Summary of findings

In all cases of extremist behavior as measured by the willingness to kill massively, the ephemeral gain was an important antecedent. In two cases where extremism might have been expected but did not occur – Indian Muslims and Bulgaria – the ephemeral gain was absent. A third case, Greece, had a brief territorial gain in Anatolia, its loss, but loss compensation in the form of the demographic strengthening of ethnic Greeks within earlier annexed territory of mixed ethnicity in Europe, which, among other factors, avoided the onset of extremism. Mortality salience in all cases was present before the rise of political extremism.

Equally if not more important is the ability of this framework to single out the most extreme of extremists, as measured by their willingness to commit mass murder on a truly unheard of scale. Both the Ottoman and German populations felt a “triumphal exaltation” after their respective victories prior to the perception of impending defeats during World Wars I and II. Ottomans, Nazis, and Stalinists experienced their successive reinforced ephemera, as did the Serbs as the first and thus far only European country to commit genocide (at Srebrenica) after the carnage of World War II. As a consequence of successive reinforced ephemera, the Malmedy massacre, to my knowledge never before examined within a comparative theoretical framework, is here contrasted with other areas of the West in which American prisoners of war were not massacred.