Extermination crews were drafted ordinary police, not committed volunteers

Evidence

Most of the men in the units used for these purposes were not volunteers but had been drafted from the ordinary police for these special assignments. But even trained SS-men found this kind of duty worse than front-line fighting. In his report of a mass execution by the SS, an eyewitness gives high praise to this troop which had been so “idealistic” that it was able to bear “the entire extermination without the help of liquor.” That one wanted to eliminate all personal motives and passions during the “exterminations” and hence keep the cruelties to a minimum is revealed by the fact that a group of doctors and engineers entrusted with handling the gas installations were making constant improvements that were not only designed to raise the productive capacity of the corpse factories but also to accelerate and ease the agony of death. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2842

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘idealism’ of industrial killing connects to Arendt’s later analysis of how totalitarian systems recruit ordinary bureaucratic functionaries.