Background: This academic essay was written in late 2020 as the final project of a masters degree. In it, I delve into the nature of human evil by engaging in a detailed study of a historical atrocity: Nazism and the Holocaust. Through this horrifying case study, I aimed to shed light not only on that event, but also on the nature of human evil on a more universal level. The theory I put forward in the final chapter – ‘Towards a New Conception of Evil’ is intended to have contemporary relevance to our understanding of evil in the modern world, and so will hopefully also be of value to readers of this blog.
Indeed, deepening our understanding of evil (and in particular mass evil practiced by the State) has only become more relevant in recent months, given the the woefully under-reported events currently developing in China`s Xinjiang Province. As these words are being written, millions of Uighur Muslims have been incarcerated by the Chinese State and have been forced to endure intense labor, ideological ‘re-education’, and, if some reports are to be believed, sterilization. What we may well be witnessing are the stirrings of yet another genocide, and so now more than ever it is necessary to look back and reflect on the horrors of the 20th century. After all, if we fail to fully imbibe the lessons of history, we may well be left mute and uncomprehending when the next Holocaust comes knocking.
Introduction to the Literature
Evil After 9/11
In the decades following the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States at the beginning of the millennium, much heated debate has arisen concerning the nature and extent of evil in the modern world. In fact, 9/11 has kickstarted something of a Renaissance in scholarship on this topic, most of which has focused on the utility of the ‘concept of evil’ – either as an explanatory tool, or as a label of moral condemnation. In the tumultuous years immediately following 2001 many ground-breaking works would emerge which dealt with this theme. Claudia Card`s The Atrocity Paradigm (2002) came first, closely followed by Richard Bernstein`s Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (2002) and Susan Neiman`s Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (2002). Over the next few years would emerge Lance Morrow`s Evil: An Investigation (2003), Richard Bernstein`s The Abuse of Evil (2005) and Philip Cole`s The Myth of Evil (2006). Whilst the central focus of this growing canon was not 9/11 specifically, their shared attempts to evaluate the concept of evil and its place in modern political discourse owes much to the charged political climate of the early 2000s.
Such a renewed focus on evil as a moral and political category likely had much to do with the controversial usage of the concept in the years following the atrocity. In his bombastic response, George W. Bush proclaimed that America now faced a collective of “evildoers” or “evil people”, who are hell-bent on the destruction of the nation`s culture and freedoms. Further, he claimed that states like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea represented an “axis of evil” that were engaged in funding and supporting the terrorist threat (Bush 2002, in Merskin, 2004: 171). In many ways, Bush`s rhetoric here mirrors much of the language emerging from the other side of the conflict. In militant Islamist circles, the United States was spoken about as a “Great Satan” and bitter “enemy of Allah”, a powerful, nefarious monolith that must be resisted at all costs (Pyszczynski et al, 2006: 527). The narratives of ‘jihad’ and the ‘war on terror’ further strengthens this parallel; indeed, the religious undertones of Bush`s strident military response have been well documented (Merskin, 2004: 167). Such a mindset, common to many conflicts in human history, is predicated on a specific ingredient: the conviction that one`s own side fights from a posiiton of absolute goodness, and is pitted against an enemy that essentially embodies ‘evil incarnate’.
Further, rather than relegating the conflict to a contest with a specific adversary – or conducting it for the sake of limited and tangible ends – this framework instead implies a struggle against ‘evil’ itself; with the eradication of the enemy being emblematic of a larger spiritual and moral crusade. Many modern scholars have noticed similarities here with the ancient religion of Manichaeism (Rengger and Jeffery, 2005: 12), a sect which posited a “duality in divinity” itself, whereby the world is split between a “cosmic force of light” and a “secondary force of darkness” (Connolly, 2002: 2). This Manichaean view of a pitched global battle between good and evil can be clearly perceived in the ethos of both Bushism and militant Islamism. Such a dichotomous paradigm divides the world between ‘we’ and ‘they’ (or ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actors), thus leaving no space for neutrality or common ground between them.
The problematic nature of this approach was quickly recognized by many scholars in the early 2000s. Aside from being actively dangerous, as an ongoing series of controversial and costly military misadventures in the Middle East was coming to prove, the fundamentally simplistic nature of this ‘us versus them’ narrative was also readily apparent. What`s more, the rigid dualism employed by Bush and his opponents led to the suppression of nuance and subtlety in much public discourse (Bernstein, 2005: 11). Rather than careful deliberation, the brute logic of moral oppositionism reigned – with bystanders being expected to uncritically accept the rightness of their side, alongside the villainous quality of the ‘enemy’ (Bernstein, 2005: 12). Essentially, what this represented was a consolidation of ethical certainty on both sides, whereby all restraint was replaced by a strident, militaristic focus on social unity and revenge. America and its Islamist opponents were on the ‘warpath’ for years to follow, and in many ways have yet to come off it.
This troubling development, in which a quasi-Manichaean notion of good conquering evil had entered the political mainstream, seems to have been the spark which ignited the new wave of evil scholarship. Indeed, one of the most pressing questions that faced scholars after 9/11 was one that had been propelled to significance by the attacks: ‘what form, if any, should the concept of evil take in contemporary political discourse?’
Competing Trends in the ‘New Wave’
Claudia Card`s The Atrocity Paradigm was the first major work to emerge after 2001 which dealt with the topic of human evil in a surprising and original way. In this book, she would define evil actions as constituting “foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing”, and judged that “the nature and severity of the harms, rather than perpetrators’ psychological states, distinguish evils from ordinary wrongs” (2002: 3). Card`s definition of evil was thus broadly predicated on the experiences of its victims. However, she would also recognize that “an evil is both suffered and perpetrated” (Card, 2002: 48), indicating that, in María Pía Lara`s words, “suffering alone cannot be the measure of an evil action” (2004: 187). Such a definition of evil on the basis of both the experiences of its victims and the mentality of its perpetrators (though with marginally more focus on the former) was a theme that would be picked up by later scholars in the new wave.
Equally notable was Card`s reluctance to employ an exclusively ‘demonic’ understanding of evil, a move that was highly significant in an age where images like ‘Great Satan’ and ‘axis of evil’ were regularly invoked by political actors. At the heart of such conceptions was the belief that all evildoers commit atrocities based on a “fixed” and nefarious moral character – essentially embodying an innate disposition to do bad (Russell, 2006: 95). Card called this a “popular modern stereotype of evildoing”, which she herself wished to avoid (Card, 2002: 52). Thus, she employed a broad terminology in her approach that succeeded in avoiding such narrow definitions; as perpetrators who inflict ‘foreseeable intolerable harms’ may not always do so simply out of villainous motives. Instead, they may cause such suffering through fear, greed, criminal negligence, careerism, conformity etc. Card thus seems to have incorporated Hannah Arendt`s insights into the power of such ‘banal’ qualities to inflict great harm under particular circumstances. In doing so, she employs a “psychologically thin” concept; whereby the motives and mentality of the perpetrator – due to them being multifarious – are less important than the effects of their actions in defining what constitutes a truly ‘evil’ act (Russell, 2006: 93).
After Card, such psychologically ‘thin’ approaches would become highly influential in the new wave, particularly in that group of thinkers that Luke Russell has labelled “evil revivalists” (2006: 89). This term refers to those thinkers who assert the utility of the concept of evil in the wake of 9/11, despite its deeply contentious status in political discourse. In this category, Russell includes Claudia Card, Richard Bernstein, Lance Morrow, Susan Neiman, and Russ Shafer-Landau; all of whom have engaged in scholarly defences of the concept. Indeed, Card`s own theory of evil might be read as something of an apology for Bush`s much maligned use of the term (through offering a more nuanced and grounded version which salvages what value remains within it). More overtly, Bernstein`s discussion of the “abuse” of evil in political rhetoric after 9/11 (2005: viii), as well as Neiman`s defence of the concept through thinkers such as Rousseau (2015: 41-42), represent clear attempts to revive evil as a moral and political category. These three thinkers thus seem to arrive at the same conclusion: that the concept of evil is a necessary part of our intellectual toolkit, despite the risk that it will be misused.
Contrasting evil revivalism, however, was another trend in the new wave which attempted to reject the concept entirely. Recognizing that Bush`s talk of “evil folks” and an “axis of evil” was used by the President to justify his military endeavours, such thinkers concluded that the term itself was fatally problematic. The major criticisms that these “evil-sceptics” (Russell, 2006: 90) had of the concept can be roughly divided into two categories: those who claimed that the label is inherently inaccurate, and those who claimed that it is actively dangerous. In the first group were figures such as historian Inga Clendinnen, who categorized evil as a “dismissive classification… which is of no use whatsoever when it comes to teasing out why people act as they do” (1999, in Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 2). Similarly, Oxford psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has argued that we “should not be satisfied with the word ‘evil’ as an explanatory tool”, due to its impotence in explaining anything specific about the nature of evil (Baron-Cohen, 2011: 100). Instead, Baron-Cohen posited an alternative label: “empathy erosion” (Baron-Cohen, 2011: 4), which he believed captures the mental process that gives rise to evildoing.
Finally, journalist Barbara Gunnell has contended that “Evil simply demands opposition rather than analysis or understanding” – making it deeply counterproductive for political thought (2002, in Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 2). The point around which this brand of evil scepticism unites is thus that the term lacks explanatory value based on two factors: 1) the amorphous meaning and inherent ambiguity of the term, and 2) its tendency to encourage emotional responses rather than rational analysis. Related to this second point, however, can be seen the stirrings of a more powerful criticism of the concept; that it necessarily leads to dangerous and impulsive behaviour when deployed in political discourse. This second brand of evil scepticism is perhaps best exemplified by Philip Cole, whose book The Myth of Evil generated much furious debate when it emerged in 2006. Before this, scholars like Bernstein and Neiman had often spoken of the ‘misuse’ of evil in political circles, and yet still believed that it had value when used cautiously. Cole however was the first to carry the widespread uncertainty that surrounded the concept after 9/11 to its logical extreme.
He argued that any usage of the term ‘evil’ inevitably generates a Bush-like worldview, due to it introducing a Manichaean element into politics. This was characterised by an absolute demonization of the ‘enemy’, a process which inevitably destroys any hope for negotiation or resolution (Russell, 2014: 217). What`s more, Cole argued that powerful political actors often exploit such discourses for their own ends (Cole, 2006: 74), a strategy that can often produce atrocities that match (or even exceed) the initial threat they claim to be resisting. This process of demonization was seen by Cole as an insidious way to reduce whole groups of human beings to a pack of irredeemable monsters, who “deserve little more than to be eliminated” (Cole, 2006: 15). In many ways, The Myth of Evil constitutes an attempt to resist this tendency to ‘dehumanize’ certain individuals/groups by reemphasising their fundamental humanity. Indeed, it is this aim that seems to have produced Cole`s impactful, if contentious, conclusion: “We the people are the monsters, and it is our fear of evil that makes us so” (2006: 241).
Since its release in 2006, many scholars on the evil revivalist side of the new wave have sought to respond to Cole`s criticisms. For instance, drawing on Richard Bernstein`s earlier work, Luke Russell has argued that the Manichaean element identified by Cole does not constitute an endemic feature of the concept of evil. Instead, he argues that the tendency to divide the world into two clean categories (good and evil) represents a misuse of the concept rather than its natural consequence (2014: 222). However, if the term is used cautiously and judiciously, Russell believes that it can still have much value in ethical discourse. This is because any system of morality requires a delineation between what is good and bad (what is worthy of admiration or respect versus condemnation and rejection) – meaning that some degree of ethical dualism is an ineradicable feature of morality (Russell, 2014: 223). ‘Evil’, as a term denoting the extreme negative end of this pole, thus has a vital role to play the process of making ethical distinctions.
However, when it comes to the matter of individual moral character, Russell fails to fully escape the danger of ‘demonizing’ perpetrators as highlighted by Cole. When speaking of an ‘evil person’ as being someone who is fundamentally disposed towards committing evil acts – thus representing, in his words, a “moral write-off” – Russell says that such cases do in fact justify the demonization of the unrepentant perpetrator (2014: 225). The issue with this argument, however, is that it equates moral condemnation or judgement (clearly necessary in many cases) with demonisation, which involves lapsing into the belief that the perpetrator embodies ‘evil incarnate’. Such a leap thus risks overstating the precise degree of wickedness that is present in any given evildoer, and in consequence shuts down all future efforts at moral reform. Indeed, whilst some crimes certainly may be so horrific as to bar any possibility of moral ‘redemption’ – understood here as a process which absolves the sinner – this does not preclude any chance for moral improvement in the future. Equally, the notion of the ‘moral write-off’ may well motivate the same kind of monstrous treatment of the convicted that is warned about in Cole: the logic being that if the offender has left the realm of morality entirely, why should we treat him as any more than a beast?
Russell`s defence of the concept of evil thus fails to address the core danger highlighted by Cole. A more successful response, however, has been offered by Eve Garrard and David McNaughton. Directly addressing the issue of the “moral abyss” that can arise between judgers and the judged (especially when the process of demonisation is present), the authors accept that self-satisfaction, self-deception, and a fear of difference can be dangerous pollutants in ethical discourse (Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 2). This is a trend which occurs when moral judges too quickly assume themselves to be morally superior to those on trial, without extending the same level of ethical scrutiny inwards. However, the authors argue that such temptations can be avoided by acknowledging that perpetrators are not “monstrously different from the rest of us, driven by forces which are ultimately supernatural”, as Cole does (Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 4). In this way, evildoers can be assessed without lapsing into self-congratulatory (or at worst self-exonerating) ethical grandstanding.
However, it must be pointed out that this approach does not mean to insinuate that everyone is equally ‘guilty’ – and thus no one can be judged. Rather, it simply means contending with the possibility that those who judge are not moral saints (‘goodness incarnate’), nor are those being judged mere devils. Hence, by speaking solely in human terms, Garrard and McNaughton encourage a more nuanced reflection on the complex nature of moral character, without abandoning ‘evil’ as a useful explanatory tool. This approach thus reveals the possibilities of the concept once it is considered beyond the “simplistic typology” outlined by Cole (Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 7). Indeed, the authors` major critique of Cole was that his own understanding of the concept and its function was rather basic – leading to the charge that he only sought to counter evil at its “weakest points” (Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 11). These ‘weak points’ were understood as those cases where danger has been clearly fabricated for political purposes, in contrast to when genuine threats exist. In these instances, the authors` argue that the label is no longer merely a tool of the powerful, as it also has genuine explanatory power in capturing the unique essence of ‘evil actions’.
Indeed, Stephen de Wijze made a similar point to this as far back as 2002, when he contended that certain actions have a unique essence that distinguishes them from being merely ‘bad’. De Wijze believed that evil actions are “qualitatively different from wrongful actions” (2002: 214) due to them generating an “irremovable moral pollution” in anyone touched by them – which he labelled the problem of “dirty hands” (2002: 211). Such a sense of moral pollution, whether it afflicts victims or perpetrators, constitutes for De Wijze a rare consequence of horrific crimes that no label other than ‘evil’ can fully capture. Indeed, terms such as ‘extremely wrong’ or ‘very bad’ are inadequate in this regard, due to them involving a merely quantitative understanding of evil (as the preponderance of wrongness/badness). Similarly, Baron-Cohen’s ‘empathy erosion’ does not sufficiently capture the essence of evil – as such a psychological process can also lead to smaller, less extreme wrongs (theft, fraud, bullying etc). On this point, De Wijze, Garrard and McNaughton seem to be in agreement: with the latter two also contending that ‘evil’ refers to that distinct category of human action which evokes “moral horror, revulsion, sometimes a kind of incomprehension, often a sense of moral diminution, defilement, and even despair” (2012: 14).
Moving the New Wave Forward
De Wijze`s point about the explanatory potential of the concept of evil can therefore be employed as an effective defence against the criticisms of the first brand of evil scepticism. Equally, Garrard and McNaughton`s discussion of how some of the dangers surrounding the concept might be avoided (such as demonization, self-exoneration, and political exploitation) offers a convincing response to Cole. The work of the revivalists in countering scepticism after 9/11 has thus presented many suitable defences of the term in general: often demonstrating that the legitimate concerns of the sceptics does not justify an indictment of the concept as such, only its more problematic manifestations. However, whilst it has been largely successful in this capacity, evil revivalism has yet to address the core of the foundational question mentioned above: ‘what form, if any, should the concept of evil take in contemporary political discourse?’ By focussing largely on defending the mere existence of the concept against the sceptics (the ‘if any’ aspect of the question), evil revivalism has thus far neglected a potentially more fruitful enterprise: which is to offer concrete alternatives to the simplistic dualism of Bush.
This is not without precedent, of course: with Card`s early efforts to revive the concept by offering more suitable versions of it being highly valuable. However, this project has not been taken up by many other revivalists, some of which have shied away from offering “explicit conceptions” – such as Neiman and Bernstein (Formosa 2008, p220). Whilst the works of such thinkers are not without value, this reluctance has often resulted in a certain lack of clarity in scholarly discussions of evil. Further, in the absence of established rules for the term`s usage (a pre-requisite for any solid conception), opportunities for its misuse will always remain open – as misapplications of the concept can arise just as much from ignorance/conceptual confusion than they can from conscious exploitation. To move evil revivalism forward, therefore, it may be necessary to return to Card`s original project. In short, rather than simply defending the abstract potential of the term, revivalist scholars must now attempt to realize this potential by offering cogent conceptions of evil that have demonstrable value in ethical scholarship.
This project aims to enact just such a shift in focus for evil revivalism, by seeking to generate a more sophisticated conception of evil than the simplistic dualism of Bush (thus ‘reviving’ the label as a valuable intellectual tool). To do this, I will extract several core insights about the nature of human evil from a close engagement with a particular case study: Nazism and the Holocaust, which will then be consolidated into an approach that might be labelled ‘internalised dualism’. I have chosen to engage with a case study due to the fact that such real-life instances of atrocity often defy oversimplified explanations and easy moral judgments. Engaging with the complex reality of events like the Holocaust thus challenges scholars to embed a greater level of nuance in their approaches. Further, such cases can offer surprising discoveries about the nature of evil that may conflict with our common-sense intuitions on this topic. The Holocaust in particular has been chosen for three reasons: 1) It is an event in which naïve understandings of human evil are particularly ill-suited – as will be demonstrated. 2) It was characterised by the intersection of many different forms of evildoing/evildoer. 3) It contains many disconcerting lessons about the destructive potential of ‘mass systems of evil’ in the modern age.
Whilst this project is thus primarily aimed at advancing evil revivalism, this is not to say that the contributions of evil scepticism will be ignored in my analysis. Indeed, the challenges of such thinkers to prevailing ethical assumptions in the past has often served to deepen understanding of the many possible uses (and misuses) of the concept of evil. Further, the guiding ethos of this trend will likely prove invaluable in my analysis: that nothing is as simple as it first seems, moral reality often defies a binary opposition between ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’, and thus the concepts we use to discuss it will always be vulnerable to either ignorance or exploitation.
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Chapter One: The Intersection of Evils under Nazism
“The Holocaust, after all, is a story with far too few heroes and all too many perpetrators and victims” – Christopher Browning
Discussing the Holocaust
Before analysing a historical event as complex and contentious as the Holocaust, it may be necessary to briefly justify the analytical approach that will be employed. This is particularly necessary given that this is a topic where opinions are divided not solely on matters of fact, but also on matters of scholarly principle. Indeed, some have even argued that any attempts to ‘explain’ the Holocaust are always either inappropriate or impossible, as understanding human actions means “to map them within the space of reasons, yet the happenings at Auschwitz are for ever beyond that space” (Cole, 2006: 175). Such thinkers suggest that only a “contemplative, pain-filled silence” can be used when dealing with an event that eludes all traditional categories of moral/political thought (Garrard and Scarre, 2019: ix). However, whilst this argument is well-intentioned, adopting such an approach risks leaving scholars mute in the face of one of the greatest crimes in human history. Further, the notion that “attempts to comprehend Nazi deeds are tantamount to attempts to excuse them” is also deeply questionable (Garrard and Scarre, 2019: x). This is because it is only through cultivating a clear understanding of the choices that actors like the Nazis made (or could have made differently) that the extent/depth of their transgressions can be exposed and repudiated.
As Christopher Browning has said: “Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving”, and any study which wishes to go beyond one-dimensional caricature must ground its discussion in “human terms” (Browning, 2017: xx). Proceeding in a similar spirit, this chapter will engage with the many different types of perpetrator that collaborated under Nazism in a way that acknowledges their distinctively human traits, without absolving them of blame. It will be shown that each of these types committed different crimes for different reasons, however they seem to have been united by a common element: the anti-quality of “thoughtlessness” (Arendt, 2006: 287). The next chapter will then expand this discussion to the victims of the Holocaust, with particular focus on the concentration camps. This will be done for the sake of conducting a “combination approach” to defining human evil (Formosa, 2008: 230), a methodology predicated on an understanding that evil does not exist solely in the intent of the offender or the suffering of the victim, but arises instead in the dialogic space between them – in short, “evil committed by someone finds its other half in the evil suffered by someone else” (Ricoeur, 1995: 250).
The Banality of Evil: ‘Desk Murderers’
Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the Holocaust, as alluded to in the opening quote to this chapter, was not the ugliness of the event itself but rather was its sheer scale. This was an atrocity in which an excess of both victims and perpetrators became enmeshed in a massive, systematic process that directly aimed at the extermination of an entire population. Further, the highly organised nature of this system meant that almost every type of violence existing under it served a vital purpose in the “killing process” (Browning, 2017: 162), which also meant a huge variety of perpetrators with multiple different functions having to collaborate. For example, without the significant number of people willing to work in the many bureaucracies/government administrations of the Third Reich, it is doubtful that the level of organisation required to implement its policies would have been possible. Such actors, which might be labelled the ‘facilitators’ of the Holocaust, engaged in the killing process in a highly routinised and indirect way. This meant that a great deal of physical distance separated them from their victims – a gap that was matched by considerable emotional distance also.
Nonetheless, the essential role that bureaucratic desk-workers played in the Holocaust has earned them a suitably scathing title: ‘desk-murderers’. This demographic is important to consider for many reasons: most notably, the existence of the killer-bureaucrat defies those conceptions of evil that depict evildoers as nefarious individuals with dark and wicked personal dispositions. In actuality, many who staffed the institutions of the Third Reich did not harbour such blatantly ugly motives, with far more banal drives often proliferating instead: such as greed, careerism, duty, loyalty etc. For such actors, the atrocities they were abetting were not matters of personal desire – nor even of ideological commitment – but rather were simply by-products of their working lives: for them, mass murder was ‘just a job’. Indeed, the significant degree of indifference in this demographic to the Nazis` crimes speaks to the preponderance of banal motives over more extreme ones in such institutions (such as ideology or sadism). However, this raises an important question: was such apathy merely a feature of those selected for such work, or was it a trait that was inculcated by the bureaucratic culture itself?
To answer this question, it may be necessary to study the many mechanisms in such institutions which served to stifle the consciences of the desk-murderers. For example, Christopher Browning has noted that such figures often took “refuge in distance, routine, and bureaucratic euphemisms” to hide from the horrors of their own deeds (2017: 36), implying that a fundamental ‘division-of-labour’ process allowed each individual to feel ethically alienated (and thus absolved) from the consequences of their labour. Further, through a commitment to strict “language rules”, the depth and extent of the killing process could be concealed behind verbal niceties such as “final solution” and “evacuation”, as well as through talking about the concentration camps solely in terms of “administration” (Schiff, 2013: 102). In doing so, emotional distance was fostered amongst the desk-murderers towards their victims, stifling individual conscience almost entirely. Finally, the pervading culture of duty in such institutions likely enabled many individuals to justify their actions as ‘just following orders’. This culture of “Dienst ist Dienst” (“Duty is duty”) in Germany pre-dated the Nazis by some years (Hartley, 1996: 96), and would have offered the new regime a vital opportunity to secure compliance to its orders, regardless of how horrifying they happened to be.
Thus, various mechanisms intertwined in such institutions to produce blind obedience, all of which having a considerable dampening-effect on the individual conscience. This resulted in the mentality of most desk-murderers being defined by “sheer thoughtlessness” and “remoteness from reality” (Arendt, 2006: 287-288), allowing them to commit great crimes largely on the basis of banal motivations. This insight underlines the fact that evil actions are not always accompanied by ‘demonic’ perpetrators (to use Card`s terminology), an observation which forms the basis of Hannah Arendt’s famous thesis on the ‘banality of evil’. The embodiment of this for her was of course Adolf Eichmann, one of the principal organisers of the Holocaust who has often been labelled the “architect of the Final Solution” (Mathis, 2006: 55). However, despite him being so high-up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich, Arendt found a set of remarkably ordinary traits in her subject: such as conscientiousness, a sense of duty, and a desire for professional advancement. In other words, he was “terribly and terrifyingly normal” (Arendt, 2006: 276), acting out his function as the Holocaust`s chief facilitator primarily because he had a fundamental “inability to think”.
Relatedly, Eichmann also had an “inability to speak”: meaning that he talked almost exclusively in stock phrases and clichés, as well as relying heavily on the euphemistic language of his profession (Arendt, 2006: 49). Thus, the deeply ingrained thoughtlessness amongst most desk-murderers can be traced to the very top of the organisational hierarchy – a fact that has many troubling implications about the possibilities of evil in modern society. Most notably, it suggests that the individual conscience can be easily circumvented through a range of methods, some of which are common even in non-totalitarian contexts. The use of language rules for example, deployed to mask the realities of real horror, can be seen strikingly in the language emerging from Bush`s ‘War on Terror’, whereby terms like “rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” were used in lieu of ‘unlawful abduction’ and ‘torture’ (Schiff, 2013: 102). Equally, division-of-labour mechanisms exist in many institutions in the modern world, making it far easier for the individual to become alienated from the ethical consequences of her work. Further, when combined with a strong duty culture as existed in inter-war Germany, what can result is a cultural mindset in which many actively take pleasure in the persona of being efficient ‘cogs’ in an administrative machine (Bernstein, 2008: 74).
Thus, when these factors converge what is produced is a large population of dedicated functionaries who will willingly enact the whims of the state, regardless of whether these are benevolent or murderous. The outsourcing of moral responsibility this entails (either to authority, the institution, or society as a whole) means that such desk-workers can be transformed into desk-murderers with chillingly little change in their underlying dispositions or motives.
The Nazi ‘Triggermen’
However, the work of desk-murderers to enhance the scale and efficiency of the killing process would have been obsolete without the efforts of another category of perpetrator: the ‘triggermen’. This label refers to those figures who were tasked with physically implementing the murderous policies of the regime – and thus includes the many soldiers, concentration camp guards, SS personnel, police officers and others of the Third Reich. If desk-murderers were the facilitators of the Holocaust, then the triggermen were its ‘executors’; directly enacting the Holocaust through explicit, personal acts of violence. This of course meant that the comforting distance enjoyed by the former was utterly absent for the latter: as the “grass-roots” of the Final Solution, such actors were faced daily the gruesome consequences of their deeds (Browning, 2017: 36). However, despite this lack of physical distance, in many cases the triggermen demonstrated a shocking degree of “emotional detachment” from their victims (Lang, 2010: 226) – as countless instances of cruelty and indifference to suffering grimly attests. The vital question to be asked here is therefore: ‘how could such individuals willingly participate in the Holocaust, even when directly experiencing its destructive consequences?’
One means of resolving this might be to deny that most triggermen were ‘willing’ participants at all. For instance, it could be contended that such individuals had to act as they did, as to do otherwise might have had fatal consequences for themselves or their loved ones. Such a view might be called the ‘unwilling executioners’ thesis, and is rooted in the idea that coercion was the principal motivating force driving the triggermen`s atrocities. However, this notion can be dispelled by the fact that no soldier in Nazi Germany was ever punished for disobeying an order to kill an unarmed civilian (Browning, 2017: 170), let alone any severe repercussions ever befalling their families. Further, Christopher Browning`s detailed study of Reserve Police Battalion 101 (‘RPB 101’) – a group of German policemen sent to Poland in 1942 to aid in the destruction of its Jewish population – provides ample evidence that this thesis is more myth than historical argument. Indeed, in RPB 101`s case, the men of the Battalion were initially offered the chance to abstain from their first massacre at Józefow by Major Wilhelm Trapp, who promised that they would not be punished for doing so (Browning, 2017: 71).
Yet, despite this clear lack of coercion from command, only a dozen men out of roughly 500 took up this offer, with the vast majority freely choosing to participate in the killings (Navarick, 2012: 136). Thus, duress was not a significant motivating factor for RPB 101 – nor does it seem to have been a significant influence amongst the triggermen as a whole. An alternative answer to this question, however, has been sketched by Daniel Goldhagen, whose book Hitler`s Willing Executioners aims to counter the ‘unwilling executioners’ thesis. Goldhagen`s contention is that the Nazi perpetrators, as well as all Germans of that era, were motivated to slaughter the Jewish people based on a culturally rooted “eliminationist anti-Semitism” in Germany (1996: 23). What this involved was a “demonological view of Jews”, which depicted them as a parasitical people that it was every ‘good Germans’ duty to eradicate (Goldhagen, 1996: 394). In essence, Goldhagen argues that all Nazi perpetrators were fanatical and eager “willing executioners” who were primarily driven by personal hatred and ideological conviction (1996: 454).
However, whilst this approach might be applicable in some cases – Police Battalion 310, for example, seems to have been predominantly staffed by fanatical and cruel “ideological soldiers” (Westermann, 1998: 62) – attempting to extend it to all triggermen is problematic. This is because Goldhagen`s thesis fails to account for the considerable diversity of this category of perpetrator. Indeed, even within a single unit like RPB 101 there existed a variety of different behaviours and attitudes towards the killing process. Broadly, the men of the Battalion can be divided into three camps: 1) those numbed/indifferent individuals who partook in the killing when ordered, 2) those “nonconformists” who often refrained from it at great inconvenience/personal cost, and finally 3) those “eager killers” who actively took pride in (or even enjoyed) their work (Browning, 2017: 127). Of these groups, the first was the largest; with most of the men quickly settling into a mindset of cold efficiency. However, if one were to take Goldhagen`s approach here, the natural assumption would be that the third group would encompass almost all of the Battalion – driven as it was a rousing racial ideology which incited violence and cruelty above and beyond the call of duty.
Equally, if the unwilling executioners thesis were adopted, the second group of nonconformists might be presumed to have been far larger, given the fact that coercion from authority was conspicuously absent in this case. Thus, both Goldhagen`s ‘eager killers’ argument and the ‘unwilling executioners’ thesis fail to account for the wide range of dispositions amongst the triggermen. Indeed, despite being diametrically opposed in many ways, both approaches share the same core problem: they offer a “monocausal” answer to the question of motive by attempting to explain the triggermen`s actions in terms of a single factor. In doing so, they stifle many complexities of the issue; leading to approaches which only offer partial answers to a much broader problem. An effective response to this question, therefore, must involve a “multilayered” analysis which addresses many possible causes (Browning, 2017: 216-217) – such as ideology, socio-cultural conditions, personality traits and even banal motivations. Further, it must acknowledge the differences between each of the three sub-groups of triggermen listed above, as any assumption that they share an identical motivation would neglect a basic fact about the Holocaust: that different actors committed different crimes for different reasons.
The problem of ‘why’ the triggermen acted as they did therefore has no simple answer, due to it varying significantly from person to person. However, the question of ‘how could’ such people freely engage in the killing process – especially given the fact that many were not driven by extreme motives – might be answerable through studying the psychological process of “brutalization” (Browning, 2017: 160). This term refers to a common effect in wartime whereby combatants who are frequently made to engage in violent behaviour become increasingly desensitized to such acts. As a consequence, such people become habituated to violence, thus making it easier for them to repeat similar behaviours in the future. For example, when RPB 101 enacted its first massacre at Józefow, many of the men reported feeling “sheer physical revulsion” and traumatic shock at their experiences (Browning, 2017: 74). This is perhaps unsurprising, given the fact that the unit was largely comprised of middle-aged policemen with little previous experience in warzones. However, at the next massacre at Łomazy, this distress had significantly reduced – and by the time they were participating in the infamous ‘Harvest Festival’ massacre, the Battalion had transformed into a cold and efficient organ of the Nazi death machine (Browning, 2017: 142).
This example demonstrates that brutalization is a powerful mechanism which can turn even ordinary people into ruthless killers. Amongst triggermen of every type, repeated participation in violent acts seems to have produced a gradual erosion of conscience over time. Thus, it might be argued that many such figures lived in a type of ‘conditioned thoughtlessness’; whereby they became emotionally detached from the horrific consequences of their deeds, and thus could no longer consider their ethical implications. Further, this detachment also resulted in an inability to see their victims as human beings, with the gradual process of empathy erosion ultimately culminating in the absolute dehumanisation of their targets (Baron-Cohen, 2011: 13). As a result, direct participation in mass murder for many simply became a matter of routine, much like in the case of the desk-murderers. However, for the triggermen, it was not physical distance that produced the anti-quality of thoughtlessness, but rather its precise opposite: their constant proximity to atrocity overwhelming their capacity for thought, thus numbing the moral instinct through overexposure rather than active suppression.
The ‘Inner Circle’
Thoughtlessness can thus be said to have been prevalent amongst both desk-murderers and triggermen, albeit in different forms. However, when it comes to the final category of Nazi perpetrator, the natural impulse might be to deny that thoughtlessness could have been a significant force. Indeed, in the ‘Inner Circle’ – referring to those at the top of the Nazi hierarchy who represent the original ‘architects’ of the regime – the principal motivating factor driving most of these figures seems clear: the ideology of National Socialism. Whilst cases like Adolf Eichmann may complicate this judgment somewhat, the general rule that those who governed the Third Reich were ideological ‘true believers’ holds true in most cases. However, this lack of banal motivation does not mean that thoughtlessness was entirely absent in this category, as will be shown in this section. Further, it will be argued that thoughtlessness in the Inner Circle was not largely a consequence of external influences (as it was for the other categories of perpetrator) but rather was a self-imposed condition. To understand this rather counterintuitive point it may be necessary to explore the characteristics of ideological thinking in general, as well as the central tenets of National Socialism in particular.
At its root, Nazi ideology was predicated upon a virulent form of “race-thinking”, which depicted the whole of human history as a perpetual struggle between warring ethnic groups (Arendt, 1973: 58). Under this framework was also drawn sharp distinctions between those deemed to be superior or “pure” races (Holborn, 1964: 545), and those designated as inferior or ‘lesser’ races. This was based primarily on the perceived ‘strength’ of each group; defined in pseudo-Darwinian terms as the ability to survive and dominate in an unending global race war. Indeed, Nazi literature often made claims that “all weak and inferior are destroyed” in history, whilst “only the strong and powerful continue to propagate” (Browning, 2017: 180). Of course, the pinnacle of strength/racial purity for the Nazis was the “blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan” (Goodrick-Clarke, 2004: 164), a term referring to the Germanic peoples who supposedly embodied the ideal physical type for the human being. At the other pole, however, were placed the Jewish people, who were believed to represent an impure race whose very existence threatened the purity (and thus the strength/survivability) of Germany`s overall genetic stock.
In this rhetoric can be seen a line of logic that would eventually culminate in a Final Solution to the Jewish problem. It would be concluded that mass extermination merely represented a natural “counterselection in pure form” (Browning, 2017: 181), as well as a practical measure to protect German strength from demographic corruption by the Untermenschen (‘subhuman’) races (Butler, 2004: x). Further, this process was considered to be a necessary step towards the ‘final stage’ of Nature, whereby the primordial race war would one day culminate in a global, racially stratified utopia with the Germanic people at its helm (Fritzsche, 1996: 8). However, this world would only emerge once all the barriers to its achievement were removed, leading National Socialism to call for the eradication of the ‘parasitical’ Jews as a necessary measure to secure this goal. Thus, an “eliminationist” mindset was a central aspect of the ideology – making Goldhagen`s thesis somewhat applicable here (1996: 23). Further, this reduction of a whole population to the status of mere ‘obstacle’ suggests a level of emotional detachment comparable to that of the brutalized triggerman. However, in the case of the true believer, the killing of conscience and the dehumanisation of the victim resulted not from external experience, but rather from an internal process of psychological conditioning.
To illustrate this point it may be useful to draw on Arthur Koester`s novel Darkness at Noon, in which he offers a compelling depiction of an aging ideologue reflecting on his life after finally being imprisoned by the regime that he helped to build. In his prime, Rubashov had been fanatically committed to the beliefs of his Party; obeying its guiding principles, playing the roles required of him, and following the logic of its revolutionary ideals to their final conclusions (Koestler, 2005: 82). Whilst doing so he committed terrible deeds – including the sacrifice of countless human lives – whenever the cause demanded it. Further, to perform such tasks effectively, he engaged in a rigorous process of mental discipline in which he burned away all traces of “old, illogical morality” through the “acid of reason” (Koestler, 2005: 205). In other words, Rubashov willingly destroyed his own moral instincts, a process that was matched by an equally thorough suppression of any thoughts that were not compatible with the objective “Truth” of the Party`s convictions (Heller, 2010: 111).
Koestler`s novel may offer many insights into the mindset of the ideological true believer – a type that predominantly made up the ranks of the Nazi Inner Circle. It suggests that such figures often subordinated their own capacity for thought and moral judgment for the sake of ideological expediency; thus manifesting what could be called a fundamental ‘will-to-thoughtlessness’. Another label that might be fitting here is ‘kenosis’, a Christian concept which refers to the “self-emptying” of Jesus` will so that he could become a more effective receptacle for the will of God (Lounibos, 2011: 88). Similarly, when true believers turn themselves into a mere node/cipher for their ideology, this can be read as an attempt to become more effective agents for their cause. Such self-subjugation to a dogmatic logic – even on the level of thought and conscience – means that such figures live in a state of “ideological thoughtlessness”, characterised by “the unthinking promulgation and acceptance of political mantras that obscure our implication in others’ suffering” (Schiff, 2013: 100).
Unique to this form of thoughtlessness, however, is the fact that it is a self-imposed condition originating from a genuine belief in a common cause. However, after the tenets of the movement are fully imbibed, true believers often set about destroying their own capacity to think beyond the narrow confines of their creed. The level of faith this requires in the fundamental correctness of their ideology is striking, and suggests a mindset defined by a curious mixture of Christ-like humility and Satanic hubris: indeed, embedded in kenosis is both an absolute sacrifice of the self for a higher ideal, combined with a “complex desire to transcend humanity and become literally superhuman, by becoming godlike – omnipotent and ONE” (Formosa, 2007: 720). Equally, as in the case of Satan, the self-corruption of the true believer was often matched by the corruption of others also. Indeed, in the Holocaust, the function of the Inner Circle as the ‘architects’ of the regime would result in the moral degradation of countless others.
By constructing a vast bureaucratic machinery that effectively distributed guilt, indoctrinating the populace through propaganda, and brutalizing millions by co-opting them into mass murder, the Inner Circle thus created the conditions in which thoughtlessness could propagate. What this demonstrates about the relationship between Nazism and thoughtlessness is intriguing: that it was not only a pre-condition for the spread of Nazi ideology in the first place (and all the evil that flowed from it), but that it was also a direct product of the system. Thus, the process of kenosis was matched by the encouragement of thoughtlessness in others, who could then be fashioned into effective agents of the regime`s nefarious goals. To speak of National Socialism as something resembling a demonic possession (of both the individual mind and society at large) might therefore not be as hyperbolic as it first appears.
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Chapter Two: The Victims of the Holocaust
“If I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen” – Primo Levi
The Process of Total Domination
In the previous chapter, I attempted to sketch the many different categories of evildoer that collaborated in Nazi Germany to produce the Holocaust. Further, it was shown that each of these types had a markedly different function in the killing process, and yet were united by a common element: some degree of thoughtlessness. However, no discussion of a historical atrocity would be complete without also unpacking the second face of human evil: the “evil suffered” by its victims (Gaita 2004, p64-65). This chapter therefore aims to engage with the devastating effects of Nazism on those countless innocents who got caught under its murderous machinery. In particular, it will focus on the lives of the concentration camp prisoners – who will broadly be divided into two categories: the ‘drowned’ and the ‘saved’. Further, I will unpack the unique nature of totalitarian evil – which will be discussed in relation to the Arendtian concept of ‘radical evil’.
By this term, Arendt refers to a deep urge in totalitarianism to render “human beings as human beings superfluous”, by eradicating all “spontaneity” from human behaviour (Arendt, 1992: 166). In essence, this would mean converting free individuals into programmable machines; whose every thought and action would be utterly predictable and pre-determined by authority. Indeed, this has already been seen in the case of many Nazi perpetrators, who were frequently fashioned into efficient ‘cogs’ in the killing process. In the case of their victims however, this impulse to control took on a far more overt form in the mechanism of “total domination”. This refers to an elaborate procedure aimed at denigrating free individuals to the status of “mere object” (Arendt, 1973: 438), and can be divided into three ‘stages’: firstly, all legal rights are stripped from the victim by placing heavy restrictions upon them (Bernstein, 2002: 20), resulting in the destruction of their “juridical person” (Arendt, 1973: 449). Secondly, once the victim is placed into an environment like the concertation camps, the regime sets about destroying the “moral person” as well (Arendt, 1973: 451)
This is done through the creation of conditions whereby all forms of human solidarity are corrupted, acts of rebellion/martyrdom are robbed of their social meaning, and all questions of conscience are rendered equivocal and questionable (Bernstein, 2002: 20). Finally, the “individual person” is abolished entirely (Arendt, 1973: 455), meaning that all of those qualities identified by Arendt as vital to the human condition – such as freedom, spontaneity, and “plurality” (Arendt, 2013: 8) – have been eradicated. To understand the ethical implications of this final stage, it may be useful to also engage with the writings of Primo Levi, an Italian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who has written extensively on the effects of the camps on him and his fellow prisoners at Auschwitz. Indeed, Levi`s description of a particular type of inmate in the Nazi ‘Lager’ (his term for the camps) offers a vivid first-hand account of total domination`s final product: the victim who has been sapped of all their authentically human traits. Many names have been offered for this group: “Muselmänner, the drowned”, “an anonymous mass”, “non-men”, a group “already too empty to really suffer”, to name but a few from Levi.
Levi also described how the “divine spark” had perished within such people, with “not a trace of thought” being perceptible behind their eyes (Levi, 1959: 103). As for Arendt, she would refer to these figures as “ghastly marionettes with human faces”, and would compare their condition to that of the dogs in Pavlov`s famous experiment. By this, she meant that they had been rigorously trained to react with “perfect reliability even when going to their own death” (1973: 455). The most striking feature of this unfortunate caste for both thinkers was therefore their total absence of spontaneity in thought and action. Thus, once again we can see the emergence of thoughtlessness under Nazism – however, in this case it was not fostered through self-discipline or cultural influences, but rather through an overt campaign by the regime. Rather than being seduced into this condition (or self-imposing it upon themselves), such prisoners` capacity to think was actively broken through the evil they were forced to endure; their minds being essentially ‘drowned’ in a sea of suffering. Further, the condition of such figures might be seen as the most extreme extent of thoughtlessness – as what was killed within them was not only their conscience, but also their capacity to make any moral choices at all.
However, this discussion has thus so far only addressed the ‘how’ of total domination, but has yet to address ‘why’ it was enacted; what was the purpose of forcing victims into thoughtlessness, especially given the fact that most would be slaughtered regardless? One answer to this could be that it served some practical end for the Nazis: for instance, that total domination created an army of unresisting slaves who could then be exploited for their labor. However, this argument collapses when faced with the fact that the Lager system actually constituted a net loss to the regime`s war effort (Browning, 2017: xv); suggesting that the resources required to maintain the camps far outstripped any goods that could be produced within them. Further, Arendt has noted that most of this work served essentially no practical purpose, and therefore seems to have existed solely to “burden and torture” the prisoners (Arendt, 1973: 428). What existed in the Lager was therefore not a slave colony, but rather something more akin to an elaborate torture device that was created to humiliate and torment its inhabitants.
Indeed, the very structure of the camps seems to have been intentionally designed to be “inadequate for all needs” (Levi, 1959: 99), rather than this being a product of mere negligence. Further, a culture of “organised sadism” pervaded the command of the camps, suggesting a markedly different motivation than slavery: which was to subject the prisoners to an “elaborate ritual of degradation” before their inevitable execution (Alford, 2009: 87). However, this leaves us once again with the question of ‘why?’; what function did such a ritual serve for the regime? To answer this, it may be necessary to engage once again with the role of ideology in motivating the Nazis. As has been shown, utilitarian explanations of the Holocaust often fail to account for its extreme and deeply irrational nature. However, when considered through the lens of what Arendt labels the ideological “supersense” (1973: 457) – meaning that hermetically sealed world of beliefs and symbols that encompasses a creed like National Socialism – the event becomes far more comprehensible.
Equally, Arendt argues that the function of total domination can only be grasped once the central nihilistic thesis at the heart of such ideologies is understood: which is that “everything is permitted”, and “everything is possible” (Arendt, 1973: 440). What this proposition denotes is an impulse in totalitarian regimes to test how far they can extend their control over human beings. To do this, they consciously attempt to ‘remake’ the minds of their subjects through various means, such as an inexhaustible supply of propaganda being distributed to the populace. In the concentration camps however, this impulse manifested itself in an overt attempt to destroy any capacity for spontaneous thought or action – and thus to strip individuals down to a set of mere “elementary reactions”. This was intended to prove two things: 1) that with enough physical force human nature could be fundamentally redesigned according to the demands of ideological necessity (Arendt 1973: 456), and 2) that the regime`s power was absolute, meaning that there was nowhere it could not extend its influence over human life. Thus, that very same yearning for omnipotence outlined by Formosa above found its most ugly manifestation in the production of the drowned in the concentration camps.
In short, Arendt argues that total domination embodied the Nazis` attempts to convert its victims into what would be essentially a species of Pavlov`s dogs (Bernstein 2002, p21) – conditioned and predictable creatures who would act in whatever ways the authorities required. In doing so, they aimed to prove that man is an infinitely malleable material who can be made or unmade at will, thus making the concentration camps huge laboratories built to test this thesis (Arendt 1973: 392). Arendt’s argument therefore offers a compelling explanation for the culture of ‘organised sadism’ in the camps, as well as for why the Nazis would construct such a system in the first place (especially in light of its considerable costs). Her interpretation of the Lager as a “gigantic biological and social experiment” – a view also subscribed to by Levi (1959: 99) – also succeeds in highlighting the fact that mass extermination was not the only effect (or goal) of the Holocaust on its victims. Rather, the imposition of thoughtlessness and the wielding of absolute control over human beings were additional benefits to the regime, as to achieve these ends would be to prove that mankind (and thus the world as a whole) could be fundamentally redesigned according to National Socialism`s ideological blueprint.
The Gray Zone
However, the above analysis has so far neglected another category of victim that existed under the Lager: those who Levi labels the “saved” (1959: 100). This group, as opposed to the emaciated mass of the drowned, was that minority of the prisoners who – through fortune, ability, or even moral compromise – succeeded in remaining unbroken by total domination. Under the rubric of Nazi pseudo-Darwinism, such figures were considered the ‘strong’ of the camps; the victors of a Hobbesian struggle in which “everyone is desperately and ferociously alone” (Levi, 1959: 101). By whatever means available to them, they were able to survive the camps without transforming into utterly thoughtless and automatized beings. However, this is not to say that they had significantly more agency than their drowned counterparts. In the brutal conditions of the camps there were few opportunities to exercise any genuine freedom (Lara, 2004: 190), due to the prisoner`s every thought and action having to be directed towards the unending struggle to survive. The saved were therefore not in the same condition of absolute imposed thoughtlessness as the drowned, yet their behaviours and choices remained highly constrained in other ways.
For instance, certain social/psychological mechanisms that acted upon the triggermen can also be located amongst the saved. This is especially true in the case of the notorious Sonderkommandos (or ‘Special Squads’), referring to that group of prisoners who collaborated with the Nazis in the camps. One of the main duties of this group was the abhorrent task of stripping their fellow inmates down and then placing them in the gas chambers, and then removing their bodies afterwards (Venezia and Prasquier, 2009: xii). Thus, whilst never being made to kill with their own hands (Levi, 2013: 59), these Special Squads nonetheless played a significant role of the killing process: that of directly facilitating the triggermen`s executions. An even more extreme example of such collaboration was the “kapos”, armed functionaries of the camp authorities who were granted a reduction in their own torture in exchange for administering the torture of others (Levi, 2013: 212). Due to their more direct role in the regime`s violence, this group could be seen as a sub-category of triggermen – however, due to them being directly coerced into such actions by the brutal conditions under which they operated, the kapos are perhaps the only type that can be accurately called “unwilling executioners” (Venezia and Prasquier, 2009: xii).
Further, unlike the triggermen, the participation of such figures in violence seems to have existed as much to torture them as it did to slaughter their fellow inmates – suggesting that tempting certain prisoners into complicity was yet another ‘elaborate ritual of degradation’. Indeed, as Levi notes, the objective of co-opting prisoners seems to have been to “burden them with guilt, cover them with blood, compromise them as much as possible, thus establishing a bond of complicity so that they can no longer turn back” (2013: 220). In other words, by making certain individuals engage in actions that resulted in them becoming “morally defiled or stained” (De Wijze, 2002: 213), the Nazis consciously sought to denigrate such figures by making them just as bad as themselves. The ugliness of this strategy can be succinctly captured in a quote from Claudia Card: “the devil wants company” (2002: 212). Indeed, Card`s articulation of “diabolical evil” is especially relevant here: which she defines as “knowingly and culpably seeking others` moral corruption” (2002: 211). Through the creation of brutal conditions in which one of the few means of survival was collaboration/complicity, the regime thus managed to transform the ‘problem’ of dirty hands into its own ‘solution’. if individuality could not be snuffed out through total domination (as it was for the drowned), then at least the victim`s sense of innocence could be disfigured beyond repair; thus ‘breaking’ victims though the weight of guilt rather than overt brutality.
Indeed, the general aura of moral ambiguity that pervaded the Lager speaks to the effectiveness of the Nazis in this regard. Whilst the Sonderkommandos and the kapos are the most extreme examples of this, a similar incentive towards compromise and corruption existed for all of the prisoners. Simply to survive, many would have to fight, steal, betray their fellow inmates, and even engage in overt acts of violence against them. A particularly ugly example of this was the “entry ritual” (‘Zugang’) recounted by Levi, whereby experienced prisoners would meet newcomers with intense hostility, bullying, and even mob violence (2013: 36). This often had the tragic result of breaking new inmates early on, with their initial hopes of being able to rely on solidarity and kinship with other prisoners being immediately dashed. Instances like this reveal a particularly disconcerting fact about the Lager: that, under conditions of such moral ambiguity, a clean division between “two blocs of victims and persecutors” becomes impractical (Levi, 2013: 33). Rather, everyone existed in a “grey zone”, whereby every action had “ill-defined outcomes” (Levi, 2013: 38), culpability for wrongdoing was almost universal, and acting morally often was either impossible or fatal.
Based on this fact, it can be argued that conceptions of evil which assume a simplistic dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are deeply ineffective when dealing with cases like the Holocaust. This is because such approaches, which involve a Manichaean “bipartition” of the world into friend/enemy, innocent/guilty (Levi, 2013: 32), are impotent in cases of such profound ambiguity. Further, when a Manichean outlook is adopted, an inaccurate image arises of actors on both sides of the moral divide. Victims are portrayed as ethically pristine individuals; the very embodiments of virtue who are incapable of doing any wrong. Perpetrators, however, are viewed as wholly demonic figures, acting out their inherently wicked natures without an ounce of conscience. The inaccuracy of this first image has already been seen in the questionable actions of the saved. As for the latter, Levi demonstrates that this depiction is nothing but a caricature through his discussion of Auschwitz guard SS-Oberscharführer Muhsfeldt – a uniquely cruel and murderous figure even by Nazi standards. However, when he discovered a 16 year-old girl who had miraculously survived the gas chamber, Muhsfeldt experienced a moment of hesitation; though he would ultimately order her execution (Lee, 2016: 284).
No matter how insignificant this flash of conscience was, Levi argued it was enough to place Muhsfeldt within the “zone of ambiguity” endemic to the whole Lager system (2013: 57). This example thus highlights the inadequacy of simplistic dualism`s vision of the evildoer as ‘evil incarnate’. Even with the acknowledgement that Muhsfeldt was an appalling individual who probably deserved his eventual execution, the fact that he showed a single instance of moral doubt demonstrates that, even in the most despicable of cases, no one can be called ‘just a villain’. Equally, just as the tendency towards demonising perpetrators is unhelpful – and perhaps even dangerous as per Cole (2006: 196) – the accompanying process of ‘sanctifying’ the victim promotes an inaccurate account of such atrocities which neglects the ambiguity of many of these cases. In short, victims and perpetrators are not homogenous collectives between which goodness and badness can be cleanly divided. Further, individuals do not have an immutable moral character that determines their every action (Russell, 2006: 97). Instead, responding to the extreme conditions of the camps, individual actors often behaved in inconsistent, unexpected, and morally complex – that is to say human – ways.
The rigidity of simplistic dualism is thus inadequate even when assessing the Holocaust, a case which is defined by a significant degree of ambiguity and moral ‘greyness’. This being said however, we should also take care to avoid another danger: which is to assume that cases like this are so ambiguous that making any ethical distinctions within them becomes impossible. This has been labelled “postmodern relativism” by Sander Lee, and is based on the belief that the job of ethics is not to identify/condemn immorality, but instead is merely to understand it without judgement (2016: 276). Such a position thus reflects the direct opposite of black-and-white morality – as it accepts the inherent greyness of ethics as absolute and insoluble. This leads to two major problems: firstly, failing to make ethical distinctions may compromise our ability to effectively respond to human wrongdoing – thus robbing ethical discourse of its ‘normative function’. Secondly, such a position risks leading to absurd and even repugnant conclusions, such as that a moral equivalency existed between victims and perpetrators.
This second danger should be borne in mind whenever cases of moral ambiguity are discussed. Indeed, Levi once warned that the tendency to confuse victims and perpetrators represents a “moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity” (2013: 46). This is because the overextension of the concept of the grey zone – by using to describe the whole world (Lee, 2016: 276), or by assuming that it poses an intractable barrier to all moral distinctions – may well spell the end of ethics itself. Instead, the issue of ambiguity should be tackled directly, with an eye to promote greater clarity rather than further obfuscation. Equally, when discussing the grey zone, we should be specific about what this term denotes: which is that unique condition created in the Lager in which acting morally was often either impossible or fatal. By remaining grounded in this particular understanding of the term, it thus becomes possible to make a concrete judgment: the space within which the saved operated often demanded of them either compromise or complicity to survive, and thus many of their actions can be justified on the grounds of pure necessity.
Further, we should remember that this condition was not the creation of the prisoners themselves, but was a structure imposed upon them by their oppressors: which constituted “National Socialism`s most demonic crime” (Levi, 2013: 53). As a result, we should give a significant degree of sympathy and moral leeway when evaluating the actions of the saved by remaining cognizant of the fact that “grey zones jeopardize, erode, and destroy the character of decent people, making physiological death a mercy” (Card, 2002: 234). On the other hand, this observation should further add to our condemnation of the Nazis who, not content merely with committing horrendous deeds themselves, also sought the moral corruption of those they were torturing. Thus, the crimes of the saved were also those of the Nazis, even if such collaborators did own a certain “quota of guilt” also (Levi, 2013: 222).
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Chapter Three: Towards a New Conception of Evil
“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Overview of Thoughtlessness
In the preceding chapters, I have engaged in a close analysis of the Holocaust from two angles: the many types of perpetrator that collaborated to produce the Final Solution, and the differing experiences of those victims who were forced to endure the concentration camps. From this, I have attempted to extract important lessons about the nature of human evil, which could conceivably inform future uses of the concept. So far however, this discussion has not explicitly outlined what a more sophisticated alternative to simplistic dualism might look like. This chapter will therefore attempt to distil the above discussion into several ‘core insights’ about evil that could be used as the basis for a more sophisticated form of the concept. I will also provide some theoretical expansion on these core insights where necessary, with the aim of situating my conception in the existing scholarship of the new wave. In doing so, the hope is to demonstrate the practical value of the concept of evil when it is employed in nuanced and cogent ways.
To begin however, it may be useful to briefly discuss a theme that has recurred continuously throughout this project: the Arendtian concept of ‘thoughtlessness’. Rather than limit this concept to banal desk-murderers, I have traced its impact (in different forms and to different degrees) across each category of Nazi perpetrator; thus making it something of a common thread in my analysis. This has been based on a core contention: that, during the Third Reich, an abhorrent worldview and set of practices spread through every level of society not on the back of the inherent ‘wickedness’ of all Germans – or a generalised “cultural antisemitic credo” (Goldhagen, 1996: 393) – but because of a ‘generic thoughtlessness’ present in figures across the social spectrum. This condition of thoughtlessness meant that many individuals lacked the capacity to resist the spread of National Socialism – or, indeed, to even realise that it represented something that must be resisted in the first place. Ultimately, this would result in the ideology engulfing both their societies and (for many) their minds. Thus, we can see the “fungus” of evil spread across the “surface” of German society due to a fundamental inability to think (Arendt, 2017: 209), suggesting that a sufficient degree of thoughtlessness was a pre-condition for the rise of Nazism.
Once established however, this trend was then exacerbated under the Third Reich through multiple mechanisms (some automatic, some consciously enacted): a ‘division of labour’ amongst desk-murderers, ‘brutalization’ amongst the triggermen, and self-imposed ‘kenosis’ amongst true believers. These processes aided in the dismantling of the individual conscience through the suppression of thought in each type of perpetrator. That the Nazis sought the absolute imposition of thoughtlessness over human beings can be seen most overtly in the process of ‘total domination’ in the camps – whereby the ‘drowned’ were forcibly drained of all their authentically human qualities, thus becoming mere “marionettes” who could only act with clockwork predictability (Arendt, 1973: 455). The role of the Lager as a ‘laboratory’ for this purpose thus offers a chilling insight into what projects the regime may have undertaken on its free populace, had it survived beyond 1945. This example also shows that thoughtlessness was not just a pre-condition for Nazism`s ascension, but was also a direct product of its rule. In short, the Nazis capitalized on the moderate degree of thoughtlessness in inter-war Germany to seize power and disseminate their ideology. Afterwards, they then sought to intensify this condition through various measures – indicating that this anti-quality is not always innate, and can be fostered by institutional or societal conditions (Schiff, 2013: 101).
Theoretical Expansion
From this account of the rise of Nazism can be divined a number of core insights about the nature of human evil, which will now be listed and expanded upon. Firstly, it has been shown that there is not one single ‘root cause’ of evil, but rather it can arise from many different sources in both society and the individual disposition. Amongst the triggermen for example, a variety of causal factors for their crimes might be identified: such as obedience to authority, loyalty to the group, individual careerism, ideological possession etc. Further, there is also not only one set of personal characteristics that defines an evildoer: “envy, malice, greed, hatred, boredom, honor, pride, revenge, ambition, thoughtlessness, a lack of self-esteem, ideology, and faith can all, at times, be roots of evil” (Formosa, 2008: 220). Despite Formosa mistakenly treating thoughtlessness as a mental quality in the same vein as envy or hate here – as opposed to an absence or ‘anti-quality’ of mind – his argument nevertheless captures an important truth: that human evil has many faces, and that these do not always match our common intuitions about what an evildoer must look like.
This observation has three implications for the study of evil: 1) it necessitates the employment of a multicausal approach to explaining instances of human evil, as opposed to the “monocausal” explanations of figures like Goldhagen (Browning, 2017: 217). In doing so, the tendency to oversimplify such cases through the imposition of a comprehensible (yet reductionist) narrative can be avoided, thus challenging scholars to contend with the actual complexities of the issue. 2) It demonstrates that many evildoers do not have a “demonic psychology” that makes them uniquely primed to commit atrocities (Card, 2002: 9). Indeed, such a ‘stereotype’ of evil may be problematic even as a single category of perpetrator, as will be discussed later. 3) Related to the previous point, it suggests that a broad, psychologically ‘thin’ definition of evil will have greater utility than ‘thick’ alternatives. This is because there are no definable traits common to every evildoer, and thus grounding the concept in dispositional factors risks excluding many horrific actions committed by banal evildoers – even those which evoke a sufficient degree of moral horror to classify them as qualitatively distinct from actions that are merely ‘very bad’ (Garrard and McNaughton, 2012: 14).
Another core insight of this project has been that the notion of an unchanging (or ‘fixed’) moral character amongst evildoers is inherently flawed, given the inconsistent and malleable nature of ethical behaviour. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that moral transformation for individuals and societies is certainly possible, especially in conditions which exert tremendous pressure on them. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the case of RPB 101, whereby a group of ordinary Germans who were not motivated by any unique degree of ideology or sadism gradually became ruthless and jaded triggermen. Equally, Germany`s initial slide into fascism was spurred by the unique pressures of the inter-war years, a political change that would ultimately result in the moral degeneration of countless figures across the country. What`s more, the radical cultural changes that occurred in post-war Germany can be seen as another such moral transformation – a fact acknowledged even by Daniel Goldhagen, when he spoke of the “character structure” and “cognitive models” of Germans radically changing after 1945 (1996: 582). These examples demonstrate that moral character is not a static or unchanging property, but is in fact fluid and unstable – as well as being inherently reactive to external conditions.
In other words, man is a “mixed-up creature” who becomes even more confused and erratic when placed under extreme tension (Levi, 2013: 65). At first this may appear to be a rather basic point, however the principal underlying it can be extended into a wider critique of the ‘fixed’ moral character idea. Namely, it can be argued any notion of the ‘fixity’ of evil as an inalienable trait of human nature fails to capture the complexity of the phenomenon of evil. Such ideas can be found in many areas, and are often rooted in the belief that there is an “inherent wickedness” in mankind that will persist regardless of external contingencies or historical change (Paipais, 2019: 365). For example, John Gray has often alluded to a “transhistorical, permanent, almost metaphysical predilection for evil” in man that predisposes us towards violence and conflict (Paipais, 2019: 367). Treating this as the primary causal explanation for most historical violence, Gray thus adopts a position that can be called ‘ethical fatalism’; involving a belief that humankind is doomed to repeat the same violent cycles forever due to what is essentially an ‘original sin’ in our species.
Choice, change, and individual differences are thus obliterated by this view, as are any hopes of improving this dismal condition. However, this position can be criticised on similar grounds as the notion of the static evildoer: that it offers an oversimplified view of human morality which suppresses the inherent complexity of ethical decision-making. For instance, as was shown in the case of Muhsfeldt, moral actors can often act in surprising and inconsistent ways and thus can never be classed as solely ‘good’ or ‘evil’ incarnate. In the same vein, the whole human species cannot be essentialised as a priori ‘wicked’ (or ‘evil’), due to the inexhaustible diversity and complexity of mankind. To talk in terms of such absolutes thus always risks turning moral actors into caricatures, which can then produce unimaginative and unsubtle responses to human wrongdoing (Powers 2004, in Bernstein, 2008: 67). In actual fact, individuals have such complex natures that it might be prudent to not consider them as homogenous beings (or coherent ‘Selves’) at all, but rather as disunited entities who repeatedly experience a clash of motivations and impulses (Connolly, 2002: 7). This is because, if disunity and conflict can be traced to below even the individual level, then to employ an essentialist belief in human nature as a whole is to do a great disservice to our moral reality.
What may thus be needed is an alternative to ethical fatalism which embraces the inherent ‘fluidity’ of human character by acknowledging that the moral status of a person can change repeatedly over their lifetime. To find this, it may be useful to expand on the notion that individuals are ‘disunited entities’; an idea that might be expressed by slightly adapting a famous quote from Niebuhr: “man is at variance within himself” (2011: 21). What this framework suggests is that evil is not a latent characteristic of human nature itself – which in any case cannot be spoken of in concrete terms – but rather represents a temptation that was “always there” (Ely, 2001: 51). Indeed, individuals who have committed evil acts often feel as if they have been “seduced by overwhelming powers” (Ricoeur, 1995: 250), rather than having simply reverted to an innately wicked nature. One image that captures this point is the ‘Adamic myth’ of the Bible. In this story, a serpent in the Garden of Eden tempts the first humans into eating an apple from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, which results in them breaking their covenant with God and being cast out from His kingdom.
As Paul Ricoeur has argued, this myth captures many important truths about human evil. Most crucially, it underlines the fact that evil is not created by/endemic to human beings, but rather is an influence that always lies in wait in the form of temptation. The Serpent, embodying the mysterious “social and psychic dimensions” of human wickedness, represents the constant possibility of yielding to evil, which can be done (or resisted) by any responsible agent (Duffy, 1988: 598). Moral corruption under this view is thus a process of “deviation” or “going astray” by being tempted by a force that feels distinct from human nature (Ricoeur, 1969: 233). This being said however, Ricoeur also stresses the fact that the Adamic myth embodies a strictly anthropological view of evil – due to it suggesting that evil is not the product of some divine being/metaphysical force, but rather emerges through the free actions of moral agents (Ely, 2001: 48). In other words, it is created through the act of surrendering to temptation – either in the form of internal impulses or external pressures. We might therefore label evil as a ‘latent potentiality’ in man, embodying an ever-present danger which is more frequently succumbed to in extreme circumstances.
This interpretation of evil as a temptation rather than as an indelible trait brings numerous benefits to discussions of evil. Firstly, it succeeds in accounting for the “reality and intractability of evil” without essentializing mankind as violent and bestial (Paipais, 2019: 378), therefore also rescuing hopes for its amelioration in the future. Secondly, it acknowledges the inherent ‘fluidity’ of moral character by emphasising that people are not always strong enough to resist the temptation to do evil – and thus the same individual can often act in inconsistent, unpredictable, and ethically ambiguous ways. Thirdly, it rescues the concepts of freedom and responsibility from the constricting jaws of ethical fatalism – as it is down to each individual whether they resist or not. Finally, it plants the seeds for a more sophisticated understanding of moral character – which could replace Bush`s quasi-Manichaean dualism (which divides the world between good and evil people) with a type of ‘internalised dualism’ (which divides the individual between many competing impulses/drives, both good and bad).
Indeed, this concept of internalised dualism can be considered the final core insight of this project: as it is an idea which arises directly from the contention that many Germans, whether soldiers, bureaucrats or policemen, fell to the temptations of Nazism in the same way that Adam fell to the Serpent. This came in many forms: the intoxicating effects of ideology, banal incentives like careerism and duty, the security of militaristic conformity, and even (for some) the pleasures of inflicting pain. For most Nazi perpetrators, a degree of thoughtlessness was necessary for this moral descent due to it weakening resistance against temptation. Once imbibed however, National Socialism would go about “mobilizing the worst drives and putting into its service subtle intellectual sophistication” (Heller, 1993: 12). In other words, the evil of Nazism was not a “permanent resident of human character” – nor even of the German character – but instead was a temporary blight that wrought its mayhem and then abandoned its hosts as mere husks of their former selves (Heller, 1993: 5).
Condemnation of those who fell to the temptation of Nazism is of course both useful and necessary. However, to avoid the risk of ethical grandstanding highlighted by Cole, it is necessary to consider an uncomfortable question: “how would each of us behave if driven by necessity and at the same time lured by seduction?” (Levi, 2013: 70). Indeed, to exculpate anyone from considering this question is to miss the essence of Solzhenitsyn`s famous quote at the beginning of this chapter. His observation that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” is both a factual observation about the disunity of the Self, and a vital warning about the fluidity of moral character (Solzhenitsyn, 2003: 75): in the right circumstances, perhaps anyone could fall to such a temptation? However, implicit in this view is also the possibility of ameliorating this condition. Rather than attempting to eradicate evil from the world like Bushism – or claiming that tackling evil is impossible as per ethical fatalism and postmodern relativism – internalised dualism instead focusses on confronting evil on the personal level first. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn`s injunction (which he draws from Socrates) is simply to “Know thyself” (2003: 313); as it is only through every individual contending with their own latent potentiality to be perpetrators that a real, lasting inoculation against evil can be created.
Conclusion
In this project I have engaged in an in-depth study of Nazism and the Holocaust, with the aim of discovering valuable lessons about the nature of human evil that could inform future uses of the concept. This has been done by studying the multiple categories of perpetrator involved in this atrocity, as well as its many victims. Further, I have also attempted to sketch an alternative conception that effectively capitalizes on the core insights of my analysis. This has been labelled ‘internalised dualism’, and has been built on four main premises: 1) that evil can spread easily across whole societies when the populace has lapsed into a state of thoughtlessness. 2) That evil has many ‘root causes’, not all of which are overtly villainous in nature. 3) Moral character is not fixed either on an individual or collective (species-wide) level, meaning that it can shift multiple times over a single lifetime. 4) ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ cannot be cleanly divided between groups or even individuals – instead, this line cuts directly through every human heart. These principles culminated in the judgment that evil embodies an ever-present temptation in human life that must be continuously resisted through a societal focus on moral responsibility, personal introspection, and the encouragement of independent thought.
In outlining this conception I have sought to offer a more nuanced alternative to ‘simplistic dualism’ by inverting many of its core tenets. For example: ‘fixity’ became ‘fluidity’ in moral character, an exclusively demonic (‘psychologically thick’) approach became a wider (‘psychologically thin’) one, and the division of the world between good and evil people became a division of the individual into good and evil drives/temptations. In doing so, this project has formulated a more accurate picture of human evil than Bush`s, thus demonstrating the possibilities of the concept when it is used in sophisticated ways. I have also aimed to prove the utility of extracting future conceptions of evil from in-depth investigations of genuine atrocities. Indeed, if the structure of this project were emulated elsewhere in the new wave, I believe it would have many benefits: not least of which would be a greater impetus for scholars to develop more nuance and conceptual clarity in their theories. This is because real-life cases often pose a direct challenge to easy judgments or simplistic explanations, and thus demand suitably advanced ethical terminologies that can accommodate the convoluted and often counter-intuitive moral realities that they represent.
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