A-list message, [A-List] Psychology of War and Genocide (Richard Koenigsberg)

The Library of Social Science recently announced a lecture by Richard Koenigsberg, Dying and Killing for Nations: the Psychology of War and Genocide that took place at the Solomon Asch Center of the University of Pennsylvania, as part of our program of scholarship on the psychological sources of culture and history.

A report on this event by Lee Hall of the Faculty of Law at Rutgers-Newark has just appeared on the Website of the INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER:

http://phillyimc.org/newswire.pl

The article provides a valuable overview and interpretation of the concepts and historical facts presented in the talk.

DETAILS APPEAR BELOW:

On 13, 2004, social psychologist Richard Koenigsberg spoke on "Dying and Killing for Nations: The Psychology of War and Genocide" at Philadelphia's Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict (University of Pennsylvania).

Dr. Koenigsberg's is a message that anyone with an interest in changing the course of human history to embrace peace instead of violence should hear.

Dr. Koenigsberg began by observing that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in the 20th-century as a result of wars, genocide and terrorism has been so continuous that it is taken as an immutable -- even natural -- characteristic of history.

To interrupt our historical attachment to war, Dr. Koenigsberg explained, we must begin to think. We might begin by examining the mentality and ideology of those who perpetrate political violence. Ideas and ideologies generate acts of war, genocide and terrorism. Certainly, then, we stand to learn much from an examination of the thoughts of those who initiate violence. No example looms larger in our history than Hitler.

What did Hitler's cognitive map look like? We normally avoid the question. It comforts us to say he was an aberration -- "Evil; a monster!" --But to do so squanders a vital lesson. To divide Hitler from the rest of humanity is a mechanism that allows us the perilous prerogative of separating violence from civilization. Thus we continue to divide genocide (the acts of Hitlers) from war (a natural part of the evolution of civilizations). Hitler's war caused the deaths of about 40 million. But if not for the Holocaust, history would have judged Hitler as a failed conqueror rather than a mass-murderer.

Hitler was sent to fight in the First World War, and for over four years witnessed and experienced war's horrors. Germany sent two million soldiers to die and four million to lose their arms or sustain other injuries, their lives shattered. One might think Hitler would have gained an understanding of war's senselessness; that he would have been radicalized by war. Yet he was never able to denounce war.

"When in the long war years Death snatched so many a dear comrade and friend from our ranks," Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "it would have seemed to me almost a sin to complain--after all, were they not dying for Germany?" The idea of the nation justified sacrifice, suffering and death. The nation required its citizenry to accept death and mayhem on a grand scale. Many of the world's nations were willing to send their young to terrible deaths, and the youths went without protest, "like sheep to the slaughter."

Once, as chance would have it, Hitler moved in a trench to get lunch, and others filled in the spot left by Hitler. Twenty soldiers were hit there -- where Hitler had just been positioned. Somehow -- the chances where so small as to be virtually miraculous -- fate had spared Hitler. What would this soldier do to live up to this gift of fate?

Hitler saw the martyrs who died beside him as the best his nation had to offer humanity -- those who would sacrifice their very lives for the community. "The Aryan willingly subordinates his own ego the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it." Hitler turned his resentment not to the leaders who ordered these deaths, but to those people who did not die. He imagined (in spite of statistics to the contrary) that a disproportionate number of the war's evaders had been Jews.

In a way, the war saved Hitler from life as a Bohemian; it took him away from those artists and drifters who resist the state's heavy hand. Hitler repressed his self-_expression_, deemed it destructive, and decided that morality meant renouncing self-interest. He embraced Germany with religious passion, becoming a radical conformist.

Thus Hitler, in his declaration of war on September 1, 1939 demanded -- of himself, and of all Germans -- not simply obedience, but absolute commitment. He required acts of sacrifice as a of demonstration loyalty. "In giving one's life for the existence of the community,” Hitler declared, “lies the crown of all sacrifice." Everyone would have to be willing to sacrifice. No one would be exempt. Anyone who attempted to evade responsibility would be destroyed. Be ready to die for your country, or your country will kill you.

Hitler understood Jews as a people who were unwilling to sacrifice, whose ultimate loyalty would not inhere in the nation. Thus did his perception of the Jews lead to genocide.

The passionate obedience that became Hitler's demand was and is the pathology that leads to war and genocide -- both. Hitler erased his private self and dedicated himself to the public sphere, what we symbolically form as the "nation." Both civilization and pathology grow from one source.

Dr. Koenigsberg told the tale of Hitler being asked by a Dutch woman to explain the horrors he was perpetrating. Hitler explained that many soldiers were dying in the war to redeem Germany. Why was it, asked Hitler that the best always die? The Jews would have to become victims too. No one would escape. After all, if the Jews were spared and thrived while so many Germans die, what would the nation look like in 100 years' time?

Somehow as a community we convince ourselves, as Hitler did, that killing soldiers is justified and right. It is patriotic. We classify the killing and dying for nations "obedience to authority" but ironically, it is radical conduct. Why do we think of it as something ordinary simply because it is done for a large community--the nation? Dr. Koenigsberg mentioned the title page of a paper with the headline "Dying for One's County." A typing error had changed the headline “Dying to One’s Country” to "Dying for One's County." It would be insane, wouldn't it, Dying for One's County?

We can begin to understand the history of the last century, explained Dr. Koenigsberg, when we are able to acknowledge that the national norm can be pathology --that profound sickness may be inherent in the structures of civilization.

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