Systematic cold destruction replaced spontaneous bestiality when the SS ran the camps

Evidence

The real horror began, however, when the SS took over the administration of the camps. The old spontaneous bestiality gave way to an absolutely cold and systematic destruction of human bodies, calculated to destroy human dignity; death was avoided or postponed indefinitely. The camps were no longer amusement parks for beasts in human form, that is, for men who really belonged in mental institutions and prisons; the reverse became true: they were turned into “drill grounds,” on which perfectly normal men were trained to be full-fledged members of the SS. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1019

Categorization

• XREF: The SS ‘drill grounds’ transforming normal men connects to Arendt’s banality-of-evil thesis and to later readings on how bureaucratic rationality enables ordinary people to commit mass atrocity.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the key distinction between purposeless sadism and calculated dehumanization as the defining feature of totalitarian terror.