You all need to go pick up a copy of Hanna Arendt's "The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem".
She was present for the trial of Adolf Eichmann when he was tried in Israel, and has some very interesting insights into what motivates people to do things, and what motivates people to follow a maniacal leader.
I was turned on to this book by a German friend of mine who laments the fact that people cannot get over this horrible event, and wants to clue people into the fact that evil can be banal (bureaucrats "just doing thier jobs") - they don't necessarily
look evil.
This topic is very interesting, especially since we are condemning the Germans for killing 6 million of their own, while at the same time we've killed 40 million of ours.
I wonder if everyone would be up in arms if a movie was made about the supreme court justices that "were just doing their jobs" while enabling us to kill 5x as many people as Hitler did.
Probably not - thus the banality of evil. Think about it.
tSGExcellent Post!
Showing Hitler (or any other mass murderer) as a monster only de-humanizes him.
It convinces the viewer that Hitler was some "thing" that existed in a far away land a long time ago.
It densensitzes the viewer to the banality of evil -- the fact that real, live human beings can and do commit monstously evil acts.
I'm quite sure that Justice Blackman led a nice, quiet homelife with his wife, and was -- in many ways -- quite an avuncular human being.
And yet, he penned and signed a Supreme Court decision that has meant the death of millions of human lives.
Avuncular people can and do monstrous things.