"the western tradition of universalism, humanity, and individual responsibility based on a guilt culture was replaced by a shame culture that elevated loyalty to and standing within the group to be the new moral fulcrum of German society. Whether it be the Volksgemeinschaft as a whole, or the small unit within which a German fought, “the group claimed moral sovereignty.

The shame culture, making conformity a prime virtue, impelled ordinary Germans in uniform to commit terrible crimes rather than suffer the stigma of cowardice and weakness and the "social death" of isolation and alienation vis-à-vis their comrades. This dynamic was intensified by several other factors. The first was that the "pleasures” of comradeship and the "joy of togetherness"

"Both Hitler and various military commanders made the coercive zero-sum moral argument that pity and lenience toward the enemy and failure to overcome one's personal scruples was a "sin" against one's comrades and future generations. The combination of all these factors created a "competition for mercilessness" and a "culture of brutality" within units.

Thus "uncertainty and dissenting convictions seethed in the culture of cruelty," and "pangs of conscience" persisted."

Page 241

"...conformity was an essential component of belonging.

the western tradition of universalism, humanity, and individual responsibility based on a guilt culture was replaced by a shame culture that elevated loyalty to and standing within the group to be the new moral fulcrum of German society.

The shame culture, making conformity a prime virtue, impelled ordinary Germans in uniform to commit terrible crimes rather than suffer the stigma of cowardice and weakness and the "social death" of isolation and alienation vis-à-vis their comrades. This dynamic was intensified by several other factors.

Nothing makes people stick together better than committing a crime together," Kühne noted."

Page 240-241

"At the same time, however, the collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications. There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority, and indeed could scarcely function otherwise. Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"

Page 188-189

"The perpetrators and victims in the gray zone were not mirror images of one another. Perpetrators did not become fellow victims (as many of them later claimed to be) in the way some victims became accomplices of the perpetrators. The relationship between perpetrator and victim was not symmetrical. The range of choice each faced was totally different."

Page 187

"While Levi focused on the spectrum of victim behavior within the gray zone, he dared to suggest that this zone encompassed perpetrators as well. Even the SS man Muhsfeld of the Birkenau crematoria—whose "daily ration of slaughter was studded with arbitrary and capricious acts, marked by his inventions of cruelty"—was not a "monolith." Faced with the miraculous survival of a sixteen-year-old girl discovered while the gas chambers were being cleared, the disconcerted Muhsfeld briefly hesitated. In the end he ordered the girl's death but quickly left before his orders were carried out. One "instant of pity" was not enough to "absolve" Muhsfeld, who was deservedly hanged in 1947. Yet it did "place him too, although at its extreme boundary, within the gray band, that zone of ambiguity which radiates out from regimes based on terror and obsequiousness."

Page 187

"Levi concentrated on the "gray zone of protekcya [corruption] and collaboration" that flourished in the camps among a spectrum of victims: from the "picturesque fauna" of low-ranking functionaries husbanding their minuscule advantages over other prisoners; through the truly privileged network of Kapos, who were free "to commit the worst atrocities at whim; to the terrible fate of the Sonderkommandos, who prolonged their lives by manning the gas chambers and crematoria. (Conceiving and organizing the Sonderkommandos was in Levi's opinion National Socialism's "most demonic crime".)"

Page 187

"In Primo Levi's essay entitled "The Gray Zone,"... He maintained that in spite of our natural desire for clear-cut distinctions, the history of the camps "could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors."

He argued passionately, "It is naive, absurd, and historically false to believe that aninfernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims; on the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself."

The time had come to examine the inhabitants of the zone" between the simplified Manichean images of perpetrator and victim."

Page 186-187

"Pervasive racism and the resulting exclusion of the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators made it easier for the majority of the policemen to conform to the norms of their immediate community (the battalion) and their society at large (Nazi Germany).

...the years of anti-Semitic propaganda (and prior to the Nazi dictatorship, decades of shrill German nationalism) dovetailed with the polarizing effects of war. The dichotomy of racially superior Germans and racially inferior Jews, central to Nazi ideology, could easily merge with the image of a beleaguered Germany surrounded by warring enemies.

Nothing helped the Nazis to wage a race war so much as the war itself. In wartime, when it was all too usual to exclude the enemy from the community of human obligation, it was also all too easy to subsume the Jews into the "image of the enemy," or Feindbild."

Page 186

"...it legitimized and upheld "toughness" as a superior quality. For the anxious individual, it had the added advantage of posing no moral challenge to the murderous policies of the regime, though it did pose another problem, since the difference between being "weak" and being a "coward" was not great.

Insidiously, therefore, most of those who did not shoot only reaffirmed the "macho" values of the majority-according to which it was a positive quality to be "tough" enough to kill unarmed, noncombatant men, women, and children—and tried not to rupture the bonds of comradeship that constituted their social world. Coping with the contradictions imposed by the demands of conscience on the one hand and the norms of the battalion on the other led to many tortured attempts at compromise...

Only the very exceptional remained indifferent to taunts of "weakling" from their comrades and could live with the fact that they considered to be "no man."

Page 185-186

"Why [was it easier to shoot then to step out of rank]? First of all, by breaking ranks, nonshooters were leaving the "dirty work" to their comrades. Since the battalion had to shoot even if individuals did not, refusing to shoot constituted refusing one's share of an unpleasant collective obligation. It was in effect an asocial act vis-à-vis one's comrades. Those who did not shoot risked isolation, rejection, and ostracism-a very uncomfortable prospect within the framework of a tight-knit unit stationed abroad among a hostile population, so that the individ- ual had virtually nowhere else to turn for support and social contact."

This threat of isolation was intensified by the fact that stepping out could also have been seen as a form of moral reproach of one's comrades: the nonshooter was potentially indicating that he was "too good" to do such things. "

Page 185

"Such incessant propagandizing must have had a considerable effect in reinforcing general notions of Germanic racial superiority and "a certain aversion" toward the Jews.

Yet 80 to 90 percent of the men proceeded to kill, though almost all of them--at least initially- were horrified and disgusted by what they were doing. To break ranks and step out, to adopt overtly nonconformist behavior, was simply beyond most of the men. It was easier for them to shoot."

Page 184