Early Holocaust research blamed individual authoritarian personalities, not social processes

Evidence

In the first decade after the Holocaust, attempts at understanding the perpetrators focused for the most part on the questions of individual psy­ chological makeup, on the one hand, and a specifically German iniquity, on the other. The Nuremberg trials provided a closer look at both the prominent Nazi leaders and the top-echelon functionaries, such as the Einsatzgruppen leaders, “euthanasia” doctors, incriminated generals, and ministerial state secretaries, who had survived the war and been captured. The work of Adorno and others focused on the cluster of individual traits—conceived of as the “authoritarian personality”—that would have predisposed others in German society to embrace the Nazi cause and commit mass murder on its behalf. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 40

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Goldhagen’s Holocaust study is fundamentally a social-psychological analysis — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 308; The 1960s shifted Holocaust explanation from individual psychology to group social psychology — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 42; Early authoritarian personality research hoped to blame anti-Semitism on deviants — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1594 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Early authoritarian personality research hoped to blame anti-Semitism on deviants #corroborates (0.92) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1594
• Attributing Holocaust perpetration to authoritarian personality may itself be a fundamental attribution error. #complicates (0.88) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 461
• Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological #complicates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89
• Authoritarianism and social dominance are ideologies, not psychopathologies #complicates (0.82) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1602
• Postwar authoritarianism research studied followers rather than would-be tyrants #expands (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 894
• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality rather than an anomaly #complicates (0.80)
• Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust #complicates (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 224
• Holocaust social psychology requires both ideological attraction and conformity obedience #complicates (0.78) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 851