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Mass murder and moral code: some thoughts on an easily misunderstood subject

Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Goethestrasse 31, D-45128 Essen.harald.welzer{at}kwi-nrw.de

Research on perpetrators of genocidal processes and especially of the Holocaust is still puzzled by the fact that most of the atrocities and killings have been executed by ‘ordinary men’, i.e. by persons with a self-concept which would not have indicated that they could become killers. The guiding question of research on genocidal perpetrators is therefore how given moral inhibitions and moral values could have been overcome, or, to put it simply, how good people could have been turned into bad ones. The following article proposes the opposite question: Is it possible that particular moral commitments and principles gave the perpetrators a sense of continuing moral integrity that enabled them to carry out the killings? This socio-psychological proposal is first elaborated theoretically and then illustrated with a case study on Franz Stangl, the commander of the extermination camp of Treblinka.

Key Words: Holocaust • mass murder • morality of perpetrators • rationality • role distance

History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 2-3, 15-32 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695104047295


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