The Exception: A Novel Part 28

During the war, Allied propaganda portrayed the top n.a.z.is as s.a.d.i.s.tic madmen and, later, doc.u.mentary films from the German concentration camps demonstrated to the rest of Europe and the United States that those running the system had to be among the sickest, most inhumane people the world had ever seen.

A sizable group of psychologists and psychiatrists, led by Douglas M. Kelley and Gustave Gilbert, was given access to the twenty-two prisoners for the purpose of examining their mental state. The brief was to find out what was wrong with the n.a.z.i leadership. There was no question in the minds of the experts that the accused were deranged. The task was seen as diagnostic: what conditions afflicted the perpetrators and how mentally unstable were they?

The main diagnostic tools used were IQ and Rorschach tests. The media gave comparatively little publicity to the results of the intelligence testing because the n.a.z.i prisoners turned out to be exceptionally intelligent, an observation that the world definitely did not want to hear. None of the accused had an average IQ100 or less, and all fell within the range of 106143, with a mean of 128. This figure is substantially higher than the mean of American college graduates (118), and several high-ranking n.a.z.is were borderline geniuses. In other words, if they were mentally ill, they were remarkably brilliant madmen.

The Rorschach test is a method used to determine personality traits, not intelligence. The psychologist shows the subject a standardized series of cards with symmetrical ink-blot patterns and asks the subject what each image might be. The patterns are meant to stimulate the imagination, but are strictly meaningless, in the sense that no answer is correct. The psychologist takes note of what the examinee says, but also records variables such as the time taken before an answer, any emotional reactions, spontaneous comments, and other responses to the images. The session is intended to chart the subjects personality, thought patterns, and capacity for imaginative expression. The method was developed in the 1920s and is still in use.

The hostility between Douglas M. Kelley and Gustave Gilbert grew in the course of the investigation, and finally it reached the point at which they refused to work together. Kelley, a psychiatrist, was experienced in the use of the Rorschach cards and, after having examined seven of the accused, he found no evidence of mental illness. Even though Gustave Gilbert, a psychologist, was unfamiliar with Rorschach tests, he went on to examine sixteen of the prisoners.

Gilbert wrote several books and articles about his experiences among the Nuremberg war criminals. He described the n.a.z.i leadership as psychopaths and murderous robots lacking in conscience and empathy. However, he presented very few a.n.a.lyses of his test results. Instead, his books mostly quoted notes from his informal conversations with the accused. These talks were conducted during a period when several of the prisoners were trying to use the widespread conviction that they were psychotic to their own advantage. Among others, Hitlers deputy Rudolf Hess later admitted that he had simulated mental illness, hoping for less severe punishment and a better opportunity to escape.

Gilberts unfamiliarity with the a.n.a.lysis of Rorschach test results was the reason that his notes were later handed over to ten experienced Rorschach specialists, who were asked to reevaluate the n.a.z.i leaders. Not one of the ten experts ever delivered his or her interpretation. Presumably, they feared being blamed for the outcome. Feelings would have run high in Europe and the USA if their results had shown that the n.a.z.is were not mentally ill. The general public would simply have concluded that the Rorschach method, on which the investigators claims to expertise were based, must be flawed. Almost thirty years pa.s.sed before Gilberts records were reexamined.

In 1975 the records were published in book form, which meant that for the first time they were subject to scrutiny by interested psychologists. The wide-ranging discussions that followed showed how divided opinions still were. Many found clear evidence of psychopathic, depressive, and violent personalities, while others contested this, pointing to the results of blind tests. In these, Rorschach a.n.a.lysts were unable to distinguish between n.a.z.i responses and those made by non-n.a.z.i and presumably normal subjects.

However, in later years, the Rorschach method was refined still further and given a more systematic, scientific basis. In 1985 the group of researchers who made the best use of the improved methodology (Eric A. Zillmer, Molly Harrower, Barry A. Retzler, and Robert P. Archer) published their conclusion that mental illness was not rife among the n.a.z.i leadership.

Generally, the n.a.z.is were found to have had normal, functional, and individually distinctive personalities with just two exceptions. Traits shared by them were a marked tendency to overvalue their own abilities and a willingness to adjust their behavior to whoever was construed as the group leader. In other words, these men were unable or unwilling to follow the directions of their internal compa.s.s.

Despite the shared traits, the researchers emphasized that the differences between the top n.a.z.i individuals were much greater than the similarities. There is, they concluded, no uniform n.a.z.i personality type.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE THIRD REICH.

For the first fifteen years following the end of World War II, attempts to understand what motivated perpetrators of the Holocaust concentrated on psychological aberrations. The leaders attracted all the attention and the Nuremberg court doc.u.mentation was the primary source of information.

Another line of investigation attempted to define the so-called authoritarian personality. People with this personality type were thought to do exactly as they were told, even when the orders contradicted common sense or decency. Many believed this personality type to be particularly prevalent in Germanic culture.

The early 1960s brought a shift in emphasis. Three circ.u.mstances were crucial: 1. The publication in 1961 of Raul Hilbergs The Destruction of the European Jews, a pioneering book in which Hilberg a.n.a.lyzed, for the first time and in great detail, the bureaucratic structure that underpinned the n.a.z.i regime. He showed that n.a.z.i rule was not directed by a united hierarchy that ruled from the top down, as had been generally believed. Instead, the Reich depended on the rivalry for power between several distinct organizations, each one striving to outdo the others. This system expanded into a colossal killing machine, which employed people from every sector of German society.

Hilberg also realized the necessity of setting up an extensive administrative structure to manage the extermination of millions. Administration meant, as always, rules, doc.u.mentation, and set procedures. Staff selected either for certain mental disorders or for a specifically Germanic personality type (or types) could not possibly have followed complex operational directives on such a scale.

Hilbergs book interested many and stimulated further studies of the bureaucracy of the Third Reich and of the middle-ranking managers who were in charge of running the system according to the guidelines laid down by the leadership.

2. Hannah Arendt, the famous American philosopher and intellectual, wrote a book ent.i.tled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Ba.n.a.lity of Evil, which came out in 1963. Its core material consisted of her report from the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Israeli intelligence agents had captured him in Argentina and delivered him to stand trial in Jerusalem. The court case took several months. Eichmann had been the head of the Gestapos Section for Jewish Affairs, and in that position he had carried the ultimate responsibility for organizing the Jewish transports across war-tom Europe to the network of concentration camps.

Arendt argued that the most terrifying thing about Eichmann was precisely that he was not a crazed demon, driven by his obsession to exterminate Jews; instead he was a dull bureaucrat devoid of any noteworthy personal traits. He was, in her view, bereft of any will of his own and followed orders without engagement or any consideration of the consequences. The face of evil was not one of frenzied hatred but of a mediocrity who, above all, cared about advancing his career within the organization.

Hannah Arendts book portrayed evil in a new light. Her image of it has had immense influence on our att.i.tudes to n.a.z.i Germany and, more generally, to the phenomenon of evil, as well as to large rule-ridden organizations. Her influence persists, even though most contemporary historians agree that she was wrong in her judgment. She had uncritically accepted Eichmanns own story of his contribution to the Holocaust, distorted by him in order to support his defense.

It appears that Eichmann did in fact defy orders from above, if these interfered with the efficiency of his sections management of Jewish transports. His energetic performance of his work went far beyond the call of duty. Indeed, his pa.s.sion for his task was such that he was prepared to weaken the German war effort at times if this allowed more Jewish transports to be completed.

3. The year 1963 also saw the publication of experimental results from the laboratories of the social psychologist Stanley Milgram. His data demonstrate the extent to which ordinary people will obey a perceived authority, even if those in charge have no means of either rewarding or punishing those who serve their purposes.

Originally, Milgram had intended to compare American and German subservience to authority in order to ill.u.s.trate a presumed trait in the German national character. He never started the German part of his experiment, however, because the first set of results from the USA were more sensational than anyone had imagined.

THE WORLDS MOST FAMOUS EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

Milgrams experimental paradigm has become internationally recognized through dissemination in school and university textbooks, newspapers, magazines, films, and television programs. Recently, it was even referred to in a TV commercial.

Two experimental subjects are told that they are partic.i.p.ating in an experiment designed to test the effects of punishment on learning. They draw lots to determine who is going to be respectively teacher and pupil. The lottery is fixed beforehand. The true subject is unaware that his companion is an experimental a.s.sistant who is predestined to be the pupil. Consequently, the true subject will always be the teacher.

The pupil is strapped into a chair wired up to deliver electrical shocks. The subject/teacher is then led away to another room, where his only contact with the pupil is via a microphone and the text on a display screen showing the pupils responses. If the pupil answers incorrectly, the teacher is instructed to deliver a punishment shock by pressing a b.u.t.ton.

The shocks are mild at first. Another display shows the voltage and grades the severity as in 15 volts: mild shock. With each wrong answer, the teacher must gradually increase the voltage in fifteen-volt steps. The scale reaches 420 volts: Danger severe shock, and then, finally, 450 volts: x.x.x.

To facilitate international comparisons there are precise rules for how the leader of the experiment and his a.s.sistant must behave. The pupil is never actually shocked, but when the subject believes that he is delivering 300 volts, the pupil will protest by banging hard on the wall that separates him from the subject. He bangs again at 315 volts and then does or says nothing at all. The implication is that the pupil might be unconscious by this stage.

The teacher is told that any failure to answer a question must be regarded as an incorrect answer, and hence, despite the pupils silence, the voltage must be increased another step each time.

If the subject protests, the experimental leader has four command options. The first is Please continue then, The experiment requires that you continue and next, It is absolutely essential that you continue. The last option is You have no other choice. You must continue. If the subject still refuses to carry on, the experiment is stopped.

The most common response by far is that the subject/teacher protests repeatedly and, as the experiment proceeds, starts to sweat, shake, stutter, groan, and bite his lip.

When the subjects arrive in the lab they are typically relaxed and self-a.s.sured, but in the course of the first twenty minutes they usually come close to having a complete breakdown. Twitching nervously, they pace about the room, as if trying to make up their mind whether to leave or not. Often, they keep talking aloud about how they cannot stand this anymore. The subjects know they are free to leave at any time and that a decision to end the experiment will not have any repercussions. All they have to say is that they dont want to do this anymore and then actually stop.

Despite this, two thirds of the subjects in the original experiment continued, obeying the leader to the end. In other words, they increased the shock voltages up to the highest setting, at which point the leader would call a halt.

Stanley Milgrams own view of his results was that they confirmed Hannah Arendts perception of the ba.n.a.lity of evil. The subject, who in the role of teacher believed that he had used shock strengths that were lethal, was not a deranged monster, but one of a majority, two thirds of a group drawn from the population at large. The behavior of this subgroup was not defined by psychosis, racism, or hatred, but by obedience.

Milgrams experiment was thoroughly tested by several other groups in the USA and elsewhere, and later Milgram, as well as many others, repeated the general idea with various modifications. It is now known that the percentage of wholly obedient subjects is relatively constant, regardless of gender, nationality, and year of testing (early 1960sthe present).

The proportion of obedient subjects decreases by only a few percent if the screams and wails of the pupil are relayed via an intercom system, but falls from about 65 percent to about 40 percent if teacher and pupil are in the same room. Social psychologists also obtained results demonstrating that, if the subject is in a work situation and someone of higher rank gives the destructive orders, the obedient percentage increases considerably.

Over the decades these experiments have been both praised and condemned. The criticism focuses on the potentially crucial difference between giving someone electric shocks for a fixed time and carrying on killing people over months or years.

One interesting angle is that many war criminals in postwar trials defended themselves by declaring that they had to obey orders, but n.o.body acting for the defense was able to produce a single example of a German soldier being punished for his refusal to serve in concentration camps or in other settings where civilians were murdered.

Milgrams experiments changed the perception of this crucial issue by shifting the attention from enforced obedience to spontaneous acceptance of authority.

ORDINARY MEN.

Studies on perpetrators of genocide took a new turn in the 1990s. The trigger was the publication in 1992 of a book ent.i.tled Ordinary Men by the American professor Christopher Browning, which drew a great deal of attention to the partic.i.p.ation of German private soldiers in the Holocaust. This led others to focus on the same issue. For example, in 1995 a Hamburg museum exhibited doc.u.mentation showing that the German army had executed prisoners of war, as well as Jews and other civilians. Daniel J. Goldhagens much discussed book Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust came out in 1996.

In his book Christopher Browning describes how, in 1942, a battalion of approximately five hundred reserve policemen from Hamburg was dispatched to Poland for guard duty or so they thought. By then almost all the younger or more aggressive men were fighting on the front line, and most of the reservists were middle-aged men who had not joined the n.a.z.i Party. Their average age was thirty-nine, which meant that they had grown up and formed their att.i.tudes in a Germany that was not under n.a.z.i rule. The majority came from the Hamburg working cla.s.s and were likely to have been Communists or Socialist Democrats before Hitler came to power.

Several years after the end of the war the survivors from this battalion were thoroughly questioned by staff in the public prosecutors office in Hamburg. Browning had found and a.n.a.lyzed the extensive notes from these interrogations.

Early one morning, after three weeks of routine service in Poland, the entire battalion was ordered to get on board trucks. They were driven to the country town of Jozefow. On arrival they received their orders: kill the citys 1,800 Jewish inhabitants.

The commanding officer, a major, wept as he told his men what Berlin demanded of them. He repeatedly made it clear that those who came to him and requested transfer to other duties would be accommodated, but only ten (possibly thirteen) men out of five hundred did so.

The task was new to both officers and men, but an army doctor instructed them in what should have been an effective procedure: they were to put the tip of the rifle bayonet on the back of the victims neck at the point where his cranium joined the vertebral column and then pull the trigger.

The first batch of victims, children as well as young and old people, were marched along to a forest clearing and told to lie belly down. The soldiers started shooting but were so shaken that many missed, despite the unusually close range. They tended to aim their rifles at the victims skulls, which exploded when hit by the large-caliber bullets. The men were sprayed with brain matter again and again. In the course of the day many broke down, vomited, and generally became physically incapable of continuing, and an increasing number requested leave to stop partic.i.p.ating in the killings. Others hid, or took implausibly long times to search houses that they knew to be empty, or deliberately missed when shooting at Jews who were running away.

When the sun set on Jozefow, between 10 and 20 percent of the men had asked to be allowed off-duty for either physical or psychological reasons. The rest had obeyed orders. But this was only the beginning. Following their initiation in Jozefow, the men adapted and obeyed orders more willingly as, during the months to come, they surrounded one small Polish town after another to round up Jews. Their job was either to send the captives off to extermination camps or to execute them on the spot. In the course of the next ten months the battalion caused the deaths of at least 83,000 Jews. The men had learned to live with their consciences.

The efficiency of the entire German killing machine improved by leaps and bounds. To the huge relief of the soldiery, slaughtering the Jews personally soon became a thing of the past. Instead most of the victims could be crammed into trains and sent off to Treblinka, the main regional extermination camp. Herding Jewish civilians into trains and sending them off to a certain death seemed easy compared to having to kill them one by one. To help the policemen relax in the evenings, their spirit rations were increased and singers and actors were sent from Berlin to entertain them. Also, prisoners of war from the Eastern Front could now be detailed to deal with the more repulsive aspects of their task.

The battalions past experience had led them to adopt much more effective ways of killing Jews, which were also less emotionally disturbing. The men realized that there was no point in making the victims lie down before shooting them and instead herded them along to line up on the edge of a waiting pit. The double advantage was that they could be shot from a greater distance and that the dead fell straight into their grave.

However, this method meant that many were only wounded as they fell, and it became the task of the East European POWs to go down into the grave and shoot anyone who moved or moaned. The prisoners were given very large vodka rations and were out of their minds with alcohol before descending into the pits, where they had to wade through a knee-high mixture of blood and groundwater. They shot wildly, bullets crisscrossing the bunker dangerously as they aimed at the floating bodies.

Most of the policemen became accustomed to the slaughter as an everyday occurrence and grew hardened to the task. They had learned to cope.

Browning describes some of the men and their lives: There is the normally strict and unapproachable SS officer who becomes bedridden with diarrhea and stomach cramps every time another Jewish action is announced. We learn of how he attempts to hide his weakness from his superiors.

There is the talented, self-a.s.sured officer who enjoys driving his car standing up, like a general. He brings his young bride on a honeymoon trip to Poland and invites her along to a ghetto operation, but his men strongly object to a woman being allowed to watch what they do.

There is the group of entertainers from Berlin, whose members beg to be allowed to join a Jewish action and do some of the killing. The battalion officers permit this.

There is the stench, carried in the wind blowing in over the town of Lublin as thousands of Jewish bodies are burned on the outskirts.

There is the care taken by some of the soldiers when they receive orders to kill their own kitchen Jews. They avoid raising any suspicion and go to quite a lot of trouble to shoot their servants suddenly from behind and at close range, so they wont suffer or experience the dread to which other Jews were exposed.

RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD COLLEAGUES.

Before the publication of Brownings book, obedience to authority was regarded as the primary mechanism that allowed ordinary Germans to turn into ma.s.s murderers, a conclusion based partly on the experimental results of Stanley Milgram and others.

Brownings account changes this view. His research indicates that by far the stronger influence is a sense of responsibility to comrades, which made the men carry on regardless. More than anything, the members of the Jewish action battalion wanted to avoid being regarded as weaklings. Also, the killings were widely detested, which meant that backing out marked you as selfish, someone who lacked team spirit after all, you were handing your share of the killings over to your colleagues.

EAGER KILLERS.

As time went on, some of the men became so intensely engaged in the killing sessions that they overreacted to new orders. They would beat up their victims for no reason at all, or amuse themselves after a drunken evening by driving into a town to shoot at live, moving targets. In the phrase used within this area of research, they developed into eager killers, Brownings term for excessive perpetrators.

One example is the forty-eight-year-old officer who, in the early stages, would always see to it that his men got out of harms way when another Jew-killing excursion was due. Later his behavior changed dramatically. During the Jewish actions he often drank as heavily as the Eastern POWs did before they were sent down into the ma.s.s graves. He became even more brutal than the battalions two young SS captains and forced his men to carry out acts of degrading cruelty, such as commanding old Jews from a town ghetto to undress and crawl naked across the forest floor, or telling his men to beat their elderly victims with sticks cut from the trees.

Internationally there is still insufficient data to state with any certainty what proportion of perpetrators is p.r.o.ne to excess. But Brownings calculations do coincide with the results of a social psychology experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Also, confirmation of the cited figures will be part of the argument in a forthcoming book by the Danish researcher and DCIG user Torben Jrgensen: 1020 percent of perpetrators try to obtain transfer to other duties; 5080 percent do as they are told; 1030 percent develop into eager killers and run riot, intoxicated by torture, rape, and murder.

THE FUTURE.

The research into the nature and behavior of the perpetrators of genocide is still hampered by the lack of hard information. There is little statistical justification for extrapolating conclusions based on data from twenty-two senior party members and one battalion of reservists to the a.n.a.lysis of mechanisms driving millions of human beings.

The Holocaust is, undoubtedly, the genocide that has been most thoroughly investigated. Even so, the gaps in our understanding are huge and the unexplored archival material is vast. Many of the 7,500 guards at Auschwitz were interrogated, but the records have not yet been examined.

Recent research has continued along the lines suggested by Christopher Browning. One approach is that of regional studies, i.e., a precise a.n.a.lysis of a selected region. This opens up opportunities to investigate interactions between the n.a.z.i Party and local police, military, local administration, and business.

To date, very little work has been carried out on the collaboration between the n.a.z.is and the populations of often strongly anti-Semitic Eastern European countries under German occupation. Now that the archives of the former Soviet Union are available to researchers, many new investigations are under way.

It may seem odd to prioritize work on the behavior of individual Germans in the context of exterminations carried out sixty years ago when other genocides, for instance in the Soviet Union and in China, have cost more lives yet remain virtually unexamined. However, there is no other genocide in known history that is as thoroughly recorded, with archival material that is both extensive and accessible. The expectation is that continued research will provide insight well beyond Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and can be applied to other, less doc.u.mented genocides.

Above all, such heightened understanding could and should be used to prevent similar catastrophes in the future, events that mankind has been enduring for too long and would prefer to forget.

This article is based on several sources. The most important are the following: Becoming Evil. How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Ma.s.s Killing by James Waller (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning (HarperCollins, 1992).

A second and final article on the subject The Psychology of Evil will appear in the next issue of Genocide News. It will present a selection of investigations by social psychologists into the minds of genocide perpetrators.

chapter 30.

i didnt want to burden you with this before. Its my job to do the worrying, after all.

Paul looks serious. He stands in front of the low bookshelf with back issues of Genocide News, his arms crossed over his chest, his feet solidly planted well apart the posture of a commanding officer demonstrating the serious nature of his speech to the troops. He has asked Anne-Lise to join the others in the Winter Garden.

I need to bring you up to speed. The lawyers in the Ministry of Finance have started work on a new bill thats going to make our Center part of the Danish Inst.i.tute for Human Rights.

He pauses deliberately.

Anne-Lise has no idea how the others will react, but secretly she feels that the news of a merger with the DIHR is like divine intervention on her behalf. The move could be her prize for holding out in this inferno. She could keep the vital aspects of her job and be in daily contact with a whole new set of colleagues who might turn out to be as congenial as her former ones at Lyngby Central Library.

But she knows she mustnt show any signs of relief.

Pauls forehead is wrinkled with concern. It explains why Ive been to so many meetings recently. He sighs and appears sheepish. Youve of course wondered whats been keeping me away so often. But then, you must know that I wont let them ruin our Center. Ill fight them with everything Ive got.

Malene is there, her first day back since being ill. Shes applied an excessive amount of makeup, at least too much for daytime. Paul! Its such dreadful news! she whines.

Iben and Camilla follow her lead.

What can we do to keep the Center as it is?

How long have you known this?

Ever since Anne-Lise found out how badly Camilla was traumatized by bullying at school, she has kept an eye on her colleague to see if she can somehow divine the truth. But Camilla is motionless and her face does not reveal anything. It never does.

I must admit I thought something was up. Youve been away so often.

Well, weve met other challenges head-on before. But this time its different: its one of our own who is undermining our fight for survival.

Anne-Lise stiffens. Has Paul somehow guessed her feelings? She hasnt let on. Perhaps he has discovered something about one of the others? Anne-Lise glances around the small circle. Camilla, Iben, Malene all look shocked. Or is it guilty? She looks at Paul.

He seems unaware of the effect of his words and carries on regardless.

Frederik Thorsteinsson has accepted the post as DIHR research coordinator. In other words, he will become one of Morten Kjrums immediate subordinates, starting five months from now. But Frederik isnt the one who told me. I was informed by a friend who sits on the board of the inst.i.tute someone totally reliable.

Paul takes a breath. Frederiks new position means that it is in his interest to have our Center controlled from within the DIHR. Never mind that hes a member of our board. Hes been completely duplicitous.

Malene asks several questions that demonstrate that she, like Paul, is aware of who the decision makers are, and whos who in the ministries and among the NGO administrators.

To protect our Center we need to get Frederik off our board, Paul continues. Hes not declared that he is compromised when it comes to dealing with this challenge to our independence, so I have no option but to make Ole aware of Frederiks deception. But neither Ole nor I can fire a board member. Only someone from the ministry can do that.

Anne-Lise is excluded from this world of high-level politics, but it obviously fascinates Iben and Malene. They readily agree with everything Paul says, but it occurs to Anne-Lise that Malene is closer to Frederik than anyone else at the Center. If by next year they are part of the DIHR, then at a stroke Malene will have become the bosss favorite, displacing Iben and her strong links with Paul. Anne-Lise feels that she has. .h.i.t on something worth thinking about, but at the moment cannot figure out what it means.

You might as well know that I have already found a good replacement for Frederik. Theres one clear candidate, and I have total confidence in him. I dont know if any of you know of him Maybe youre too young. He used to be all over the media and even a couple of years ago he was still writing brilliant articles for Information. Im talking about the journalist and Africa expert Gunnar Hartvig Nielsen.