The Jewish US army translator who got to know the Nazis

[pampango]

Hermann Goering considered himself to be the star prisoner at Nuremberg

A German Jew who became a US military translator is the last surviving member of a team that carried out psychological tests on leading Nazis after the war. They learned very little he says - but he gained unique insights into their characters. "If you took away the names of these Nazis, and just sat down to talk to them, they were like your friends and neighbours."

"Goering was still a very pompous man," he recalls. "He was the eternal actor, the man that was in charge. He considered himself the number one prisoner, because Hitler and Himmler were dead. He always wanted the number one seat in the courtroom.

"He arrived at Nuremberg with eight suitcases, mostly packed with drugs, because he had a big habit, and was surprised that he was treated as a prisoner and not as a famous personality."

In the course of his duties, Howard also came face to face with Rudolf Hoess, a meeting all the more intense because of the death of Howard's parents at Auschwitz, once under Hoess's control. ... He describes Hoess as "very normal. He didn't look like someone who had killed two or three million people."


Nuremberg saw trials of some the most notorious Nazis left alive after the war

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14706309

[polly7]

1. K & R. Very interesting how 'normal' he found most of them, considering their atrocities. nt.

[frazzled]

2. See Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil"

More precisely: "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"

[polly7]

6. Thank you, I will do that. n/t

[burrowowl]

10. Yes! I highly recommend

Arendt is very good!

[Shandris]

3. I have little doubt that many of the great atrocity-committers of history...

...would come across as 'normal' men in the context of several conversations that weren't directly about the subject of their atrocity. I mean, obviously I wouldn't know for sure, but there has always seemed to be some...I don't know, 'disconnect' I guess, between what we've learned in Psych so far and what groups like the Nazi's and so forth were able to...for lack of a better word...'accomplish'. Like some missing element that we still haven't quite figured out yet.

And that's what makes me nervous occasionally...that we haven't figured it out yet. These weren't (originally) utterly despicable, evil people. They were Rudolph from down the block and Herman the slightly chubby kid and Adolph the runt that everyone picked on. But something, somewhere, went TERRIBLY, terrible wrong. And for most of them, once whatever the 'ticker' was that made them that way, whatever stimuli they were responding to...once it was gone, they seemed to be normal people again.

It's frightening, really. And it should make all of us just a touch nervous. This is one reason I don't like to use dehumanizing words like 'monster' to describe an atrocious criminal, because until we know WHAT makes that change...he or she could be ANY of us. :scared:

[polly7]

5. Thanks for that Shandris.

I've come across people I believe really could be evil (but nothing like those freaks) in my own life .... and thankfully left them, but yes, it is frightening to think we believe we can trust someone based on our own instincts, which could be absolutely 100% wrong. I think they're missing the empathy gene, but that could be pure nonsense. I'm no Psych student. I guess we never know how anyone else's environment, upbringing, hereditary trait have shaped them or what they're capable of. That some of these men still couldn't accept the evil they accomplished boggles the mind. It's really creepy.

[applegrove]

8. I disagree. They guys at the top are psychopaths. They reorient the world to be all

about them, rather than the former government or religion that people use to have allegiance to. Sure there are normal people who become patsies and pawns because they get manipulated. But the ones on top are psychopaths.

[tblue]

4. I had a landlord who was a former homicide detective

and he told me most murderers are normal people who just snapped. Freaky.

They were very methodical and exacting and controlled, so I guess it doesn't totally surprise me that Nazis weren't raving maniacs. They had ice in their veins but they could turn on the charm, too. Very freaky. And it is fascinating! Thanks for sharing. I am always interested in learning and reading about WWII.

[lunatica]

7. Psychopaths can be very charming

And these people and people like them we now know are psychopaths who are out to get theirs only and at any costs to others.

We didn't know it then.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Yup, this is the big secret

these monsters live normal lives and have normal concerns and are pretty normal...

And they are CHARMING.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Triest was a guest speaker at a conference I attended a few years ago

He was very upset at what Bush was doing to civil liberties, especially the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo (even though his ostensible topic was interpreting at the Nuremberg Trials.)