That’s a great question, and it’s one I entertained myself!
Regarding **** germany, a few explanations come to mind:
(1) Dehumanization to justify acts of aggression: A key study in this area is Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment (they even made a movie out of this, starring Adrian Brody, I believe). Initially, students were separated into two groups—the prisoners and the guards. After awhile, the prisoners ceased being individuals in the eyes of the guards. This made their subsequent mistreatment easier. The experiment devolved into a “Lord of the Flies” scenario so quicklly that it had to be terminated!
(2) Brainwashing: by chanting hateful slogans (e.g., “death to J…s), you might come to believe in their authenticity. Another example: the brainwashing of American POWs by the Chinese. The way to shift a POWs thinking is to get him to write essays increasingly sympathetic to your point of view. The POW will seek to minimize cognitive dissonance by telling himself that his “new” viewpoint isn’t all that bad, after all, because he’s writing in support of it! This is a form of insidious, coercive persuasion/attitude shift. The key here is that even normal people--just like you and me--can be made to commit great acts of evil--through errors of omission (ignoring atrocities) or commission (going along with them).
The best part is that people can be “inoculated” against these insidious shifts in attitude. The way to do it is just like vaccinating a person against a pathogen like the flu, where an attenuated form of the pathogen is introduced into the system and allows the build-up of protective antibodies (memory B and T cells). Here, you introduce people to an argument that challenges a certain aspect of their belief system (in the case of soldiers, it would be their loyalty to their country’s philosophies). Then, you force them to defend their position. If they are able to successfully refute the challenge to their beliefs, they will be more resistant to attempts at attitudinal shift in the future! Note: this works for other forms of propaganda, including the advertisements you see on television. For more info, google “inoculation theory."
If you’re interested in this stuff, here’s a book to read: Aronson’s “The Social Animal.” It’s a best seller on Amazon for a reason.
Best,
