However, officials/soldiers who participated in Holocaust in Browning's book is different.I think conceptually, I can make myself understand how this happened. Conformity, peer pressure, desire to have solidarity, desire to follow authority, antisemitism, etc could have made these "ordinary" men into military men who intended to kill ALL the Jews. I can understand how this transformation was possible if I try really really really hard.
However, I cannot empathize with them at all. Conformity, peer pressure, desire to have solidarity, desire to follow authority, extreme hatred was always present and it still does. I can say for myself that I have had all of those emotions some points in my life. However, I did not become inhumane. I'm sure that majority of people have experienced those emotions also. However, they did not abandon their beliefs, morals or basic human conscience. Of course, some people lost to their emotions and killed people. But this isn't supposed to happen, and that's why they are secluded and isolated from the public.
Seems like the difference between our situation and the Nazi's situation is that murder for the Nazi's was state-approved.
ReplyDeleteIf there's anything I've learned in sociology, it's that the State is, to some, the ultimate authority. Sometimes, even above God. Other times, directly related to God (Hitler was considered God-like, in a sense).
Now it seems to me, to use a tired symbol, that most men are sheep. Perhaps all men are sheep - and they strive to conform to authority. It may even be advantageous from an evolutionary point of view to do so. Now if the ultimate authority, one who even the Pope evidently approved of, conscripts you and sends you out to murder, I suppose you're pretty likely to listen.
And I can't express how sad it is to come to this conclusion - that in some cases, authority and conformity are more important than morality.