Totalitarian radicalization accelerates with war and defeat rather than being checked by them

Evidence

The radicalization began immediately at the outbreak of war; one may even surmise that one of Hitler’s reasons for provoking this war was that it enabled him to accelerate the development in a manner that would have been unthinkable in peacetime. The remarkable thing about this process, however, is that it was by no means checked by such a shattering defeat as Stalingrad, and that the danger of losing the war altogether was only another incitement to throw overboard all utilitarian considerations and make an all-out attempt to realize through ruthless total organization the goals of totalitarian racial ideology, no matter for how short a time. After Stalingrad, the elite formations which had been strictly separated from the people were greatly expanded; the ban on party membership for those in the armed forces was lifted and the military command was subordinated to SS commanders. The jealously guarded crime monopoly of the SS was abandoned and soldiers were assigned at will to duties of mass murder. Neither military, nor economic, nor political considerations were allowed to interfere with the costly and troublesome program of mass exterminations and deportations. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 925

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the Foundations Module 2 framework: this is an instance of ideology trumping utilitarian rationality, a mechanism of how totalitarian logic operates regardless of practical cost. — connects to: Legal constraints shaped which group bore the postwar anti-radical attack — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1361; Heavy-handed state intervention and stigmatization deepen rather than halt radicalization — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 579; Heavy-handed institutional deradicalization often backfires by deepening radicalization — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 72