On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (25 page)

He
must
believe that not only is this atrocity right, but it is proof that he is morally, socially, and culturally superior to those w h o m he has killed. It is the ultimate act of denial of their humanity. It 210 KILLING AND ATROCITIES

is the ultimate act of affirmation of his superiority. And the killer
must
violently suppress any dissonant thought that he has done anything wrong. Further, he
must
violently attack anyone or anything that would threaten his beliefs. His mental health is totally invested in believing that what he has done is good and right.

It is the blood of his victims that binds and empowers him to even greater heights of killing and slaughter. And when we realize that this same basic empowering process is what motivates satanic murders and other such cult killings, the analogy of a satanic pact is not as strange as it seems. This is the strength, the power, and the attraction that have resided in human sacrifices over millennia.

Bonding to Leaders and Peers

Those who command atrocities are powerfully bonded by guilt to those who commit atrocities, and to their cause, since only the success of their cause can ensure that they will not have to answer for their actions. With totalitarian dictators, it is their secret police and other such Praetorian guard—type units who can be counted on to fight for their leader and their cause to the bitter end. Nicolae Ceausescu's state police in Romania and Hitler's SS units are two examples of units bonded to their leaders by atrocity.

By ensuring that their men participate in atrocities, totalitarian leaders can also ensure that for these minions there is no possibility of reconciliation with the enemy. They are inextricably linked to the fate of their leader. Trapped in their logic and their guilt, those who commit atrocities see no alternatives other than total victory or total defeat in a great Gotterdammerung.

In the absence of a legitimate threat, leaders (be they national leaders or gang leaders) may designate a scapegoat whose defilement and innocent blood empowers the killers and bonds them to their leaders. Traditionally, high-visibility weak groups and minorities —

such as Jews and blacks — have filled this role.

Women have also been defiled, debased, and dehumanized for the aggrandizement of others. Throughout history women have been probably the greatest single group of victims of this empowerment process. Rape is a very important part of the process of THE DARK POWER OF ATROCITY 211

dominating and dehumanizing an enemy; and this process of mutual empowering and bonding at the expense of others is exactly what occurs during gang rapes. In war, empowerment and bonding through such gang rapes often occur on a national level.

The German-Russian conflict during World War II is an excellent example of a vicious cycle in which both sides became totally invested in atrocity and rape. This reached the point at which, according to Albert Seaton, Soviet soldiers attacking Germany were told that they were not accountable for civil crimes committed in Germany and that personal property and German women were theirs by right.

The incidence of rape as a result of these encouragements appears to have been in the millions. Cornelius Ryan, in
The Last Battle,
estimated that there were one hundred thousand births resulting from rapes in Berlin alone following World War II. In recent years we have seen the use of rape as a political tool by the Serbs in Bosnia. The thing to understand here is that gang rapes and gang or cult killings in times of peace and war are
not
"senseless violence." They are instead powerful acts of group bonding and criminal enabling that, quite often, have a hidden purpose of promoting the wealth, power, or vanity of a specific leader or cause . . . at the expense of the innocent.

Atrocity and Denial

The sheer horror of atrocity serves not only to terrify those who must face it, but also to generate disbelief in distant observers.

Whether it is ritual cult killings in our society or mass murders by established governments in the world at large, the common response is often one of total disbelief. And the nearer it hits home, the harder we want to disbelieve it.

Most Americans have been able to accept the millions of murders committed by Nazi Germany because our soldiers were there and were personally exposed to the Nazi death camps. Eyewitness accounts, films, a vocal and powerful Jewish community, and shrines at death camps like Dachau and Auschwitz all combine to make it almost impossible to deny the horror. Yet even in the 212 KILLING AND A T R O C I T I E S

face of all this evidence, there is a bizarre minority in our nation that truly believes that it never happened.

T h e sheer awfulness of atrocity makes us wish it away, and w h e n we are faced with events such as genocide in Cambodia we would rather turn our heads. David Horowitz, a 1960s radical, writes about h o w this denial process occurred in him and his friends: I and my former comrades in the Left dismissed the anti-Soviet

"lies" about Stalinist repression. In the society we hailed as a new human dawn, 100 million people were put in slave-labor camps, in conditions rivaling Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Between 30

and 40 million people were killed in peacetime in the daily routine of socialist rule. While Leftists applauded their progressive policies and guarded their frontiers, Soviet Marxists killed more peasants, more workers, and even more communists than all the capitalist governments combined since the beginning of time.

And for the entire duration of this nightmare, the William Buck-leys and Ronald Reagans and other anti-communists went on telling the world exactly what was happening. And all that time the pro-Soviet Left went on denouncing them as reactionaries and liars, using the same contemptuous terms. . . .

The left would
still
be denying the Soviet atrocities if the perpe-trators themselves had not finally acknowledged their crime.

Although this is a most remarkable example of naivete, a significant and vocal minority in America was trapped in this program of self-deception. Those w h o were deceived are mainly good, decent, highly educated men and women. It is their very goodness and decency that cause them to be so completely incapable of believing that someone or something they approve of could be so completely evil. Perhaps denial of mass atrocity is tied to our innate resistance to killing. Just as one hesitates to kill in the face of extreme pressure and despite the threat of violence, one has difficulty imagin-ing — and believing — the existence of atrocity despite the existence of facts.

But we must not deny it. If we look around the world carefully we will find somebody somewhere wielding the dark power of atrocity to support a cause that
we
believe in. It is a simple tenet T H E D A R K P O W E R O F A T R O C I T Y

213

of human nature that it is difficult to believe and accept that anyone
we
like and identify with is capable of these acts against our fellow human beings. And this simple, naive tendency to disbelieve or look the other way is, possibly more than any other factor, responsible for the perpetuation of atrocity and horror in our world today.

Chapter Three

The Entrapment of Atrocity

"The Horror! The Horror!"

— Kurtz

in Joseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness2

Despite its short-term benefits, atrocity as policy is normally (but not always) self-destructive. Unfortunately this self-destruction usually does not occur in time to save its immediate victims The process of bonding men by forcing them to commit an atrocity requires a foundation of legitimacy for it to continue for any length of time. The authority of a state (as in Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany), a state religion (as in the emperor worship of imperial Japan), a heritage of barbarism and cruelty that diminishes the value of individual human life (as existed among the Mongol Hordes, in imperial China, and in many other ancient civilizations), and economic pressures combined with years of prior experience and group bonding (as in the KKK and street gangs) are all examples of varying forms of "legitimizing" factors that, singly or combined, can ensure the continuing commission of atrocities. They also, however, contain the seeds of their own destruction.

Once a group undergoes the process of bonding and empowerment through atrocity, then its members are entrapped in it, as it turns every other force that is aware of their nature against them.

T H E E N T R A P M E N T OF A T R O C I T Y 215

Of course, those w h o commit atrocities understand that what they are doing will be considered criminal by the rest of the world, and this is why at the level of nation-states they attempt to control their population and press.

Still, controlling people and knowledge is only a stopgap measure, particularly as ubiquitous electronic communication becomes widely available. The existence of the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag were debated, and instant worldwide television trans-missions of the Tiananmen Square Massacre allowed the Chinese Communist regime no denials.

Burning Bridges and One-Way Streets

Forcing men to commit atrocities is much easier than getting them to accept the atrocity as a bonding and empowering process. But once they have accepted the empowering process and firmly believe that their enemy is less than human and is deserving of what has happened to him, then they are stuck in a profound psychological trap.

Many students of German conduct during World War II are puzzled by the paradox of the Nazis' handling of the war against Russia. On the one hand the Nazis had a remarkably competent war-fighting organization, while on the other hand they failed to capitalize on opportunities to "liberate" the Ukraine and convert defecting Soviet units to their cause.
The problem was that the Nazis
were entrapped by the very thing that enabled them.
Their racist, atrocity-based denial of the humanity of their enemies made their forces powerful in battle, while it simultaneously prevented them from treating anyone other than an "Aryan" as a human being. Initially the Ukrainian people greeted the Nazis as liberators, and Soviet forces surrendered en masse, but they soon began to realize that there was something that was even worse than Stalinist Russia.

For now it would appear that atrocity has succeeded as policy in China and in Bosnia. In Vietnam, the North w o n by using atrocity. And for decades the Soviets stayed in power in Russia and Eastern Europe by wielding the dark power of atrocity. But in most cases those who attempt to wield atrocity as a systematic national policy have been struck down by this two-edged sword.

216 KILLING AND ATROCITIES

Those who choose the path of atrocity have burned their bridges behind them. There is no turning back.

Enabling the Enemy

During the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, a German SS

unit massacred a group of American POWs at Malmedy. Word of this massacre spread like wildfire through the American forces, and thousands of soldiers resolved never to surrender to the Germans. Conversely, as was mentioned earlier, many Germans who would fight the Russians to their last breath made a point of surrendering to the Americans at the earliest honorable occasion.

Those who commit atrocities have burned their bridges behind them and know that they cannot surrender, but even as they have enabled themselves, they have enabled their enemies.

And so we have seen a few of the limitations of atrocity. But all these negative aspects do not really address the most important and difficult manifestation of committing acts of atrocity. The worst part is that when you institute and execute a policy of atrocity, you and your society must live with what you have done.

But before we conclude this section by examining the psychological toll taken by atrocity, let us first briefly examine a case study in atrocity.

Chapter Four

A Case Study in Atrocity

This is a firsthand account
of
the psychological response
of
a Canadian soldier who was confronted with the vilest possible aspect of atrocity while serving in the UN peacekeeping force sent to the Congo in 1963. It is not pretty. It was written under the n o m de plume Alan Stuart-Smyth. Colonel Stuart-Smyth served twenty-three years as a UN peacekeeper, progressing in rank from private to full colonel. W o u n d e d twice, he was awarded the UN

medal, a mention in dispatches, the Canadian Decoration, and the Distinguished Service Order. After retirement in 1986 he was offered, and accepted, a professorship at a major American university, where he taught criminology for two years.

Note the two-edged sword of atrocity here. N o t e the way in which it both enables and entraps the killers in this case, and then note the way that their atrocity enables the soldier w h o must kill someone caught in the act of atrocity:

As I approached the building the sound of moaning, punctuated by deep laughs, was clearly audible. The rear of the church contained two small dirty windows at eye level, through which I looked. Although the interior of the church was dark by comparison with the blazing outdoors sunlight, I could pick out the forms of two naked black men torturing a young white woman whom I assumed to be a nun or teacher. She had been stripped naked and 218

KILLING AND A T R O C I T I E S

was stretched out in the aisle of the church, arms pulled tightly over her head by one of the rebels, while the other knelt on her stomach and repeatedly touched her nipples with a burning cigarette. She had burn marks on her face and neck as well. Uniforms of the Katangese Gendarmerie were thrown over the back of a pew, and female garments were scattered near the door. A

. . . carbine lay in the aisle beside the young woman. Another rifle had been left leaning against the wall near the uniforms. There appeared to be no one else present in the church. . . .

On my signal we burst into the cathedral, our weapons on full auto.

"Stand still," I bellowed. "U.N. troops; you're under arrest." I didn't want to do it that way, but damn it, I was still a soldier, and subject to Queen's Regulations and Orders.

The rebels bounded to their feet to face us, eyes staring wildly.

I carried a Sterling 9mm SMG [submachine gun] . . . which I leveled at the two naked men. We were no more than 15 feet apart.

The one who had been holding the nun's arms was visibly shaking with fear, his eyes flying uncontrollably about the room.

In a second they rested on the rifle lying in the aisle. The nun had rolled onto her stomach, clutching her breasts and rocking from side to side, moaning in pain.

"Don't be a fool, man," I cautioned. But he did it anyway.

In a bunt of panic he emitted a loud, piercing wail and dove for the rifle. Landing on his knees he grabbed the weapon, and turning his terrified face to mine, attempting to bring his weapon to bear. My first burst caught him in the face, the second full in the chest. He was dead before he fell over, a body missing most of its head.

The second terrorist began to wave his arms frantically up and down, like a featherless black bird attempting to take flight. His eyes kept flitting back and forth between the muzzle of the Sterling and his own weapon, which was leaning against the wall a good 10 feet away. . . .

"Don't do it, don't do it," I ordered. But he emitted a loud

"Yaaa . . . ," and scrambled for the rifle. I warned him again but CASE S T U D Y IN A T R O C I T Y 219

he grabbed the weapon, worked the action to place a round in the chamber, and began to swing the muzzle toward me.

"KILL HIM, GODDAMMIT," screamed Cpl Edgerton, who had now entered the church behind us, "KILL HIM, NOW!"

The rebel terrorist was now fully facing me, desperately attempting to swing the long barrel of the bolt-action rifle across his body to align it with my chest. His eyes locked on mine — wild, frantic eyes surrounded by fields of white. They never left mine, not even when the powerful SMG rounds tore into his stomach, walked up his chest, and cut the carotid artery on the left side of his neck. His body hit the floor with a thud, blown apart by the blast of the Sterling, and still the eyes remained riveted to mine.

Then his body relaxed and the eyes dilated, blind in death. . . .

Prior to Okonda, I had not killed a human being. That is, I did not know for sure that I had killed. When one is firing at moving, shadowy figures in the confusion of battle one cannot be certain of the results. At Bridge 19 I had killed many men when I detonated the charges, blowing an enemy convoy to kingdom come, but somehow the incident was not psychologically close. They were a long way off, and the cover of night hid their shapes and movement, their very humanity. But here at Okonda it was different.

The two men I killed were practically within arm's reach, I could see their facial expressions clearly, even hear their breathing, see their fear, and smell their body odor. And the funny thing was that I
didn't feel a damn thing! . .
. [Stuart-Smyth's emphasis]

There had been two nuns at Okonda: the young one we saved, and the older one we didn't. When I first entered the church I was standing slightly behind the altar, and off to the left side. From that position I couldn't see the front of the altar, a rather large affair made of rough-hewn wood with a cross towering above it.

Perhaps it was a good thing I could not, for the rebels had used the altar to butcher the old nun.

They had stripped her naked, but had not assaulted her sexually, probably because she was elderly, and obese. Instead they sat her upright with her back to the altar, and nailed her hands to it in apparent mimicry of the crucifixion. Then they cut off her breasts 220

KILLING AND A T R O C I T I E S

with a bayonet and, in a final act of savagery, drove the bayonet through her mouth into the altar behind, impaling her in an upright position. Evidence of a struggle showed that she had not died instantly from the bayonet wound, but had probably succumbed to the loss of blood from the wounds on her chest. She had a white man's penis and testicles shoved partially in her vagina. Her severed breasts were not present.

We found the owner of the male genitalia tied spread-eagle in the middle of the village compound, with the nun's breasts attached to his chest with sharpened sticks. . . .

Before we departed Okonda the young nun asked to meet the soldier who had saved her life. She was clothed now, and had cleaned up a little bit with the help of our medic. I was surprised how young she was — early 20s or younger. . . . She required a number of sutures in her vagina, and would need burn treatments as well. I didn't admire her decision to remain in enemy territory when she was given ample opportunity to leave, but I did admire her spunk. When we met she looked me in the eye and said, "Thank God you came." She had been badly beaten, but not defeated.

As for me, I had turned 19 only two days previous, and still suffered from the native upbringing of a good Christian family. I lost a lot of that upbringing at Okonda. There was no honor here, no virtue. The standards of behavior taught in the homes, churches, and schools of America had no place in battle. They were mythical concepts good only for the raising of children, to be cast aside forever from this moment on. No, I didn't feel guilt, shame, or remorse at killing my fellow man — I felt pride!

— Alan Stuart-Smyth

"Congo Horror"

There are numerous examples of atrocity committed by nearly all national, racial, and ethnic groups, but this example is one of the best, clearest, and most literate representations of the killology aspects of atrocity.

Many of the factors and processes that we have discussed — or will be discussing shortly — can be observed clearly in this case study. We see the rapists' instinctive lashing out and defiling of A CASE STUDY IN ATROCITY

221

all that is held dear by those they consider to be their oppressors.

We see that the rapists' atrocity has enraged and empowered their opponent. We see the rapists entrapped in atrocity: caught red-handed and knowing that if they surrender they will be executed, they have no option but to try to fight. We see Stuart-Smyth's reluctance to kill these men even in the face of their atrocities.

We see the low target attractiveness associated with the ludicrous and harmless sight of a naked man with his arms waving "frantically up and down, like a featherless black bird attempting to take flight."

We see the role of obedience-demanding authority in that even in the face of all this provocation Stuart-Smyth must be ordered to kill. We see a diffusion of responsibility in that the individual giving the order to kill did not fire his weapon. We can see the development of Stuart-Smyth's rationalization and acceptance process as he first says, "I didn't feel a damn thing!" and later contradicts this statement by saying, "I didn't feel guilt, shame, or remorse at killing my fellow man — I felt pride!" And we can see that Stuart-Smyth's rationalization and acceptance was gready assisted by the fact that the men he killed were committing atrocities.

We see all these things. But most of all, as we see them, we see the powerful process of atrocity at work in the lives of the individuals playing out their parts in this tiny microcosm of war.