Ordinary Germans, not a special kind of German, carried out the Holocaust

Evidence

Hilberg argued that the perpetrators “were not different in their moral makeup from the rest of the population. The German perpetrator was not a special kind of German.” Rather, the perpetrators represented “a remarkable cross-section of the German population,” and the machinery of destruction “was structurally no different from organized German society as a whole.” — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the ‘banality of evil’ reasoning of Arendt and the later Milgram/Browning ordinary-men literature on perpetrator psychology. — connects to: Ordinary, unselected Germans carried out mass killing when asked — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 315; The Holocaust’s perpetrators were ordinary educated men of their era, not deviants. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 236; Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 682 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Ordinary, unselected Germans carried out mass killing when asked #expands (0.95) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 315
• The Holocaust’s perpetrators were ordinary educated men of their era, not deviants. #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 236
• Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 682
• Holocaust perpetrators were normal and their institutions socially non-pathological #corroborates (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 89
• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them #qualifies (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 522