be manipulated and moved along a “continuum of destruction” – and unless people are made aware that these social processes are at work, they always will be.
References:
Berkowitz, L. (1999). Evil Is More Than Banal: Situationism and the Concept of Evil.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3 (3), pp. 246-253
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. New York: Harper & Row
Goldhagen, D. (1996). Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust. New York: Knopf
Hewstone, M. & Cairns, E. (2001). Social Psychology and Intergroup Conflict. . In
Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.319-342). Washington: American Psychological Association
McCauley, C. (2001). The psychology of group identification and the power of ethnic
nationalism.. In Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.343-362). Washington: American Psychological Association
Milgram, M. (1972). Obedience to Authority. London: Tavistock
Nissani, M.(1990). A Cognitive Reinterpretation of Stanley Milgram’s Observations on
Obedience to Authority. American Psychologist, 45 (12), pp. 1384-1385
Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Staub, E. (2001). Ethnopolitical and other group violence: origins and prevention. . In
Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.289-304). Washington: American Psychological Association
Suedfeld, P. (2001). Theories of the Holocaust: Trying to explain the unimaginable. In
Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.51-70). Washington: American Psychological Association
Weinstein, F. (1980). The Dynamics of Nazism. Leadership, Ideology, and the Holocaust.
London: Academic Press
Zimbardo, P. (200o). Reflections on The Stanford Prison experiment: Genesis,
Transformations, Consequences. In Thomas Blass (Ed): Obedience to Auhtority. Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm. (pp. 193-239). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum
The Holocaust - one of the greatest atrocities committed in human history, and certainly in the more recent one. The systematic killing of millions of Jews, Gypsies and other “Untermenschen” has stunned past and present generations alike. How can one whole nation turn against other groups so remorselessly, so viciously; subjecting men, women and children to such inhuman suffering? One would like to think that only evil people do evil deeds – or, as Diamond (1992, cited in Staub, 2002) puts it: “we’d like to believe that nice people don’t commit genocide, only Nazis do”. However, as genocide the events of the Holocaust - although unique in terms of method and scale - are not the only examples of such atrocities in modern history. The conflict between Turks and Armenians, the killing fields of Cambodia and the massacres in Rwanda are all dark examples of the attempted “extermination of a racial, religious or ethnic group” (UN definition of genocide). This essay will examine the current thoughts and theories in psychology that have surfaced in order to explain the atrocities committed by ordinary Germans during the Nazi regime. Cognitive explanations such as Goldhagen’s (1996) book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” as well as social-psychological explanations derived from inter-group dynamics as well as well known experiments by Milgram (1974) and Zimbardo (2000) will be considered and critically evaluated.
As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, it would be nice to think that the Holocaust was only a product of specific circumstances and preconditions at that point in time – an event that could and did only happen in Germany. Indeed this is by and large what the cognitive explanation offered by Goldhagen (1996) states. Goldhagen (1996) is not concerned with leading Nazi figures or SS guards, who are usually named as the main perpetrators - but with ordinary Germans who actively participated in atrocities against Jews and others. He argues that the Holocaust was the result of deep-seated anti-Semitism in the German culture, going back to the middle ages. Once the Nazis came to power, the Germans were given the opportunity to remove all restrains and act out their murderous hate against the Jewish population. Indeed, there is some evidence for these claims. Historically, there has always been animosity between Christianity and Judaism. One of the most influential opponents of Judaism was Martin Luther, whose vicious attacks against Jews were first published in 1543 and later picked up by the Nazis and incorporated into their propaganda. The century-old hate, proposes Goldhagen (1996), had simply reached its boiling point and the “final solution” was inevitable – and this hatred can be used as the sole explanation of the horrifying crimes committed by ordinary people.
Whilst this might seem to be a convenient and plausible theory to understand the compliance and actions of a whole nation, Goldhagen’s (1996) account does not explain later incidents of genocides. In addition, anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany – it was present in many other countries at that time. It also fails to explain why the German did not turn immediately against the Jews once the Nazis had seized power – it took seven years until the first organised mass killings. And, last but not least, Goldhagen (1996) dismisses any social-dynamic and situational processes – although there is substantial evidence that a wide variety of these processes contributed to the events leading to the Holocaust.
For example, Milgram (1972) investigated the factor of obedience – can ordinary people be commanded by an authoritarian source and led to “hurt” another person? The evidence derived from a series of experiments in which people where asked to administer shocks to a confederate subject as punishment for mistakes in a paired-word recall task seems support that notion. Following the instructions and, when hesitating and protesting, the prompts of the experimenter, over 60% of the “teachers” administered the maximum of 450 volts. Unknown to the naïve teachers, no actual shocks were delivered to the learner – but it is quite surprising that despite verbal protests and screams by the learner, a majority of people were willing to administer a potentially dangerous voltage. Milgram (1972) concluded that people will comply if they believe that the orders come from a source of authority – a source that “knows what’s best” and has overall responsibility. People come to see themselves as irresponsible instruments that carried out another person’s wishes. Being physically separated from the victim did also help to achieve compliance – the distance helped to “dehumanise” the learner. However, even when the learner was in touch proximity to the teacher, and the teacher had to force the learner’s hand on the shock pad to continue the experiment, 30% of the participants complied. And when the naive subject was part of a group and a confederate administered the shocks, over 90% of the participants went along without any protest.
Of course, an experiment like this is wide open to criticism, and obedience alone cannot be the only reason why ordinary Germans committed the atrocities of the Holocaust. For example, Milgram’s (1972) experiment depended to a large extent on the acting abilities of the learner and the experimenter. Maybe people sensed the unreality of the situation, and that is why many went along (although the video footage of the experiment shows participants rather convinced) – and how much relation does administering shocks in a laboratory have with shooting men, women and children? Nissani (1990) argues against the realism and relevance of Milgram’s (1972) study: the high compliance levels resulted from the immense trust people had in the reputation of Yale university, where most of the experiments were conducted – a high-status university would never risk to seriously harm people like that. Compliance levels in Milgram’s (1972) study did indeed drop to 48% when the experiments took place in an office building with no association to the university. But Nissani (1990) fails to realise that this criticism is de facto in favour of Milgram’s (1972) conclusion: if so many people believed that a reputable university would never do anything that was morally wrong, how must it have been for Germans who faced their entire government? In addition, a compliance rate of nearly 50% is still considerably high – and this concerns only actual perpetrators. As Milgram’s (1972) group variation shows, the majority of people will comply if they do not have to do the “dirty work” themselves – and not everybody of the Holocaust perpetrators was directly involved in the killings, but gave administrative and logistical support. The importance and effects of group conformity were also highlighted in experiments by Asch (1951; cited in Milgram, 1957): when groups of confederates were asked to pick one of three lines corresponding in length to a reference line, they consistently identified the wrong one – and naive subjects who were with them started to make the same judgments after a while, despite having the correct evidence right in front of their eyes. Goldhagen (1996) has used this point to support his line of argumentation: if (as many Germans have claimed) the majority of people were indeed against the atrocities, why did the few willing perpetrators not conform to the overwhelming group views? An obvious answer might be that they simply did not know what others were thinking, thus resorting to conform to the “official line”. But again, going along with a group when it comes to judging lines is quite different to accepting the killing of innocents – so there must be other factors.
An interesting point has been provided by Zimbardo (2000) and his well-known prison experiment. Although the experiment took place in a simulated prison on university premises, and there were no differences between the participants other than their randomly assigned roles, soon the behaviour of all participants changed considerably. “Guards” were abusing the “prisoners” on a considerable scale, and for all the boundaries between simulation and reality soon became very blurred. It seems that by simple being told that they were superiors and subordinates, people really started believing it – and acted accordingly. Staub (1989) proposed that people come to believe in a just-world – “prisoners” were prisoners because they deserved to be one, thus legitimating maltreatment and punishment by the guards. Similar parallels can be drawn to the Holocaust and its perpetrators. Staub (1989) also examined bystander behaviour, and found that they, like perpetrators, change their views of the victims over time. In order to reduce their own feelings of guilt, they too start believing in a “just-world” and distance themselves from the victims. Many become perpetrators themselves.
Both Zimbardo’s (2000) and Milgram’s (1972) account help to understand some issues of the holocaust – but they provide a rather simplistic insight into a complex situation. The Holocaust did not occur from one day to another, like the aforementioned studies. The Nazi regime had several years for portraying the Jews as the greatest enemy and threat to the German nation – an important aspect when it comes to social identity theory. Taijfel (1978) states that individuals define themselves to a large extent via their social group memberships; to achieve a positive identity the in-group needs to be perceived more positively than the out-group. If the moral value/identity changes on a group level, so it must on an individual in order to maintain a positive identity. Before the Nazis rose to power, Germans already valued a number of things that would later pave the way to the Holocaust. Being a “good German” meant efficiency, respect for authorities, honour and obedience – values that minimized critical thinking and resistance. The Nazi propaganda reinforced the already present hostile stereotypical beliefs about Jews; now being a “good German” meant also to dislike, or rather hate, Jewish neighbours. By artificially creating an enemy, a threat to the German nation, the Nazis strengthened the in-group bounds and increased the perceived dissimilarities with the out-group. In addition, the German public was subjected to a systematic desensitising and isolation with regards to the Jewish population. Not only were they told that Jews were the root of all evil, but over the cause of several years Jews were increasingly marginalised and physically separated from the rest of the population. They were removed from many occupations, and later resettled into ghettos. All these actions limited the possibilities of contacts between Germans and Jews (contact was forbidden by law anyway), and propaganda messages could not be easily contradicted. By following the law, the image of a “good German”, people became increasingly anti-Semitic, their repeated actions influencing their thoughts and believes. This notion of cognitive dissonance has been demonstrated by Festinger (1957): the only way how people can explain their changing behaviours and actions is by believing that they are doing it because they want to do it, because it represents their own believes. Thus, Germany moved along a “continuum of destruction” (Staub, 1989) that culminated in the Holocaust.
“It takes evil people to do evil deeds”- one would like to believe that. However, by accepting that the Holocaust could only happen in Germany, and caused by evil people, one relieves oneself from an immense responsibility. If people accept that something like the Holocaust can never happen again (because it was a phenomenon confined in time and place), they will ignore all the social-dynamic mechanism that have contributed to the Holocaust – and will risk that it happens again. The Holocaust, as an example of genocide, is by no means exclusive in human and modern history. However, as it was initiated by an entire government with immense resources and a well-organised propaganda machine, it gives researchers a unique opportunity to examine how people can be moved along a “continuum of destruction” without much resistance. There is no single or simple way of explaining the atrocities: the social-dynamic processes, intra- and inter-group relationships, propaganda, and last but not least the already present animosity towards Jews: they are all parts that contributed to the whole.
Can something like the Holocaust happen again today? On that scale probably not, although it is always easier to judge in hindsight. However, the Holocaust is not only about the mass murder of ethic groups – it is also about “brainwashing” an entire population and creating an artificial enemy; using fear and hate to generate a strong in-group bounding and justify governmental actions. And this is precisely what is going on today – and once again, the opposition is minimal. In times after 9/11, governments worldwide have justified their actions with the threat of imminent terrorist attacks – and created a new enemy. Over 60 years ago, Jews were accused of being a threat to German people. They were alienated, marginalised and demonized. Their freedom and everything else was taken away from them – before they were murdered. Today, Muslims are being demonised as a threat to the Western world, and their freedom is being taken away. Whilst they will not face the same horrible fate as the Jews 60 years ago, it still shows how easily people can be manipulated and moved along a “continuum of destruction” – and unless people are made aware that these social processes are at work, they always will be.
References:
Berkowitz, L. (1999). Evil Is More Than Banal: Situationism and the Concept of Evil.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3 (3), pp. 246-253
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. New York: Harper & Row
Goldhagen, D. (1996). Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust. New York: Knopf
Hewstone, M. & Cairns, E. (2001). Social Psychology and Intergroup Conflict. . In
Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.319-342). Washington: American Psychological Association
McCauley, C. (2001). The psychology of group identification and the power of ethnic
nationalism.. In Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.343-362). Washington: American Psychological Association
Milgram, M. (1972). Obedience to Authority. London: Tavistock
Nissani, M.(1990). A Cognitive Reinterpretation of Stanley Milgram’s Observations on
Obedience to Authority. American Psychologist, 45 (12), pp. 1384-1385
Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Staub, E. (2001). Ethnopolitical and other group violence: origins and prevention. . In
Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.289-304). Washington: American Psychological Association
Suedfeld, P. (2001). Theories of the Holocaust: Trying to explain the unimaginable. In
Martin Seligman and Daniel Chirot (Eds): Ethnopolitical warfare: Causes, consequences, and possible solutions (pp.51-70). Washington: American Psychological Association
Weinstein, F. (1980). The Dynamics of Nazism. Leadership, Ideology, and the Holocaust.
London: Academic Press
Zimbardo, P. (200o). Reflections on The Stanford Prison experiment: Genesis,
Transformations, Consequences. In Thomas Blass (Ed): Obedience to Auhtority. Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm. (pp. 193-239). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum