Concentration-camp brutality is cold and systematic rather than sadistic and spontaneous

Evidence

The real horror began, however, when the SS took over the administration of the camps. The old spontaneous bestiality gave way to an absolutely cold and systematic destruction of human bodies, calculated to destroy human dignity; death was avoided or postponed indefinitely. The camps were no longer amusement parks for beasts in human form, that is, for men who really belonged in mental institutions and prisons; the reverse became true: they were turned into “drill grounds,” on which perfectly normal men were trained to be full-fledged members of the SS. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1019 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Kogon, op. cit., p. 6, speaks of the possibility that the camps will be maintained as training and experimental grounds for the SS. He also gives a good report on the difference between the early camps administered by the SA and the later ones under the SS. “None of these first camps had more than a thousand inmates… Life in them beggared all description. The accounts of the few old prisoners who survived those years agree that there was scarcely any form of sadistic perversion that was not practiced by the SA men. But they were all acts of individual bestiality, there was still no fully organized cold system, embracing masses of men. This was the accomplishment of the SS” (p. 7). — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2842 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Systematized mass cruelty displaced the individual sadism of early camp administration — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2842; Torture at Abu Ghraib was coldly systematic rather than the work of sadistic individuals — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 146; Explaining the Holocaust via sadistic hatred obscures its most sinister truth (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Systematic cold destruction replaced spontaneous bestiality when the SS ran the camps #corroborates (0.96) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1019
• Systematic bureaucratic destruction replaced spontaneous atrocity in the camps #expands (0.95)
• Systematized mass cruelty displaced the individual sadism of early camp administration #expands (0.93) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2842
• Ordinary people can commit extreme brutality under the right circumstances #complicates (0.72) — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 1