Ep. 60- Perpetrators of Mass Violence with Alette Smeulers

What makes someone a perpetrator?  Are killers born or made?  One thing that is clear in studying the Holocaust and other genocides is that perpetrators come in all shapes and sizes with just as diverse a set of motivations.

On today’s episode, I talked with Alette Smeulers about her work in studying perpetrators from a variety of perspectives across many different forms of mass violence.

Alette Smeulers is a professor in the faculty of law at the University of Groningen.

Smeulers, Alette.  Perpetrators of Mass Atrocities: Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal? (2023)

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You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman Beorn (00:00.958)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Whiteman Bourne. And today we are talking about perpetrators, but not in a necessarily specific sense as one in particular, but thinking about the category or categories, as you'll see, of perpetrators, what makes one a perpetrator? What are the different ways in which people become perpetrators in genocide and other mass atrocities?

And with me today is Aleta Smullers, who has written an incredibly exhaustive study of various kinds of perpetrators, not just Holocaust, but we'll focus sort of around genocide perhaps today. Aleta, thank you so much for coming on.

Alette Smeulers (00:46.808)
Thanks for having me.

Waitman Beorn (00:48.552)
Can you tell us a little about, to start with, sort of how you got interested in this particular topic? What's the background to how you got, went down this road of studying perpetrators?

Alette Smeulers (01:02.67)
It started when I was a kid and I started to read books on the Dutch resistance during the Second World War. My dad was interested in the Second World War and had loads of books of it. Both of my parents experienced the Second World War as children. So it had my interest and then specifically the books on the resistance. And the people within the resistance were my youth heroes.

So then I thought whenever I would be in a war, I hope I'll be brave enough to fight in the resistance. But then at some point I started to think, like, doesn't everyone want to be like they are? And then who are the perpetrators? What kind of people are they? Whoever wants to be a perpetrator?

So that started me to trigger that, for me it was obvious everyone wanted to be on the good side, so why do you have these people doing these horrendous things? So that is when it started to intrigue me who the perpetrators are and what kind of people they are.

Waitman Beorn (02:08.884)
Yeah, I think that's a great point that whenever we think about, for example, the Holocaust, but also any of these things, we never imagine ourselves to be perpetrators. But yet, think, statistically speaking, we're more likely to be perpetrators than we are rescuers or resistance. it goes to one of the larger sort of questions.

I suppose positions that I've come around to is that there's no such thing as a bystander. You know, that one is either on one side or the other of that equation from, you know, perpetrator to resistance slash rescue, or whether it's just a little tiny bit one way or a little tiny bit one way or the other, but no one is sort of is perfectly neutral or an observer in that sense.

Alette Smeulers (03:00.141)
True.

Waitman Beorn (03:01.748)
Are you still there?

Alette Smeulers (03:03.179)
But I think we lost the connection now.

Waitman Beorn (08:28.404)
.

Waitman Beorn (09:21.127)
So yeah, I mean, I think that, again, that's a really good point that you made about perpetrators, that we often imagine ourselves, I suppose, to be the valiant resistors or rescuers, but that, statistically speaking, we're much more likely to be perpetrators. And what I like about what you're doing, of course, in your work, is you're kind of expanding that category as well to include lots of different people.

And as an aside, as I've mentioned on here before, you know, I don't subscribe to the idea that, that you can even have such thing as a bystander. I sort of feel like you're, you're always on one side of the other, whether it's only, even if it's only a tiny little bit to one side of the other, but nobody can be strictly neutral. I mean, we, we, we aren't neutral about the most mundane things in our lives about, know, which soft drink we prefer or whatever. I no, no one is, no one is really neutral in anything, particularly when it comes to, to Massachusetts like this. think.

What you said, I think is really important in terms of broadening the scope of who we call perpetrators.

Alette Smeulers (10:28.718)
I totally agree, because bystanders who do not intervene actually support the perpetrator. And not just in the eyes of the victim, but also the perpetrator, seeing a bystander not interfering, thinks he is supported by the bystander. So in that sense you're right. a perpetrator, or as a bystander, you cannot be neutral. By being neutral and doing nothing, you actually choose the side of the perpetrator.

Waitman Beorn (10:56.079)
Yeah, exactly. And so I think we should maybe talk a little bit about sort of how you came to this project, because it's a really ambitious project that sort of wraps its head around lots and lots of different kinds of violence, as well as obviously different kinds of people involved in that violence. So maybe we could start by just thinking about how did you conceptualize this project and come

to the decisions that you made about all of the different categories and types of perpetrators involved.

Alette Smeulers (11:34.081)
Yes, it started off with the main question, who are the perpetrators? Whoever wants to be a perpetrator? And then in my first part of my research in my life on perpetrators was that main question, who are the perpetrators? Then I realized perpetrators, or at least many of them, not all, but many of them are very ordinary law abiding citizens.

regular people with no criminal record, anti-social behavior, mental deficiencies. So then I started to think, well, okay, that's the answer to my first question, but how can ever a normal, ordinary person like you and me do such a horrible thing? So that was the second phase in my research and I got to understand that how ordinary people can transform into perpetrators.

In the meantime, I had built a database on all the perpetrators I could find information on. So I had this, it was back in the time before internet, so I had these cards with their names written on it in a small box, so very amateuristic, but nevertheless, that's how it started. So then I got the answer to my two main questions, and then I realized that...

perpetrators also differ. And yet I also found that there are very intriguing parallels between certain perpetrators. And it shows clearest when I looked at Adolf Eichmann, who was of course one of the Nazis and one of the main people responsible for the execution of the genocide by organizing transportation from the camps from

the Jews their homes to the death camps and he said a few things that were very similar to what Alfredo Estes said who was involved in the dirty war in Argentina in 1967-84 and then I was like wow they've got almost exactly the same frame of mind they say sometimes almost literally the same thing

Alette Smeulers (13:51.211)
So that is where my research progress towards what is now became this book, categorizing perpetrators, looking for similarities, putting them in groups. And that is how it started. So it evolved from the other two main questions.

Waitman Beorn (14:08.654)
And just to be clear, and obviously there's no stigma attached to this, but you come from a social sciences background, right? Is that like your area of expertise or professional training, right?

Alette Smeulers (14:18.613)
yet.

Alette Smeulers (14:22.143)
I'm a political scientist by training.

Waitman Beorn (14:23.161)
Okay. Yep. Which is great because, you know, one of things that I'm curious about, I'm an historian, obviously, but we have everybody on this podcast from all kinds of different disciplines. And I'm curious how, just as an aside, how your, your disciplinary background, affected how you look at this perhaps differently than, I might as an historian.

Alette Smeulers (14:46.817)
Yes, it's a very good and interesting question. I don't really see myself, by the way, as a political scientist because I haven't done that much with political science, but that was my training. And the reason I picked, I started to study political science because it's so broad and inter and multidisciplinary.

And I consider myself much more a thematic scholar. So my focus is international crimes, so genocide, war crimes, against humanity and terrorism. And I use whatever I can find in whatever discipline I can find. But what is intriguing is that I now notice also with certain reactions to the book that it doesn't sit very well always with all historians.

nor with all lawyers. Why is that? Because lawyers and historians tend to very much look at the unique features of individuals and the specific circumstances. Which is true, which is valuable and we should do loads of research to that. But I think that

more political scientists, social scientists, criminologists also look at comparisons. And that gives us an additional angle of looking at perpetrators and deepens our understanding. So I absolutely do think that my background and also my being open to other disciplines helped me a lot in that. And then you see indeed the circumstances

are different but you still see very similar mechanisms and I think therefore you can draw what I find intriguing parallels throughout case studies.

Waitman Beorn (16:36.037)
Yeah, I and I agree with this, too. mean, I think, you know, methodology is kind of like theory in a certain sense, in that it's it's like a toolbox. And, you know, if you need to drive a nail, then you look for a hammer. And if you need to mow the lawn, you look for a lawnmower. And, you know, it's it's it's kind of what what works best for the questions that you're trying to accomplish. And I can certainly see how.

you know, some scholars would take issue with some of the things, some of your conclusions, but also, you know, you are working at a macro scale and that has a different value as well. You know, looking at lots and lots of different things comparatively means that you're asking different questions and that you're working at a scale that's different, you know, than someone that's focused on a very narrow historical circumstance. And I think that I think that's important to recognize.

And that leads kind of to my next sort of area of discussion, which is you've touched on this a little bit. And it's an area that particularly in what we call comparative genocide, know, some scholars of the Holocaust have gotten very up in arms about as well, which is this idea of what value is there in comparing certainly different events, but

events that have similar similarities, right? Obviously. And of course, I'm not on that side. think it's I think it's obviously very important to do comparative work. But can you talk about maybe a little bit about, you know, what are the what are the advantages, but also the challenges of comparing perpetrators across time and space and qualitative, you know, context?

Alette Smeulers (18:27.329)
I think the added value is because you want to ultimately understand human behavior. And of course, human behavior is set within a context. That's the main determination. And then within that context, you as a person interact with the context. You are shaped by the context, but also by your own behavior, you also shape the context. So it's back and forth between the context and between you.

as an individual. You can study that as many historians do within a particular set context but it leads to an even better insight if you see like hey in this situation for instance in Nazi Germany the the people there the Nazis dehumanized their victims.

But then you see a very similar feature in Rwanda, in Cambodia, in those genocides. So you see also dehumanization. But then you can also see a level of dehumanization that terrorists use. And that is intriguing to see, like, okay, so the dehumanization is not just in Nazi Germany, it appears elsewhere.

It appears very obviously in different genocides, but also even terrorists use dehumanization.

And that makes it very interesting to see parallels and to realize it's not just dependent on certain circumstances within either Nazi Germany or within a genocidal context. But that is something what people who commit horrendous criminal and violent acts do more in general. And that helps us see even other perspectives in human behavior, which are helpful to understand.

Alette Smeulers (20:25.231)
human behavior and to understand why a genocide is occurring, why war crimes are occurring or why terrorism is occurring.

Waitman Beorn (20:33.959)
Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that that that's really interesting. You know, and then the book is very upfront about and I think also really helpful in is that, a lot of the questions that you're asking and I think a lot of questions often that historians of the Holocaust are asking at a certain level are psychological. You know, they're about they're about human behavior, which ultimately is about, you know, human mindset in, you know, choosing to do certain things.

And so I'm wondering if you can talk a little about about the the psychological aspect of this, because on the one hand, you know, we can observe behaviors as they're reported to us historically, which is, you know, always challenging. But very, very rarely do we have the opportunity to kind of put a historical character on the couch, so to speak, and, you know, go have like a psychological dialogue with them. And so then we.

We enter into this potentially into this realm of psychological history or psycho history. And I'm curious, you know, is this what you're doing in a certain way? And how do you how do you come to these kind of psychological conclusions about about perpetrators?

Alette Smeulers (21:49.783)
Well, what I did is look how individuals respond to certain circumstances. And my research, as with many genocide scholars and scholars of extreme violence, started with the Holocaust. So you had a specific background and you start to try and understand how people respond to that.

And what I actually did, what I realized first of all, that most perpetrators within Nazi Germany were very ordinary, regular people. They respond in the way ordinary people respond to the circumstances. And that is when I started to get out social psychological handbooks and train myself within social psychology and try to understand why people obey, why they conform, why they follow the group, why they

accept things that other people around them accept. And that is also when I realized how important psychology is. That psychology actually, and especially social psychology, has all the answers. People respond in certain ways and of course there are differences between people, individual differences, there are cultural differences, but at the core most people want to be good people.

Most people also want to do the right thing. But most people are also, much more than we like to think, dependent on others. We're social beings. We want to belong in a certain way.

That I found very intriguing and that actually also solved the answers to my very first question which started me trigger whoever wants to be the perpetrator, which led me to the insight that perpetrators almost never see themselves as perpetrators. They see themselves as the real victims. They see themselves as the good people trying to make the world a better place. So that is also then how I realized how ordinary

Alette Smeulers (24:00.951)
people can get involved because they change what they're doing and give it a very different meaning compared to what we from the outside would give it. So we can see something as genocide from the outside, but people committing it will not see it as I'm a perpetrator and committing genocide right now.

Waitman Beorn (24:24.143)
Yeah, and that's a great point. And it's worth highlighting again, you that I've said this before, too, that, you know, no one commits a genocide for bad reasons in their mind. Right. I they all think that I'm defending my my my group or I'm, you know, making again, as you say, making the world a better place for my for my particular group cause or whatever. You know, it's nobody sort of says, gosh, I'm a really bad person doing really bad things.

But I think that's a really important insight, you know, into and I think that is one that absolutely runs across all genocides. You know, if you look at at every genocide, the genocid airs, the people that are doing this in their mind, you know, think that what they're doing is absolutely the right thing to do. And it's it's brave and it's, you know, it's selfless, et cetera, et cetera.

Alette Smeulers (25:21.375)
Exactly, exactly. that is so intriguing and I would almost say amazing, although it's sad as well, of course, that we have the ability, apparently as human beings, to commit genocide, which is the crime of all crimes, the worst thing you can do, and yet see ourselves as good people. But that is the reality and that is what perpetrators do.

But that is also where I found intriguing parallels to for instance genocide and terrorism, where also people who commit terrorism believe that

the world is corrupt, is wrong and they also see themselves as the saviors who are actually trying to rescue the world and look at the suicide terrorists. They really show that they have self-sacrificed and sacrificing their own life in order to make the world a better place. From the outside it seems crazy. They're killing so many people.

And yet, in their mind, they're doing the right thing because they like the genesis there, believe themselves to be the good people, and they're fighting evil and evil people in order to make the world a better place.

Waitman Beorn (26:45.351)
It's curious and one of the questions that just popped into my head and we'll take a little detour about it in the context of, for example, suicide bombers. But, you know, obviously one of the tensions, I suppose, that runs throughout the book, but also the general study perpetrators is always this ideology versus situation sort of, you know, are people ideologically driven?

believers or something else. And it seems like, you know, in the context of particularly in the context of suicide bombers, you sort of have to be an ideological believer. You know, you can't be a pragmatic opportunist, you know, when you are when you are a suicide bomber, you know, that you have to be a believer, whereas lots of lots of other sort of genocide perpetrators can be there for all all the reasons that you lay out in the book, you know, whether it's just

personal wealth or going with the flow or getting a career promotion. But when it comes to sort of terrorism, particularly in the suicide bomber realm, you kind of have to be a believer.

Alette Smeulers (27:58.247)
Yes, probably. Although I also found, even in suicide terrorism, people who follow get find themselves suddenly into a situation where they cannot get out of it. So that could also happen that they follow a bit the flow, the extremist, without being themselves extreme and then suddenly they end up in a situation where they feel back,

that they cannot back out, that they cannot withdraw. So even there that happens. And during my research I also found that sometimes people are used for suicide, sometimes people do it for revenge. can also be there are people who committed horrendous suicide attacks just to avenge the people they lost.

So that also plays a role, lack of hope. And there are also scholars who say, which might be true for some suicide bombers, that

They merely use the ideological context as an excuse, whereas in reality they're just people who are depressed and want to commit suicide. But if their religion, for instance, doesn't allow it, then pretending it's for an ideological or religious cause gives them the opportunity to commit suicide in a heroic way.

Waitman Beorn (29:29.087)
right. Well, that's really interesting that you can sort of make your suicide more palatable, I suppose, to yourself, you know.

Alette Smeulers (29:38.401)
Yes.

Yes, absolutely. There are things where you can see that. There are recorded cases where that happened. And sometimes it's you just don't know. I was intrigued in the literature that, for instance, there was a discussion around Mohammed Atta, who is one of the main pilots who flew one of the planes into the Twin Towers at 9-11.

And about Muhammad Atta there are discussions. Was he more ideologically driven? Was it really an ideological act or was he in fact suicidal? And maybe in his case it might also have been a certain combination of factors.

Waitman Beorn (30:27.143)
I mean, that's really fascinating too, because I've mentioned on this podcast before in brief, there's a book, I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's called Promise Me You'll Kill Yourself. And it's just this really fascinating book about the very last days of World War II in Germany and the just massive epidemic of suicides across Germany. You know, not just by sort of

you know, fanatical Nazis, but like all kinds of other people as well. And and and that's really that's a really interesting comparative idea that just sort of popped into my head because it may be in a certain sense, the collapse of the Third Reich offers people a more palatable way to commit suicide. But there's also this kind of again, like sort of psychological epidemic of people sort of seeing other people doing it and.

you know, thinking that they have no future or whatever, and or they're worried about what the Soviets are going to do when they arrive, you know, and they kill themselves. So it puts it puts suicide in a kind of an interesting position, as well as this idea of essentially what you're describing in a certain sense is peer pressure, you know, in the suicide bomber sense, right? You know, we're all we're all going to be suicide bombers together.

or you're going to be a suicide bomber and we've sort of built you up to do this and now you're going to do it. And I wonder if there's something similar with Nazis at end of the war where they sort of feel like, I'm just going to do this because everybody else is doing it too.

Alette Smeulers (32:03.117)
Yes, but so it's partially peer pressure, but it's also peer pressure I consider as something from the outside. But what I realized plays a very important role is also the pressure from within. And what I mean by that, it's not always necessary in peer pressure that others say, oh, now you have to do it. Otherwise, we will force you or anything that will be sheer peer pressure.

But it can also be the case that you within the group said, yeah, we should do this or we should do that. And then when it comes down to actually doing it, you suddenly feel you don't want to do it, but you also realize if I don't do it now, then you consider yourself as let's say a sissy boy, as a weakling.

as someone who backs out, whereas you just said that you were going to do it. So there's also this internal pressure that once you said certain things or the group you're joined or the activities you commit kind of push you towards doing something similar. So

speaking about certain things and then someone suddenly does it makes the other maybe forcing to do it as well because of this internal pressure not just others pushing you to. So there's this slight nuance difference between peer pressure from the outside and intral forces to comply with what you said earlier or to go along.

Waitman Beorn (33:45.227)
Yeah, but I also think that they're kind of the same in the sense that the internal is kind of, it's like self-imposed peer pressure because it's taking place in the context of what other people will think, right? I mean, like it's, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

Alette Smeulers (34:03.277)
Partially. In the sense that you're partially right, but that's not the only thing. Because it's not just that you're afraid that you look bad in the eyes of others, but also in the eyes of yourself. Because by your actions you give yourself an identity. And as I said, my initial feeling when I read the books, I want to be that resistant fighter. You want to be good.

So people also want to be good and they have certain standards in being good. So if they feel that, for instance, you have to actually commit genocide or go on jihad, commit a terrorist act, if they define that for themselves as good and then they wouldn't do it,

I think what is far more devastating is also that you feel you failed in your own eyes.

Waitman Beorn (34:57.479)
Mm.

Alette Smeulers (35:05.556)
is also crucial. So I do agree it's partially imported internalized peer pressure, but not just. It's also your own image of what you want to do, who you want to be, that you want to do the right thing and to make sense of your own behavior. And that is also or can be devastating if you then back out.

Waitman Beorn (35:27.707)
Yeah. And so that's a really, that's a really great explanation and much better than mine. And this is a great place, I think, to let you talk about something that I think is central to understanding perpetrators and particularly the perpetrators. I think that many people find the most difficult to understand the ones that are actually, you know, physically murdering people in a certain sense. And that's this idea of cognitive dissonance. Can you talk a little bit about

what this theory is or in detail and how it functions and why it's so important in understanding in understanding perpetrators.

Alette Smeulers (36:09.183)
Absolutely. Cognitive dissonance is, in my view, the crucial mechanism that turns people into perpetrators. What is cognitive dissonance? It's a social-psychological theory which says that people want to do the right thing. So they believe they do the right thing. And with perpetrators, can best immediately relate it to perpetrators.

Perpetrators are for instance part, let's take the Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, you're a member of the SS, so and you believe in the ideology, you believe in the fact that the Jews are the enemy and should be killed, so ideologically you're committed. You believe yourself to be a good person because you want to make the world a better place.

Now, then as you get into a situation as this SS soldier and you're asked to kill someone, to shoot someone. What I found in my research by looking at hundreds, maybe even thousands of perpetrators is that almost all of them, very few exceptions, and that are the sadist and psychopath, but otherwise ordinary people get into that.

all of them feel very bad the first time they commit a crime, without exception. They suddenly realize they have this ideological commitment. For instance, that a Jew is bad. They've demonized the Jew, dehumanized it, and then they think, I'm justified to kill a Jew. But then suddenly they are confronted with their first murder, their first killing. Then almost all of them

realize or get filled with shock and horror of what they've just done. Then suddenly they see that person they killed no longer as this enemy, but as a person and a shock. feel human empathy. They feel bad about what they've just done. And that is where cognitive dissonance comes in. That is when you have the idea that you're doing something right. And yet at the same time, you've just done something

Alette Smeulers (38:29.203)
which you realize is wrong. And that feeling is this cognitive dissonance. So there two contrasting feelings about what you've just done. And we don't like that. We like as human beings, our behavior should make sense. It should be consistent. We want to be right. So what will you then do? There are two options. Either you admit that killing that Jew was wrong.

And then you stop doing that. That will be the good solution of course. But that's not easy because then you have to admit that you were wrong in thinking that you had to kill Jews. Secondly, you tell yourself that you just committed murder. And thirdly, you probably have to also point to your friends and buddies within the unit.

that they too are murderers. Not easy and maybe even very dangerous. So the better option and that's the one that most people choose for and which actually transforms them into a perpetrator is that they then start to rationalize and justify what they did. So they try to confront this nagging feeling of I just did something wrong by convincing themselves that

They basically did the right thing after all. They might feel bad about it, but... And then they start to rely on everything they can find. The Jew is the enemy, the Jew is bad, the Jew is a subhuman. And go on, if I wouldn't have killed him, he might have killed me. If I wouldn't have killed him, my partner would have killed him. And that is where the human mind can go to great length to...

rationalize and justify our own behavior and all that in order to reduce this feeling, this nagging feeling of cognitive dissonance that we don't like. So what we actually do or what perpetrators do, they bring their behavior in line with their thinking. So at that moment when they suddenly felt this confrontation, hey, I'm not doing the right thing, they convinced themselves, no, you did the right thing.

Alette Smeulers (40:56.578)
And that is also the crucial moment in the transformation because as of then it becomes easier. change. It becomes easier to commit the second crime and the third. And in fact, the second and the third crime are confirmation that the first was not a crime in the first place. And that is when, and here I use the theory of the continuum of destructiveness by Irwin Staub in his excellent book Roots of Evil.

where I describe people change by doing. And that is what I clearly saw with perpetrators, that after their first crime, solving this cognitive dissonance in that way, they transformed into perpetrators. And then gradually it get worse. And in the end, they don't feel any of the human empathy, the horror or shock they felt in the first time. They managed to push all those feelings away.

Waitman Beorn (41:52.795)
Does this assume that that we all have a sort of innate moral conscience that tells us that killing people is wrong?

Alette Smeulers (42:03.435)
I'm not sure if we all have that. In literature there's this discussion where does this horror and shock come from. Some people say it's moral disgust. That would answer your question. Yes, we have this moral thing in ourselves. Others say it's more human animal feeling. Human empathy is human pity, animal pity.

So it's more a instinctual reaction. I don't know, maybe we have a bit of both. If everyone has it's very hard to say. But from my research at least, I don't think that we're general or natural killers. I found that it doesn't come easy with most perpetrators. Not in the beginning, but then they convince themselves that's the right thing. And then they end up...

not feeling bad about it at all.

Waitman Beorn (43:02.853)
I mean, that's it's interesting because I want to ask the question because I had a Dittmering Muncheuristic on here as a guest on the podcast. And I know that you're familiar with her work, of course, in the book. And she provided a really interesting, I think maybe the second the second example that you gave there that that people react with disgust, but that doesn't necessarily indicate moral opposition, but can also just indicate

that this is literally disgusting work or gross or the analogy that I always use is, I like eating a hamburger, but if I had a choice, I wouldn't want to have to go out and kill the cow, you know, to make it myself. That would be gross to me, but I'm not morally opposed to the cow being killed for my hamburger. know, so it sounds like you're you sort of think that maybe there's a little bit of both in terms of our initial reactions to. To to.

atrocities to killing.

Alette Smeulers (44:03.703)
Yes, I think it could be both and I'm much less of a philosopher thinking well what is our moral status exactly and I also think what I also found in my research perpetrators differ. So some might have this moral stance, others might not. Some have this pure instinctive reaction whereas others don't have that.

Waitman Beorn (44:26.981)
And this is bringing me to another part of the of your work that I think is really interesting. And, you know, it it begins with, you know, exactly the same thing that I always tell students and everybody else, which is that, know, 99 percent. mean, the vast majority of perpetrators are not psychologically abnormal in the sense of like clinically, you know, psychiatrically, clinically diagnosable as, you know, as psychopaths or sociopaths.

And so that then begs the questions that you're asking in your work, which is, if that's the case, how do we, you know, how do we understand this? Can you talk a little bit about what is psychologically abnormal? What is a psychopath? What is a sociopath? And how might we identify them amongst perpetrators? Because then we're going to move on to sort of talking about

you know, the rest of us and the rest of people.

Alette Smeulers (45:31.863)
Yes, a very small minority of the perpetrators are indeed sadists, predators, psychopaths. a psychopath is someone who doesn't have empathy, conscience, or even fear. And those are people who just are out there for their own benefit. They...

Waitman Beorn (45:35.943)
Thanks.

Alette Smeulers (45:58.509)
just don't see any moral issues, any moral problems, but also don't have the empathy for other people. They simply cannot see the world through the eyes of another person. And psychopaths are usually associated with serial killers, because serial killers generally are indeed psychopaths. But it's not true, the reverse is not true. Not all psychopaths are serial killers.

psychopaths can actually be well functioning CAOs of big companies. Because a psychopath lacking empathy and conscience doesn't always mean that you're therefore by definition violent and criminal. You can also have learned to guide your behavior.

What I found the most intriguing finding through my research, I came across the book by James Fallon, The Psychopath Inside. And James Fallon was a neuropsychiatrist who studied brain scans. And at some point he was asked by a colleague to study brain scans of serial killers, psychopath. And...

He saw the brain scans and compared them with brain scans he had himself. And he saw a clear difference. So there is a biological element in becoming a psychopath. It has to do with how the brain is functioned and it has to do with certain neurotransmitters psychopaths have. But then he discovered a very interesting thing. In his control group, there was one

person who had the brain of a psychopath who had a similar brain scan to the psychopath So he got intrigued by that and he tried to figure out who that was and then realized that was his own brain scan which led to this incredibly interesting book called the psychopath inside because then he was like hey, this is weird

Alette Smeulers (48:15.565)
and also intrigued him of course because he turned out to have the similar brain as the serial killers. So then he realized, he started, it's a very, it's a quite thin book but extremely interesting. He started to talk to people, his family, his friends, interviewed them, study, psychopathy and everything. And then he realized that he in many ways was a psychopath.

Because he indeed lacked empathy, indeed lacked conscience, he just did what he wanted to do. But he was a non-criminal and non-violent psychopath because he was raised well and he was trained well and his mother actually told him, yeah we knew you were different. And then he came to, I think, very important conclusion that

it's not just the biological factors that play a role, but also the way you are trained. And that was confer or trained, raised in this case, of course, kids are not trained, but raised by their parents. So how you are raised. And that came to an important conclusion, which is confirmed by others that

It is always the combination of factors. So psychopaths are people indeed with a biological lack of empathy and conscience, but it only leads to criminal, aggressive, violent behavior if they were also abused or badly or had a lack of love in their youth as a child. And then it interacts and leads to horrible things.

Waitman Beorn (49:58.671)
And so this is if I'm I'm understanding correctly, you know, psychopathy is basically a genetic predisposition that you can't develop into a psychopath, a clinical psychopath over over your life. Either you sort of are or can you can you become one?

Alette Smeulers (50:20.609)
Well, it can get worse, of course, and it depends a bit on the interactions. So in principle, you have the biological setup, but then it depends on the conditions in which you are raised. But it might also be true that you are a psychopath, but you're raised in a warm, loving family. So it never showed.

But then you get, you end up in a period of war and then suddenly the interaction with the environment might lead you to show more extreme behavior than other people do. Also what is suggested by Fallon and I assume it's supported by others, but that I'm not entirely sure. But he says there might also be an intergenerational effect or a mode.

also be an effect for people living in a period of war. he even before the current violence in Israel and Gaza, he pointed out that for instance people living under repression in Gaza might develop a more extreme brain and might develop a certain trauma which might lead to psychopathy.

And that's even more true nowadays. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (51:50.747)
I mean, and that's that's a fascinating if we take a step back, because you also talk about the biological roots of violent behavior, which aren't necessarily abnormal psychology, right? So they're not necessarily they're not so psychopaths, but but that it's parts of the brain, right? That trigger or are triggered by violent behavior. And those people would be considered.

psychologically normal people, right?

Alette Smeulers (52:25.623)
Yes, sometimes it's parts of the brain, sometimes it's the neurotransmitters, but also sometimes it's the way people are raised. You can be born with a perfectly normal brain mind, but then you have to survive in a very abusive, dangerous situation.

And what I've learned, and I was intrigued by that as well, from, I'm not a biologist, so I'm not an expert, what I've learned from reading about it is that certain deficiencies can develop over the course of a lifetime if you are in a very dangerous situation where you're abused. So it's always an interaction between the individual and the environment.

And that can have an effect on your brain on how genes function and work and which abilities of the genes or neurotransmitters or brain aspects you use or don't use.

Waitman Beorn (53:30.277)
I mean, think that's a really good point. mean, and it goes back to this other one, too, of the power of of the brain, particularly in the cognitive dissonance sense of of, know, and you actually I think you had to quote the quote in the book from. Reserve Police, probably one of one from Chris Browning's work of the guy who the way he justified his his killing was that the guy next to him was killing the mothers and so.

he would only kill children. and that was literally his coping mechanism, because then he said, well, without the mother, you know, it became an act of mercy or whatever. Right. And so you have, you have this nice mix in, in, in, in your analysis of, you know, potentially people have some kind of physical brain, anomaly, but most of us are able to sort of manufacture that, that anomaly, you know, from a, just from a purely psychological perspective.

Alette Smeulers (54:30.903)
Yes, that's also what I found fascinating to see the different ways how people can get there. And it could be biological reasons, could be social reasons, it could be a combination. yes, people, in this example, I also find it the most intriguing one, how you see how far people can go in justifying and rationalizing their own behavior. Because the guy you just quoted correctly,

he participated in a genocide and yet he doesn't see himself as the bad person because he was only killing children but he kind of redefines it in his own mind as an act of mercy and that is amazing I think that that is the very dangerous ability that we have as human beings is to kind of trick our own minds in believing we do the right thing

Waitman Beorn (55:16.699)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (55:29.575)
And that leaves to another question that I was thinking about, because this is the version of the book that I have, I think is a second edition or so. Or it's a revision of your previous work, because you say in introduction that you added some categories to it that you hadn't had in your previous work. And so I guess, you know, my question then is, was, what were the challenges? Who was the hardest person or the hardest people

to categorize when you're thinking about this because one of the nice challenges of having a of a categorical approach is that you have to really make a decision about, I'm gonna put this person here or this person here. And it makes you really think about your categories and your choices. So I'm curious, maybe if you have a couple examples of people that you found really difficult to pin down one way or the other.

Alette Smeulers (56:27.927)
Yes, also good question. The way I did it is more or less pile them or group them together. And whenever I found someone like who doesn't fit entirely to see whether that would be a new category or not. And there are some people who are quite

quite difficult to categorize. this brings for instance back the memory of trying to categorize Josef Mengele. Josef Mengele was of course the Nazi doctor who did these horrible experiments in Auschwitz, mainly on twins, but not only on twins. So he seems like a sadist.

And yet, if you look at him and what really motivated him, the starting point was absolutely the ideological belief that the German people, the Nazis, were superior to others. So that was the basic starting point. And of course, within Nazi Germany at the time, it's tied in with the general circumstances. And yet,

his behavior was mainly triggered by a certain kind of ambition. He wanted to become a famous scientist and he saw because the Jews but also other inmates in the Contracion camps were so devalued, so dehumanized, he saw them as literally as guinea pigs.

and suddenly having certain opportunities that no one else would have. So there you see behavior that from the outside is very sadistic and of course it's extremely cruel but sadism is primarily defined not by its cruelness but by the motives of the perpetrator and although he might have had some sadistic tendencies that was not

Alette Smeulers (58:39.181)
The prime motive was to become a famous scientist and to become a professor. Which I also felt striking to read, being a professor myself, where you suddenly realize, my gosh, this guy is doing that to reach something in a career where you can think, is that...

worth it? Do you really want to do that? And also realizing, well, I'm in that position and he is doing that to get into that position. And it gave me the shivers. And he was also one of the people I initially found difficult to qualify or decide. think intuitively, I'd put him on the pile of the sadists, but then reading more about him, analysis of other mostly historians.

I then put him in the profiteers category.

Waitman Beorn (59:36.991)
Well, and it also, it also, think, highlights the importance of sort of the professional guardrails that we set up, you know, the moral, ethical guardrails. And obviously you just pointed out one of them is, you know, even before we had the concept of the Nuremberg code, but the idea that, you know, we owe a certain level of ethical consideration to, you know,

participants in experiments and this kind of stuff. But that once you take that away, um, in, you know, in the case of Auschwitz and other camps where you'd had literally a population of people that had no rights, no protections, then how quickly people like Mengele will say, great, I now can have my perfect control group for my experiment. Um, you know, and, just throw out all of the ethical moral concerns that, that were, that are sort of collectively agreed upon, um, in the profession.

And I guess, you know, of course, sadism is always a challenging concept in this because, as you point out in the book, you know, technically speaking, sadism has a sexual pleasure component to it. You know, one drives not just satisfaction, but a sexual gratification from it. And of course, you know, people use that he was a sadist that was sadistic a lot, you know, but by that definition, it's a very

difficult to prove because how do you, you know, how do you prove that, you know, and certainly there probably are people who are. I don't know there's a proper term or not, but sort of not sexually sadistic, but just do enjoy inflicting pain on people, you know, which is what I don't know what you would call that, because, you as you point out, technically speaking, it's as a sexual component, but I'm sure there people that just enjoy. Because it's the power or.

you whatever, like rape is about power, not sex, you for example, you know, and that kind of thing. I don't know if you have if we have thoughts on how do we think about about sadists in that sense.

Alette Smeulers (01:01:38.369)
No, think absolutely. Even rape is more about power than it is about sex. it's the power that gives a certain sexual satisfaction without necessarily being sex itself. And you do see quite a lot of people, perpetrators who do enjoy the power. This is also something, there are some people, and also I mentioned them in my book, who they're entirely

your lives were clear sadists and who very often you see that already in childhood where they torture animals and then later on they become perpetrators.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:18.055)
Mm-hmm.

Alette Smeulers (01:02:22.465)
But the enjoyment of power, even if it's not up till the level of sadism, that is what you see with a lot of perpetrators. And even in regular life without people going as far as the perpetrators we're talking about. But that is another very intriguing factor I found in my research that people enjoy power, but also change by power.

suddenly they realize that they have power and can make things happen. They can decide. And that apparently is a feeling a lot of people like and a lot of people then abuse. Which is also a sad factor. So you can be a totally normal, ordinary functioning person, but suddenly you become a much less nice, kind person once you are in a position of power.

And that is also what I saw in the book. And power therefore doesn't necessarily mean a lot of political power, but in a period of war, the one with the gun is already the one with the power. And yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:03:28.528)
Yep.

And I want to talk about a little about another thing that comes out of the book. I don't think it's an oversight. And so I'm not pointing it out as a criticism, but where are the women and how do we explain the fact that women appear to be much less likely to fall into the perpetrator category?

Alette Smeulers (01:03:55.915)
Yes, thanks for asking that question because Where Are The Women was supposed to be chapter number 15. I wanted to say something specifically about women, but the book was too long already and I had to cut it down. So then I realized a separate chapter on women doesn't make sense. But I've written on that elsewhere in a journal article on the women. So it is an intriguing question. Where are the women? By far most perpetrators are men. With regular

Waitman Beorn (01:04:01.36)
Okay.

Alette Smeulers (01:04:25.899)
crimes that is true but also if you look at genocide war crimes and terrorism most perpetrators are men. Why is that? I think there is first of all an important sociological or social element in it and a practical element. Why? Most perpetrators are members of a militarized unit and most members of militarized units are men. So in that sense it's very simple. Another reason is the way we train the different

the different ways we train boys and girls. Girls are way more trained to be empathetic, to be caring, to be kind, also to be submissive to a certain extent, whereas males are much more trained to be assertive, aggressive, and to stand up for certain things. So there is also this difference.

So that explains why there more men than women. women be perpetrators? Yes, absolutely. Women can be perpetrators if they also end up in these kind of environments. So women who enter these very male environments, sometimes you see them trying to prove themselves very strongly. They're one of the guys that they're not inferior.

And then sometimes they, in a war, they could be the most brave or the bravest soldiers, but they could also be the worst perpetrators if they end up in a unit that becomes or commits violence. And why is that? Because they try to make up for their, these organizations are very often very patriarchal. So they try to make up, show that they're worth.

their worth. So then they can commit horrendous crimes. I've studied quite a few of them. There are by the way also a few in the book. The one that immediately comes to mind is Biljana Plavcic, who was one of the leaders during the war in former Yugoslavia. So she was there also an important politician, very radical.

Alette Smeulers (01:06:43.433)
inciting other people. So there's one woman. What you see if women are in these kind of situations, you also see the outside world being even less understanding to their behavior as when men commit horrendous crimes. Why? Because they don't just violate our moral norms and rules on behavior, but also on what it is to be a good woman.

Waitman Beorn (01:06:48.551)
see if women are in these kinds of situations, also see outside worlds being even less understanding to their behavior as what men experience Christ. Why? Because they don't just violate the...

Waitman Beorn (01:07:13.232)
Is this a sorry, is this a function? Is this a function of misogyny in a certain sense, in the sense that that, you know, if if men and women were truly equal in society and treated equally and had equal opportunities, that women actually would would be more represented because they would be in positions of power and authority and would have the and would have the.

Alette Smeulers (01:07:14.068)
So they

Waitman Beorn (01:07:40.239)
as it were, opportunity to do this. whereas in a certain sense, because of the innate structures of patriarchy and misogyny and society, they are denied access to the positions where most perpetrators come from.

Alette Smeulers (01:07:56.749)
Yes, absolutely. If our society would be entirely equal and if women would be in militarized units, you would see many more women committing such crimes. On the other hand, it is also true that it's not just about being men or women, it's also how you qualify certain characteristics and features. So in these patriarchal societies, you...

value courage, assertiveness, aggressiveness, being a strong male. Whereas in these organizations certain typical features like showing empathy, being caring are qualified as being weak, feminine. Now to truly equalize the world more

I think apart from having women in certain positions, the other aspect, seeing empathy, caring as very important crucial factors would really change the world. And luckily we've seen some female politicians who do show not just the male sides of power, but also the male, I say that in brackets,

the male attributed side of power, they also show a lot of empathy. And I think that is crucial to get the world to a better place. So not just more women, but also these so-called feminine features as empathy, as caring. What a lot of men show as well, by the way. So it's in that sense, it's not just men, women, it's also how we

qualify certain features.

Waitman Beorn (01:09:55.623)
I was going to say, and this is another element that I wanted to address. And these things, I think, are deeply connected in the way that you just mentioned it. Maybe it's even better than talking about men and women. It's talking about masculinity and femininity and what these terms mean and how they're defined and precisely the way you just mentioned them. Because one of the things that runs through the book

a little bit under the radar is this idea of sexual violence and the fact that sexual violence so often accompanies genocidal violence or mass atrocities. And I think I want to hear you sort of reflect on that a little bit, but it seems like one of the arguments for why is that because genocide is associated with this toxic masculinity that then also

also is associated with sexual violence, both sexualized violence and sexual violence itself.

Alette Smeulers (01:10:59.372)
Yes, you see in a lot of conflicts, you see a lot of sexual violence. So it's very often it was qualified as inevitable side effect of war. And sometimes it's also used as a weapon of war in Wanda and former Yugoslavia was used as a weapon of war.

But very important research by Elizabeth Wood also said there are patterns, not in all conflicts, not in all wars, sexual violence is that prominent. So it can vary, there are variations, very much depending on the ideology, the people, how it's checked.

But in many ways, in many cases, you do see it a lot. Why? And I think it all has to do with this very patriarchal way of looking at things. Being strong, being powerful, being courageous. And seeing everything that is empathy, weakness, everything that is empathy, kindness as a certain weakness.

kind of also changes your worldview and in that sense you start to see the strong, violent, courageous men as a kind of model and you see then the women as more kind of war trophy. And what I also found intriguing to see that violating women, so sexually abusing them.

is very often not just a crime towards the women, but sometimes deliberately done to show the man you can't even protect your women. And that is a very misogynist type of motivation. So unfortunately it's strongly tied in with violence in general. But there it's important to

Alette Smeulers (01:12:58.966)
see the variation to say it's not an inevitable consequence. There's some male commanders very much aware of that and there's also some units where it doesn't or hardly occur because simply certain commanders are very strict on it and they have very clear rules. So that's possible and I think it's also very important to have now

Waitman Beorn (01:13:05.799)
you

Alette Smeulers (01:13:25.101)
at the ICTY, the ICTR, so the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, a lot of prosecutions for sexual violence.

Waitman Beorn (01:13:34.747)
Yeah, I mean, and it's one place that I've that I've certainly seen. At least in my studies, that ideology breaks down because, course, the in the in the Nazi sense, right, you weren't you weren't supposed to have sexual relations or contact with Jews because that was, you know, a deeply bad, you know, thing for the race, et cetera, et cetera. You know, but I found that that it's actually what happens with Mengele is much more the rule where.

You have a group of people with no recourse to rights, et cetera, et cetera, that are available. And Nazis frequently, you know, take advantage of that to commit sexual violence and assault and are not in the least bit motivated or hesitant because of these sort of ideological claims. You know, and it becomes a very, it becomes just another part of.

the way the Nazi state exploits its victims.

Alette Smeulers (01:14:36.417)
Yes, what happened basically, we started off with that the victims are dehumanized. But if you dehumanize someone, you also place that person outside the moral universe of obligation. So then you can still believe that rape is wrong, sexual violence is wrong, murder is wrong, torturing is wrong. But if that person is not considered a full human being,

then rape, torture, sexual violence, murder are all allowed. And that's the weird thing that perpetrators do not lose their whole moral stance. They just apply it with different norms, different values to different people precisely because some of the people they no longer see as people. They've dehumanized.

Waitman Beorn (01:15:27.077)
Yeah. And you have some really interesting quotes. I live my life in scare quotes. When I say great quotes, they're not great, but they're very illustrative, you know, from rapists who say, you know, all the things that it's a great example of cognitive dissonance as well. You know, this idea that will actually deep down, I think that she probably enjoyed this or deep down, she probably wanted this, which again,

paired with what you just mentioned in terms of dehumanization is another, another way that human beings are able to wrap, to twist their mind and mental gymnastics to make what they're doing acceptable. And, and you, you know, now that I mentioned it, it makes me now reflect on how, you know, not infrequently one of the quote dangers of Jewish women is this idea that they're very seductive.

You know, and so Nazis will talk about, you know, be careful because they're again, this is is victim blaming, right? This is but it's but it's also this sort of I think it's very much what you're talking about, this cognitive dissonance of, you know, I need to make it OK for when I rape this person. And so one justification for that is that will actually, you know, she's being very seductive and I, you know, fell prey to her wishes or whatever.

Alette Smeulers (01:16:50.094)
Yeah, absolutely. That's also why you have so many rape myths. Of course, many of the rapists, especially serial rapists, will to a certain extent also be psychopaths. If they don't have conscience, they don't have to soothe their conscience. But there are a lot of people who are not necessarily psychopaths and still sexual abusers. But that's why they keep believing in this rape myth that actually women...

Waitman Beorn (01:17:03.44)
Yeah.

Alette Smeulers (01:17:17.248)
like to be violently taken or that they enjoy it or that they are to blame. It's amazing how far they to go and still hold on to the rape myth. There's one it's also quoted in the book and I think it comes from Scully who wrote more on sexual violence said that a lot of rapists believe that people should not be that easily

prosecuted and found guilty for rape. Whereas in reality we know that sexual violence and rape is what we call there's a big dark figure that most women don't even come forward and it's one of the crimes that's most difficult to prove and yet rapists kind of reverse the entire situation say yeah it's way too easy

Waitman Beorn (01:18:11.107)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, again, it's I think you it's I'm forgetting the exact phrase, but the Joe Joe Gambon uses, but the idea that we have these zones where you can do whatever you want and do whoever you want. And I think that that's one of the things that comes to this entire conversation about perpetrators and genocide is. And again, it's a great I think you've done a great job of illustrating the.

the personal potential predispositions, but then also the situational factors, you know, and that, and that what genocide does is create a, a massive zone complete with people where moral obligations or societal norms are destroyed and then allow people either because they're predisposed or because all those norms are gone to then behave in ways that make them perpetrators.

Alette Smeulers (01:19:06.69)
Yes, absolutely. What I found a striking sentence is at some point you come into a world that you call its own, whatever you call it, where you suddenly have the freedom to hate, the freedom to hurt, the freedom to kill, because it's no longer defined as such and no longer defined as wrong. And that is problematic, that we can enter such worlds.

Waitman Beorn (01:19:32.057)
And I mean, without being too, you know, presentist, mean, I think that's also a danger of the moment that we're in now where, you know, things that when I was a kid, you could not say out loud in the news or in government, you know, whether or not you believe them now are just OK. You know, we've created a situation where you can you can do and say things that.

are clearly racist or clearly sexist or clearly homophobic or whatever. then at least you would be, you would suffer repercussions from even if only out of sort of polytests and societal norms that now just aren't. And of course that is a stepping stone, I think, to creating exactly the situation we're talking about.

Alette Smeulers (01:20:22.029)
Absolutely, because it's a very gradual process. bring back what I said earlier, the continuum of destructiveness. In Nazi Germany, Hitler rose to power in 1933. He didn't start the genocide in 1933. That started later. So it's a building up process. It's a gradual process. And the main thing is the normalization. And that's also why I'm really worried about the situation in the world right now, because so many things, exactly as you say, are starting

to get normalized, to speak out in certain ways, to show hatred in certain ways is normalized. To polarize is what people start to do and if one side starts to do the other side has to do it to kind of define themselves. So it's this normalization of

Again putting certain people, actually pushing them outside the moral universe of obligation, qualifying certain people, migrants as criminals, rapists, drug addicts. Yeah, it's very, very worrisome.

Waitman Beorn (01:21:33.703)
Um, well, we've, we've had a really, um, I think amazing and far reaching conversation. And on that happy note that you just mentioned, um, we probably should begin to wrap it up. But before we do, I always ask our guests, you know, what is one book on the Holocaust? And I know you, that you study much more than the Holocaust, but, um, what's one book that that's speaking to you right now or that you think is, is something that, our, our listeners should check out.

Alette Smeulers (01:22:04.077)
I couldn't decide on one, so I mentioned two, if I may. The book that for me was also very important was Robert J. Lifton's Nazi Doctors. It's already an older one from 1988, but I found it very intriguing.

Waitman Beorn (01:22:05.829)
I'll give you two. Yeah, of course.

Alette Smeulers (01:22:22.513)
And only later I realized he to a certain extent also had different types of perpetrators. What I found intriguing. But his question as to how can even doctors be involved in genocide. I thought back then was very important. So that's my one of my absolute favorite books. And I have to mention Christopher Browning's Ordinary Man.

where he really shows the social dynamics underlying the Holocaust and the genocide and especially one of the quotes you already mentioned earlier but I also want to mention the one thing in that book that stands out that a lot of perpetrators were asked well why didn't you step away because they were given the opportunity and that people said

we didn't want to be considered a coward. And I think that is one of the most telling quotes that you think, okay, you don't want to be seen as a coward and that's why you joined genocide. But that shows the tremendous social and social psychological pressure on individuals. And I think it's crucial in understanding why and how people commit genocide.

Waitman Beorn (01:23:48.519)
and

Alette Smeulers (01:23:48.993)
So these two books would be my favorites.

Waitman Beorn (01:23:51.279)
And that last bit, again, is worth highlighting. I always I always point out to people that to me, the most frightening. You know, revelation or whatever that I've learned in my years of studying the Holocaust is is not it's not the fanatics, it's not the true believers, it's not the people that are, you know, willing to die for the cause. It's it's precisely as you point out, it's how mundane and powerful.

motivations can be to get people to do terrible things. mean, that, you know, the the fanatics are much fewer and far between. the fact that somebody can, you know, murder children out of a fear of what his friends will think about him is to me far more terrifying than, you know, someone who is a fanatic willing to do anything for the cause. And again, thank you, everyone, for listening.

If you're finding the podcast to be engaging, insightful, useful in your your your life, please leave a comment or a like, subscribe, all those good things. And Aletta, thank you so much for coming on and talking us through this topic.

Alette Smeulers (01:25:04.888)
Thanks a lot for having me and I loved being here.