The SS (Schutzstaffel) was created as an elite bodyguard for Hitler in the early 1920s and eventually became the organization that had primary responsibility for the Nazi genocide. The following section, taken from the chapter called “The SS and the psychology of perpetrators,” shows how people evolved with their roles. The personalities of the SS men and the roles they fulfilled intersected, merged, and became deeply interwoven.

Given the initial self-selection, the progressive identification with the institution, the evolution of the SS into a system devoted to mass murder in the context of changes in the larger system of Germany, and learning through participation, the psychological condition of many SS members came to fit the role they were to fulfill. They became well adapted to their functions, following the rules and operating procedures and treating their victims as contaminated material to be disposed of.

The “ideal” SS man was not personally brutal and did not enjoy the suffering of victims. He could even treat individual Jews well while serving the machinery of their murder. This level of development is demonstrated by a fictional character, O'Brien, in George Orwell's 1984. O'Brien, the torturer of Winston Smith, inflicts indescribable pain and terror, but does so in a kindly manner, as if it is a necessary task against his inclination. Dr. Wilhelm Pfonnerstiel, professor of hygiene at the University of Marburg and SS lieutenant colonel, reporting after the war on a wartime visit to the concentration camp at Belzec, said: “I wanted to know in particular if the process of exterminating human beings was accompanied by any act of cruelty.