| > Sure, that may have motivated some people as the Nazis grew in power, but the phenomenon of humans viewing their outgroup as less than human is not unique to 1940s Germany. It is not that few people were motivated by fear in Germany. The nazi oppression apparatus was large and violent long before the war. People feared a lot, many of them, pretty much including those who also somewhat agreed with ideology. Once Hitler got power, the first concentration camps were opened - for political opposition. And they were horrible places. The whole point was to destroy people and intimidate them. There was also large internal security apparatus in place to catch people who said something anti-nazi in random social setting. People reporting what others said and structures to investigate those repots. If someone was bullying a Jew in the street and you would try to help him/her, you would be targeted by literal violence too. The level of control and pressure was large on non Jewish Germans. You could not have social or sports clubs unaffiliated with party, there was little safe space where you could say what you think. The nazi project took a lot of internal violence and intimidation to happen. Also, they did their best to indoctrinate kids in schools to their ideology. Growing up generation of soldiers was focus of school system. Nazi ideology also taught empathy as feminine weakness, ruthlessness as virtue. All of that combines into values system where even if you are not watched, you still don't want to show empathy. --------------------------- Afaik, keeping up slavery takes considerable level of violence too. It did not happened outside of culture where you teach kids that what is happening to slaves is actually ok. Roman thinkers spend effort to explain why slavery is necessary and good thing, why slaves are naturally slaves. Massive violent events don't just happen out of nowhere from nothing where originally pure unideological people are suddenly confronted with innocent choice. |