SS torture made even political prisoners identify with their captors

Evidence

When the defeat of National Socialism began to approach, and misuse of his findings by the Gestapo was hardly to be expected any more, he finally decided to publish them as `The Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations’. The article’s explosive quality was the way it showed how the SS brought about a personality change in prisoners by torturing and humiliating them until they finally conformed to camp existence and identified with the SS itselfeven in the case of political prisoners. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1618

Categorization

• XREF: Bettelheim’s identification-with-the-aggressor thesis connects to Milgram’s obedience experiments and general theories of authoritarian submission. — connects to: Bettelheim’s camp study showed prisoners identifying with their SS captors — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1618
• DEFINE: This is the origin of the ‘identification with the aggressor’ concept that became a foundation of Frankfurt School authoritarian personality theory.