Dehumanisation Under Nazi Germany
“Evaluate both the historical and generational impacts of dehumanisation under Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party”
Note: This was written a my Thesis for Modern History Extension in Year 12 of high school, mid-2022.
Under the reign of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi
Party), the atrocities committed between authority figure and victim ignited individual
trauma for both parties and a level of intergenerational guilt, shame and grievance for
decades to come. Dehumanisation is the phenomenon that can be seen through
periods of war, including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan Genocide and the contemporary
American-Islam conflict. It is abolishing any human characteristics of a person and
denying any proof of their humanity. It is the form of mental programming that “opens
the door for cruelty and genocide,” (Livingstone-Smith D, 2011) and under the Nazi
Regime; it culminated in the rape, torture, starvation, experimentation and slaughter of
between 17 and 20 million ‘untermenschen’ subhuman people. Within concentration
camps and extermination camps, demonised groups included the scapegoated Jewry,
Communists, Freemasons, negroes, Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, religious
people, creatives and intellectual opponents. Adolf Hitler’s goal of transforming
Germany into a racially unified state of “perfect Aryans,” (Nyiszli M) or
Volksgemeinschaft, was undoubtedly among the most successful attempts at genocide
ever committed.
In exploring the impacts of dehumanisation in this era, the value lies in acknowledging
the idea as a phenomenon of authority, rather than a result of war. “Dehumanisation
doesn’t only occur in wartime - It’s happening right here, right now,” (Haslam N, 2017).
Dehumanisation exists in the modern world, just as it did in Nazi Germany and to some
degree, in every conflict before it. Therefore, to understand the present, one must first
observe the past. Between the experiments of Nazi physician, Josef Mengele on twins,
the Milgram shock experiment exploring obedience to authority, intergenerational
trauma or second-generation trauma, and life in the concentration camps;dehumanisation is evidently the catalyst where ordinary people will commit heinous
acts.
As for the purposes of analysing dehumanisation as a historical phenomenon, it is the
core element behind mass murder, racial discrimination and bigotry. Studying
dehumanisation involves reflecting on human beings as a species and appreciating the
past in hopes of preventing hellacious events, such as those seen in Nazi Germany,
from occurring in the future. This encapsulates the whole purpose of history. Historical
investigation via anthropology and historiography can provide a foundation to discern
the past and comprehend our world today, since many elements of societies are
surprisingly unchanged.
Regardless of historical perspective on why something like the Shoah (Holocaust)
occurred; demonisation and authority still exist in the modern world and provide
evidence of dehumanisation in war today. “Aerial bombers nuke entire cities of people
with little guilt because they couldn’t see or hear them,” (Sharief S, 2020). The impact of
dehumanisation on both victims and perpetrators alike can be seen in the phenomenon
of a “psychological loophole,” (Resnick B, 2017); that under Adolf Hitler, in particular,
“normalised ever more extreme forms of sadistic cruelty - that devoured both victim and
perpetrator,” (Kahn-Harris K, 2015).
This psychological loophole was evident in Nazi Germany in WWII, whereby the act of
dehumanisation went against the “deep and natural inhibitions - against treating other
people like game animals or vermin,” (Livingstone-Smith D, 2011) and decreased one’s
own humanity the more it was reinforced. For example, “even Eichmann was sickened
when he toured the concentration camps, but to participate in mass murder he had only
to sit at a desk and shuffle papers,” (Milgram 9).
In a more contemporary sense, there was US President Donald Trump’s travel ban; “a
temporary ban on refugees - a new ban on issuing visa to travelers from six
Muslim-majority countries,” (Resnick B, 2017). Psychologist Nour Kteily, author of The
ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanisationidentified that hate crimes against Muslims in the US are at all-time high since 2001.
The “psychological loophole” or cycle of dehumanisation is explored by Kteily, whereby
“the more Muslims felt dehumanised by Trump, the more they dehumanised Trump” and
that it works “both ways,” (Kteily N). This reinforces the proposal that while many Nazi
officials and SS soldiers punished and tormented the Jewish and other subgroups at the
time, they too were psychologically plagued by their actions in the years to come.
As for the modern case of Islamophobia, statements such as, “Muslims are a potential
cancer to this country,” sound eerily similar to the “plague”, “pests’‘ and “vermin’‘ those
German subgroups were labelled as under Hitler’s regime.
Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Dalia
Mogahed, even suggests the “legitimising of those perspectives with laws and with
people in positions of authority” normalises social demonisation and Islamophobic
rhetoric for all. Likewise, as US secretary Ben Carson compared Muslims to “mad
dogs”, an SS soldier called Auschwitz prisoner Eddie Jaku Juden Hund, a “Jewish
Dog,” (Jaku 98).
As we recognise demonisation and dehumanisation as a phenomenon of authority
rather than war, the reality of what happened in the Holocaust becomes clearer and the
line between then and the modern world - smaller.
Intergenerational trauma is defined as “thoughts, feelings, and behaviours generated
from the survivors’ experiences and transmitted to their offspring,” (Patricia Dashorst,
Trudy M. Mooren, Rolf J. Kleber, Peter J. de Jong, Rafaele J. C. Huntjens, Eur J
Psychotraumatol, 2019). Studies have shown intergenerational trauma manifests both
biologically and through interaction between first-generation victims and their children
and grandchildren.
In this analysis, ‘second-generation victims’ and ‘children’ of survivors will be used
inextricably. Also described as ‘postmemory’, (Novick P, 2000) trauma is transmitted
“through repetition, identification and mimesis,” (ibid.). In the case of the Holocaust, by
analysing recounts of survivors and studying how their trauma is expressed to, andinherited by, second-generation victims, we can explore the impact of the Nazi Regime
over time. Add to this, by analysing contemporary conflicts - the prolonged effects of
dehumanisation can be deduced.
Two underlying elements of this analysis must be defined. Firstly, the nature of trauma
in first-generation Holocaust survivors. Such damage manifested in flashbacks and
recollections in “abrupt, fragmented phrases,” (Friedman C, NightFather, 1994),
physical malformations, such as those seen in Mengele’s twins, “after the war - my
sister and I were skinny and undernourished. We had problems with our lungs,”
(Grossman V, survivor) as well as the obvious PTSD and accompanying emotional
consequences, “loss of a personal identity,” (Levi P, If this is a man, p.g. 101).
Additionally, second-generation trauma from the Holocaust came via the psychological
domino effect of torture, starvation, torment, mass extermination and exhaustive labour
on those first-generation victims.
Studies and historical literature such as Carl Friedman’s NightFather - based on her
own experiences - suggest that a child raised hearing first-hand reports from survivors
of the war, has a high likelihood of developing childhood trauma. This did not simply
occur from children being educated on the Holocaust; rather, the unorthodox manner
used by survivor-parents to express their trauma was difficult to comprehend and
utilised terminology that was outside the frame of reality in which their children lived.
An example is illustrated in NightFather, where a Holocaust survivor father expresses
his trauma indirectly rather than through direct communication. He often refers to the
concentration camps as simply “camp”. In response to the father’s fragmented stories,
the children first believe camp to be an illness, then suddenly a place where no one gets
eggs, “An egg!” (Alphen E.V. Second-Generation Testimony, Transmission of Trauma,
and Postmemory. 479).
It’s not mentioned how old the children are but it’s assumed they are of a very young
age, and still trying to piece together definitions of words. Inevitably, these seemingly
made-up “fairy tales - contradict his (Simon) frame of reference of reality and normality,”
(Alphen 481), confusing his developing brain as it tries to distinguish language used inthe concentration camps from his reality. In this sense, it can be deduced that trauma
does not always transfer explicitly from survivor-parent to child, and it’s possible for
traumatic family dynamics to lead a child to have worse trauma than that of their parent;
“the parents seem to be able to cope better with life than their children,” (Alphen 483).
The fact that the survivor-parents had experienced a normal life or frame of reference
before the Holocaust, allowed them to separate themselves from those traumatic events
- unlike the second-generation victims.
In further attempts to understand dehumanisation and its relevance today,
contemporary conflicts such as; the prolonged America-Islam tension—emphasised
more so after 911, the Rwandan genocide, the Afghanistan War, or the Ukraine’s Great
Famine; infer that intergenerational trauma is embedded in those affected, even when
the conflicts occurred 20-70 years ago.
Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, inspired by the trials of Adolf Eichmann, a
Nazi official and “engineer of the Final Solution,” (Lagnado 181); conducted experiments
on obedience which he wrote about in his book ‘Obedience to authority - an
experimental view’. Here, Milgram proposed that a man obedient under “ubiquitous”
authority can become an “instrument” for carrying out given orders and “therefore no
longer regards himself as responsible for his actions,” (Milgram 2). This theory
embodies dehumanisation since both are intrinsically linked to hierarchy and reveal how
potentially ordinary people like Eichmann can commit atrocities as seen in Nazi
Germany.
In essence, the Milgram Shock Experiment was a series of obedience tests performed
by Stanley Milgram, with the aim to “find when and how people would defy authority in
the face of a clear moral imperative,” (Milgram S, 1973). With an “experimenter” in a
lab-coat, a subject or naive “teacher” and the victim or “learner”, Milgram used a fake
“shock machine” to determine how far the subjects were willing to go to shock the victim
when they chose an “incorrect” answer within what was declared to be a memory test.The machine ranged from 15 - 450V, increasing in 15V increments, with the acting
“learner” uttering fixed sounds and dialogue based on what voltage was selected.
Milgram’s inspiration, Eichmann, was one of the sole contributors to the deportation of
those demonised groups to concentration camps and killing grounds, planning every
logistic detail himself.
However, it is not the kind of person Eichmann was at face-value that intrigued Milgram,
but how, “he came closer to being an uninspired bureaucrat who simply sat at his desk
and did his job.” Milgram wished to comprehend how atrocious actions, such as those
taken by Nazi officials and soldiers, are minimally dependent on the values and
conscience of the individual. Rather, they are achieved by a divergence of responsibility
from that individual onto what they deemed a higher, “legitimate authority,” (Milgram 6).
Josef Mengele, or ‘Uncle Mengele’, was the sole man to stand at the entrance to
Auschwitz and direct each captee to either their death in the gas chambers, or hard
labour in the death camp. Along with this basic role, he would shout for SS Nazi soldiers
to aggressively search the crowd and remove any twins to use for Mengele’s
experiments; these children would become “Mengele’s twins”, (Lagnado L.M. Children
of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz 3).
With these children, Mengele possessed a powerful desire to “produce a master race of
blond, blue-eyed Aryans,” (Lagnado 5).
To explore this gruesome topic, Lagnado wholeheartedly dived into the lives of
approximately 10-13 sets of twins or individuals who survived the wrath of Mengele. The
authors were Lucette Matalon Lagnado & Sheila Cohn Dekel and the article came from
Lagnado’s newspaper being contacted by twin survivor Eva Morez in 1984. She
proposed that someone write about Mengele and the twins, and considering Lagnado’s
late husband was a twin and had tried to publicise Mengele’s actions right before
passing away - the journalist accepted and interviewed Morez immediately.
Mengele’s primary role within Auschwitz - directing prisoners either to their death in the
gas chambers or to hard labour—became the representation of his character for thoseprisoners’ experiences at the camp. The ‘Angel of Death’ could not have assumed this
role alone without dehumanising every individual “down to the level of an animal or
lower,” (Sharief S, 2020). This display of blind-sighted dehumanisation can be more
easily seen in Mengele’s experiments on up to ‘3000’ twin children, (CANDLES). The
impact of those horrific experiments created a certain kind of trauma in the approximate
160 twins who survived, some even demonstrated a paradoxical relationship with
Mengele with “memories of the handsome young doctor who had tortured and-they
thought, loved them,” (Lagnado 6).
The “charming and carefree” physician believed the genetic characteristics of twins held
the key to breeding “perfect Aryan’s” as they were supposedly “perfect genetic
specimens”. Between inserting chemicals and needles into the eyes, injecting twins’
hearts with chloroform (Nyiszli M, pathologist), drawing large quantities of blood,
removing organs without anaesthesia and castration; “Mengele was one of the most evil
men in the history of mankind,” (Jaku E, Holocaust survivor, 2020).
Josef Mengele proved to be the source of life-long trauma for every survivor and as
illuminated by Lagnado in her interviews with these individuals, such trauma also
manifested in the relatives of the victims; intergenerational trauma.
Many of the survivors, once adults, were both psychologically and physically tarnished;
this trauma spread like a plague to their loved ones and even children. Twin survivors
Eva and Miriam Morez, formed an organisation called CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz
Nazi Deadly Laboratory Experiments Survivors) to unite all surviving Mengele victims
and make known their stories, “I had read many of the books about Auschwitz, but to
my great sorrow they never mentioned Mengele and the twins,” (Morez E).
Introspectively, dehumanisation proved to be a fundamental element in the expansive
success of the Nazi regime in the sense that Hitler nearly achieved his goal of
exterminating any non-Aryan Germans and establishing a racial state, with
Volksgemeinschaft being the eventual outcome. Adolf Hitler utilised dehumanisation to
create a “movement” as he described his party, scapegoating the Jews and demonisingother subgroups - classifying them as “life unworthy of life,” (Lebensunwertes Leben).
The primary motif behind the Nazi regime was automating horrific processes, such as
mass murder via the gas chambers in the concentration camps and enforcing these
under a completely “fascist, totalitarian state,” (Grobman G.M, 1990). This automated
methodology is also known as “mechanical dehumanisation,” (Sharief S, 2020).
Historically, the victims of these processes suffered life-long injury and illness due to the
harsh circumstances and varying levels of PTSD; Mengele twin survivor Vera Grossman
had “very vivid memories of Auschwitz,” (Lagnado, 14). These victims are the
first-generation survivors of the Holocaust and many of them had children. Despite
these children and even the grandchildren not experiencing the same traumatic events
themselves, they are still subject to the after-effects of the war. These children are
referred to as second/third generation victims.
The generational impacts are summarised by Ernst Van Alphen in Second-Generation
Testimony, Transmission of Trauma, and Postmemory as trauma adopted through
“disconnection - unintelligibility” and a “deep personal connection” to those events via
the “family dynamics,” (Alphen 16). Author of After Such Knowledge, Eva Hoffman,
proposes the trauma of latter-generation victims as possibly “worse than that of
survivors’‘; the premise being that the children don’t have a “frame of reference,”
(Alphen 9) to distinguish the traumatic stories expressed by their parents from their own
reality.
Essentially, the phenomenon of dehumanisation is one that can be connected to most
war events in the latter 20th century and also in the 21st century; where it is utilised to
distance a man from his victim and remove the personal connection. This is what allows
an official US collateral damage tracker to be called “Project Bugsplat”. A “bugsplat” in
US drone strike terminology is a civilian death. Again, this bears witness to animalistic
dehumanisation first hand; comparing a person to a bug, just as Rwandan civilians were
called “cockroaches”, and Jews, “vermin” or “pests”. Stanley Milgram said that when
authority is involved in dehumanising the enemy, the perpetrator can “absolve himself of
any responsibility,” (Milgram 33). Dehumanisation did not simply occur under Adolf Hitlerin his striving for racial unity, but exists within our media on a daily basis; the effects of
which are evident in those past “subhuman” groups still suffering today.