Why We Kill.

We often think of the Holocaust as an anomaly, the brutality of which could never be matched. Though its true that the Holocaust was extreme in its inhumanity, war inherently unleashes evil forces that hopefully lay dormant in mankind during peacetime. Carl Von Clausewitz said that “war is no chameleon”, it is a trinity of “primordial violence, enmity and hatred in which the individual spirit is free to roam.”(Clausewitz on War) Peace keeps the "natural man" at bay to some degree, while war unleashes him in his most vile form. The only thing that acts as a deterrent is the humanity of the combatants, their relationship with God and their government's restraint. What we call civilized nations are not immune from these displays of brutality.
Atrocities occur when humanity is absent within a government and they haven't nurtured a culture of life. When this is the case, the primordial violence that is unleashed during war has nothing to moderate or mitigate its brutality. Hitler implored his people, “to harden themselves, to feel no humanity and do the dirty work”. His statements and power enflamed the emnity and hatred that Clausewitz talked about. Primordial violence will now have free reign, because the government is doing nothing to discourage it or is in fact actively encouraging it.
Once we embrace the idea that it is relatively easy for humans to kill other humans it becomes easier to understand how the Holocaust occurred. In the limited space of this essay, I’ll draw from examples not only of the German Holocaust, but also from Vietnam and World War II to demonstrate that massive killing of innocence is relatively easy in war if one nation is given the means and the inclination.
In most cases, the human mind needs at least some rationalization, but what is truly remarkable is how little. There is an invisible barrier between the "natural man" and the righteous man, that he or she must breech in order to kill to be sure, but most people can rationalize their way across it and then killing becomes easier when they commit it again. Like Varnado Simpson who killed 25 people at My Lai explains, “My mind just went. . . the training, the whole programming part of killing, it just came out. . . I just started killing any kind of way I could kill. . . I didn’t know I had it in me. . . And once you start, it’s very easy to keep on”. Man can concoct the most frivolous and foolish excuses in order to convince himself that he is justified. Often it’s not until a period after the killing that normalcy and their senses return that they might understand the magnitude of what they have done and have to pay the piper. Even men who recoil at the thought of killing in any form must be extremely aware of their own potential immorality, their "natural man" and if not vigilant can be convinced to kill innocent. It is not just hard core Nazis that can kill civilians, but it can be the faithful Mormon boy from Utah, a young protestant farmboy from Iowa, or students from Tokyo. It can be anyone.
These rationalizations range from silly to sinister, but even good men can use excuses to absolve themselves of responsibility and perhaps even postpone, momentarily gloss over their guilt with the artificial varnish of adrenaline and sadistic pleasure. The most common excuse may be “I was ordered to do it”. An example of this may be that of Major Wilhelm Trapp, a german officer during WWII. He spoke to his men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 telling them of his unfortunate orders, even tearing up as his voice cracked, but to him orders were orders they had to be obeyed. Germans are not the only nationality given to the folly of blindly following immoral orders. In Asia, during WWII, the japanese were also looking for “living space” and waging a brutal war against the Chinese populace, a war of extermination. A 1937 directive was given to the Japanese army saying it would “neither apply, nor act in accordance with, all the concrete articles of the Treaty Concerning the Laws and Customs of Land Warfare and Other Treaties Concerning the Laws and Regulations of Belligerency.” This was the setting in China when a young bright-eyed officer named Shozo Tominaga arrived after graduating from Tokyo Imperial University. On his arrival he was amazed by the evil in his men’s eyes. So much so, that he could not bring himself to meet their gaze. Soon he and all the new arrived officers were directed to a detention center and instructed to behead some of the occupants. When Tominaga’s turn came, all he could think was “don’t do anything unseemly” by disobeying a superior and completed the murder. Later he recalls, “at that moment, I felt something change inside me… that night I realized I was not self-conscious at all in front of (his men). I didn’t even find their eyes evil anymore.”(Flyboys) Now Tominaga could do his perceived duty.
Though following orders can definitely be called a rationalization, it can also be safely assumed that often it is only an excuse for a much more sinister underlying cause. Sadistic pleasure of killing and even curiosity must not be excluded in the rational for primordial violence. When Major Trapp announced his orders to his men, he extended the option of declining participation. Only 12 of 500 accepted the offer.
Sometimes the excuse will even be as pathetic as mercy. Maybe they can even believe that they are doing their victim a favor, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that instead of trying to help the victim survive or at least not actively participating in their death, they killed them. This is the case with the German who decided to only shoot children after his buddy had murdered the child’s parent(ordinary men). He decided if he killed them, the children would not have to endure a lifetime of reflection and longing for a departed loved-one. Maybe it was a favor, maybe not, but the German never seemed to ask himself at the time whether or whether not he had the right to make that distinction. This kind of rationalization is not confined to Germans. A similar rationalization took place in Vietnam in 1968 by a young man named Michael Terry. He was from Orem, Utah and from all indications a devout Mormon. His unit entered My Lai on March 16 and began to slaughter women and children. He and his buddy sat off to the side not wanting to participate, but the moans and cries of the mortally wounded got to them so they began executing them. They explained to themselves that it was merciful since they weren’t likely to get medical help and they would continue to suffer until they died. Years later he was tormented by his actions in My Lai. The case of Michael Terry is a difficult one because we find ourselves feeling sympathy for the killer. It is almost as if he is as much a victim as those he shot, because the sadness of war deadens the senses and turns them on their heads. It blurs the distiction between right and wrong. He may have truly believed he was helping, but he couldn't alter the reality that he killed innocent civilians. Perhaps his justification even had some sense of humanity woven into it, but there are some that don’t.
The most revolting justification is the “us against them” rationalization. This was especially acute in the case of the Nazis. The German people were surrounded on all sides by enemies’ real and imagined. A great deal of their propaganda revolved around scapegoating the Jews which enhanced the dehumanizing process that is a part of war. It makes easier for new soldiers in particular to kill their enemy. Browning makes it clear in his book that the Germans lacked the sense of human ties with their victims. It is not surprising considering images of Rats scurrying in sewers while a narrarator compared them to Jews in German propaganda films.
Further to the east, Tominaga was instructed that Japan’s enemies were not humans, but “devils”. With the Devil chasing you and death laying in wait to take you at any moment, rules of civility melt away. Staying alive and the people who help one stay alive becomes the most important. “When you’re in an infantry company, in an isolated environment like this, the rules of the company are foremost. . . What matters is what people here and now think about what you’re doing. . . What they thought was right was right”. With the leaders of the company being the measure stick of morality, what happens when the leaders are devoid of morals? What happens when they see only subhuman qualities in the enemy and their civilians? The following quote could well be taken from a Nazi. “We weren’t in My Lai to kill human beings. We were there to kill ideology that is carried by- I don’t know. Pawns. Blobs. Pieces of flesh. I wasn’t in My Lai to destroy intelligent men”.
So we can see that the killing of the Jews was not an isolated event. It can happen whenever a government allows any ambiguity whatever about the sactity of life in its policies. In war it must maintain strict codes of conduct even though according to the nature of war, they won't always be closely observed. However, if the government chooses not to enforce a strict code and allows ambiguity; policies like free-fire zones, body count or simple genocide, then slaughter will be the rule and not the exeption. This happens when a government devalues human life in any form and when they determine who is worthy of life whether born, unborn, healthy or sick. In short, it happens when a government fails to recognize the existance of God and therefore the fact that we are all children of God and hense brothers and sisters. When this happens and war comes, heaven help us!