Group 2: Turn in journals (2 piles: A-P; R-Y)

• Kristallnacht: history as cause
• Announcements (Field Trip, office hours)
• Psychology

Question:
What role did "history" play as a cause of the Kristallnacht pogroms?

Answer:

• Long-term: German antisemitism; developments since 1933
• Middle-term: diplomatic events during 1938
• Short-term:pre-laid arrest plan PLUS assassination of v. Rath
• Punch line: "History" is a necessary background, but human agency is still key

Question of the Day

• What makes people (want to) murder other people?
• 2 types of reasons: force, desire

• Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz
• Police Reserve Battalion 101
• Stanley Milgram's experiment

• Volunteered (underage) in World War I
• Free Corps after war, then Nazis
• Training in Dachau since 1933
  rose through the ranks to become commandant
• Quotations textbook p. 191
  • What was his moral horizon?
  • His mentality?
  • Concept of "preemptive obedience"

• Adolf Eichmann, Reinhard Heydrich

• Christopher Browning: "Ordinary Men"
• Daniel Goldhagen: "Hitler's Willing Executioners"

Perpetrator Mentality
(textbook chapter 8)

• Dehumanization of victims
• Cold cult of professionalism (emotional detachment)
• "Moral blindness of leadership"
  opportunism/careerism: a question of values
  ideology: antisemitism
• Obedience to higher authority (deference)
• Lack of knowledge (ignorance)
• Fear of punishment
• Desire to conform (peer pressure)
• Division of Labor (out of sight, out of mind)