The Pattern of Evil – Myth, Social Perception and the Holocaust

By now, sixty-two years after the collapse of Nazi Germany, with several thousand books describing and analysing the Holocaust, one might think that there is nothing new to say on that subject. In this, his latest book, Lawrence LeShan has proved the opposite. He set out trying to understand the thinking of the organisers of the German concentration camps and the world view on which it was based, so that should a similar world view emerge from the seats of power, attempting to justify the unacceptable, we shouldn't helplessly fall under its spell and tolerate a return of the 'concentration camp system'. LeShan's starting point is the sharp contrast between the polished efficiency of the death camps' infrastructure, and the ridiculous inefficiency of dealing with the constant influx of prisoners – Jews, gypsies, Slavs and other non-Aryans. At first, while Germany's prospects of victory seemed good, the intended destruction of non-Aryan prisoners went smoothly: they were gassed or shot dead as soon as they arrived at the camps. Why did this deadly efficiency vanish after Stalingrad, when a German defeat became conceivable? Instead of killing the prisoners outright, why were they kept alive for a while under dreadful, inhuman conditions, before ending up anyway in the gas chambers or flaming pits? Why were food, rolling stock and manpower wasted on them, when the failing German war effort desperately needed those very resources? Above all, why were those barely surviving, helpless, defenceless victims tortured and brutalised before being murdered? LeShan's chilling answer is Radical Evil, the term coined by Immanuel Kant in 1793 for deliberate cruelty and incomprehensible horror inflicted by one human on another; the kind of terrible action about which we cannot even think within our normal frames of reference. And this is the phenomenon that LeShan, the world-class research psychologist, decided to unravel. His conclusion: ordinary"banal"individuals, such as the vast majority of death camp personnel must have been, were able to commit acts of incomprehensible cruelty against those in their power, because they existed in a state of mythical reality. Instead of a rational sensory world view they followed a mythical scenario in which the Germans represented the absolute Good, while everybody else stood for absolute Evil and therefore had to be eliminated. In this perspective World War Two, with Nazi Germany pitted against the rest of the world, was the ultimate battle between Good and Evil. It had to be won, so that the all-good redeeming Nazi system could be established all over the globe for a thousand years - or forever. The rational sensory world view operated on the basis of science; the mythical version was based on magic, which ignored the link between cause and effect and believed that specific actions were able to influence the forces of the universe. In other words, the more the "enemy" was hurt, tormented and humiliated, the stronger the power and righteousness of the SS grew. The black and white, "we" and "they" scenario of the magical world view, with no margin for nuance or doubt, is familiar from fairy tales and myths. When applied in reality, it invites the wildest, most irrational projections from the strong onto the weak. "We" act from self-defence, benevolence, common decency and morality; "they" act from innate viciousness and an appetite for power. "We" tell the truth, "they" lie. "They" are the only real problem and must have their will broken before being wiped out. LeShan quotes from the memoirs of several camp survivors who saw clearly that the senseless suffering inflicted on them by the Nazis, the beatings, hunger and manifold humiliation, were meant to make them feel subhuman, indeed dehumanised, and push them into stealing, lying and violence against each other in order to save their own lives – at least for a little while. This served to "prove" that they were beyond contempt and unworthy of life. Yet despite this ice-cold manipulation many prisoners managed to retain their human dignity and ethical standards to the end. "There was more heroism, self-sacrifice and greatness among the prisoners than we shall ever be fully aware of", writes LeShan. Radical evil, he adds, does not have an explanation. It exists, but we cannot imagine living in a world that includes it. It destroys the order of the cosmos and threatens us with living in chaos, where there are no rules to determine" if our perceptions are real, our feelings valid, our actions relevant to the situation." Indeed we are in the presence of a dark, incomprehensible Shadow, threatening us with the breaking up of our way of thinking and of our idea of how the world functions. So how do we react? The answer is almost as frightening as the question. We react by not believing, perceiving or remembering the terrifying facts. So far this book has been unravelling an almost inconceivable chapter of our past. Now LeShan demonstrates how the denial and avoidance of harsh facts and burning problems continues to act, and how it is endangering our future. He quotes Einstein on how the public, having been warned of the horrible nature of atomic warfare," has done nothing about it and to a large extent has dismissed the warning from its consciousness." The same is happening on the subject of overpopulation, on the stockpiling of ever more lethal weapons and on ubiquitous radioactive poisoning. We know it's there, and we pretend it isn't. "It is so hard to face the existence of radical evil when done by others; how much harder is it to face it in ourselves when done and acquiesced in by ourselves?" asks LeShan. He ends his passionate pleading by listing some signals which, he fears, might precede a drift towards a Nazi-style system. They include the rejection of the modern political process, leading to the setting up of an absolute authority; subordinating the individual's interest to the good of the State, with no room for opposition; bringing in social change in one gigantic step; claiming that these measures are inevitable, in keeping with the will of God, and believing that all problems are caused by a single factor, which must be removed in order to realise Paradise on Earth. We have been warned. This is an important and timely book, and I wish it had been published with due care and professional skill. Instead it is bristling with literals, gross mis-spellings of common everyday words, non-sequiturs and faulty punctuation. A long quotation by Sir Arthur Eddington appears twice. True, there are some unintentional gems, e.g. "sycophant" appearing as "synchopants", but the general impression is dismal. Also, despite careful handling the paperback is already falling apart. Surely any writing of Lawrence LeShan deserves better than this shoddy presentation.