The over-use of ‘insanity’ etc

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

Good evening folks, very late post here,
What I mean by the title is that recently I saw a post on Reddit I believe, and it got me thinking. What the post outlined, and what I have pondered many times since and realised I had not thought of before, was that people in general discourse tend to label the Nazi leadership as ‘insane’, ‘deranged’ etc repeatedly, and how, really, this is wrong. YES they were all Evil, very very evil, but to label them as ‘lunatics’ etc almost detaches them from their heinous crimes. Yes, some were definitely actual deranged lunatics, but for a large part they were very calculating, switched on and were perfectly aware of what they were doing, and what they were doing was pure evil. To say they are lunatics, which when googled means mentally ill, unknowingly removes their responsibility from the crime. When you look into the theories of Psychology, many link to how some of the horrifying crimes could have happened, and it is very uncommon for it to have anything to do with one of the actors being mentally ill, in actual fact the actor knows exactly what he is doing.

That’s one hell of a big paragraph, I hope I haven’t confused everyone as much as I have myself, and I hope that huge mass of text is somewhat understandable and my point is clear. Maybe I’m being rather pedantic, what’s everyone else’s thought on it.

Kindest Regards,
Harvey

[CBH]

People who use the term insanity to describe the TR do so as a defence mechanism, to separate themselves from the barbaric acts. It is false as you expressed in your post. There is no limit to human depravity and history has shown time and time again. It all starts with totalitarianism, then the dehumanizations of the (others) and eventually violence etc.

[TWS]

My definition of insanity: The amount of time and money I spend on acquiring the relics from the military forces of this failed, evil regime.

[SchokaKola]

I agree with what your saying its a lazy way of telling the history of the second world war. People who use terms like insanity or lunatic to label the Nazi leadership often have a shallow understanding of history and don't really register how horrible the second world war was. My great grandmother and most of her family were killed in concentration camps and I find it frustrating and disrespectful how negligent people often are when it comes to learning/teaching the history of the second world war.

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

SchokaKola, I would just like to begin by saying I am very sorry to hear about your relatives who died at the hands of the Nazis, may we as a race never allow it to happen again.

I’m glad you guys are in agreement and my minor rant above was a fair one. I think it helps being interested in this period already and being able to have the basis to formulate these views and arguments. I think on the other hand it’s just how as a society we have started to use words such as the ones above interchangeably, with a lack of the original semantic meaning, another one being the use of ‘literally’ when describing something that isn’t literal at all. I’m guilty of it so this is just me making a point rather than ranting this time. I don’t think people do it on purpose, I think it’s just what the over-use of the terms has led to and what’s comfortable for us to believe.

If people thought otherwise, about how they were lunatics at all, it poses very real questions about society today, one which could include the fact that it could just as easily happen again. If we look at Milgram’s Psychological Experiments of the 60’s and the copies by Burger in the late 2000s around Agency Theory, it shows that people can be told to do things and they will do them quite unaffected by the consequences.

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

Edit: was supposed to say ‘weren’t **’ not ‘were’ at the start of the 3rd paragraph.

[BrodieBartfast]

I find their complete and unquestionable sanity to be the precise reason their crimes are so utterly horrifying. That a group of intelligent, civilised people could come together and orchestrate something so inhumane is a testament to the fact that acknowledging and educating about this particular period of history is vitally important.

We find the Nazis horrifying because they ‘are’ us. They were human beings. They had thoughts, feelings and emotions, just like we do. They weren’t bogeymen hiding under the bed; they were real people with real lives.

And like the Nazis, all people are capable of great evil. We all have that capacity, just as we have a capacity for love, peace and understanding. There’s a John Lennon quote that I think is quite appropriate here:

‘We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance?’

B.B.

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

I don’t think I could have worded it better myself and what you’ve said was what I was trying to put across in my original post, excellently worded mate. That is exactly what makes it so horrifying. It would be horrifying anyway had they been insane, but the fact they weren’t make it unfathomable to us really.

It’s not like our biology, thought processes etc have changed since either. An excellent point made in my psychology class last year was, paraphrasing here, as follows:
“If you took a baby from 500, 1000, 2000, 5000 years ago, even further back in fact, and brought it into today’s world, it wouldn’t grow up a medieval child, a Roman child, a bronze age child, it would grow up to be exactly the same as every other child around it today”. In short, we have been the exact same for a very, very long time, it is only our surroundings/stimuli/environment that makes ‘us’. So on top of everything else that has been said, this also makes their war crimes of the Nazis scarier, because it could just as easily happen today.

[Chopperman]

--- So on top of everything else that has been said, this also makes their war crimes of the Nazis scarier, because it could just as easily happen today.

It could easily happen again and I think it probably will.

edited-- I was in the middle of a very long response but I have the feeling it would have started a debate
that would not end well.

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

I saw your reply before you edited it mate I think and I agree, we live in very worrying times, and there’s genocides happening all over the world, humanity never learns.