Older Nazi officials retained moral qualms the genocidal machine overrode

Evidence

Whatever else the Nazi state has achieved, it certainly succeeded in overcoming the most formidable of obstacles to systematic, purposeful, non-emotional, cold-blooded murder of people – old and young, men and women: that ‘animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering’. We do not know much about the animal pity, but we do know that there is a way of viewing the elementary human condition which makes explicit the universality of human revulsion to murder, inhibition against inflicting suffering on another human being, and the urge to help those who suffer; indeed, of the very personal responsibility for the welfare of the other. If this view is correct, or at least plausible, then the accomplishment of the Nazi regime consisted first and foremost in neutralizing the moral impact of the specifically human existential mode. It is important to know whether this success was related to the unique features of the Nazi movement and rule, or whether it can be accounted for by reference to more common attributes of our society, which the Nazis merely skilfully deployed in the service of Hitler’s purpose. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 520 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

By and large, all rulers can count on rationality being on their side. But the Nazi rulers, additionally, twisted the stakes of the game so that the rationality of survival would render all other motives of human action irrational. Inside the Nazi-made world, reason was the enemy of morality. Logic required consent to crime. Rational defence of one’s survival called for non-resistance to the other’s destruction. This rationality pitched the sufferers against each other and obliterated their joint humanity. It also made them into a threat and an enemy of all the others, not yet marked for death, and granted for the time being the role of bystanders. Graciously, the noble creed of rationality absolved both the victims and the bystanders from the charge of immorality and from guilty conscience. Having reduced human life to the calculus of self-preservation, this rationality robbed human life of humanity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 583 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 583; The Nazi accomplishment was neutralizing universal moral inhibition against killing — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 520; Totalitarian leaders use humanitarian cliches freely once extermination is underway (+2 more)

Related

• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.87)
• The Nazi accomplishment was neutralizing universal moral inhibition against killing (similarity 0.85)
• Nazi law reversed the presumption of rights to presume universal rightlessness at birth. (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian legal theory replaces juridical accountability with fate and life-laws (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust was rational social management in scientific dress (similarity 0.80)
• Absolute evil reveals evil’s radical essence by exceeding comprehensible motives (similarity 0.80)
• Nazi power operated by crafting a rational make-believe world for victims (similarity 0.80)
• Intense Nazi indoctrination failed to override conventional, nonracial loyalties (similarity 0.80)
• Rational bureaucracy rendered murder morally neutral in perpetrators’ eyes. (similarity 0.79)
• Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. (similarity 0.79)
• Moral judgment survived the Holocaust only outside all existing rules (similarity 0.79)
• The extermination machinery aimed to eliminate personal sadism and reduce cruelty (similarity 0.79)
• Modern totalitarian terror governs the obedient by striking objectively innocent victims (similarity 0.78)
• The Nazi race concept was deliberately kept supranational to license internal extermination (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The Nazi accomplishment was neutralizing universal moral inhibition against killing #corroborates (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 520
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime #corroborates (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 583
• Totalitarian leaders use humanitarian cliches freely once extermination is underway #complicates (0.75)
• Science’s value-freedom dismantled normative barriers to genocidal co-operation #corroborates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 315