The Ordinariness of Extraordinary Evil: the Making of Perpetrators of Genocide and Mass Killing

Abstract

According to Jewish-Christian tradition, the first time that death appeared in the world, it was murder. Cain slew Abel. ‘Two men,’ says Elie Wiesel, ‘and one of them became a killer.’¹ Throughout human history, social conflict is ubiquitous. Wars erupt naturally everywhere humans are present. As Winston Churchill said, ‘The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.’² Since the Napoleonic Wars, we have fought an average of six international wars and six civil wars per decade. An average of three high-fatality struggles have been in action somewhere in the world at any moment since 1900. The four decades after the end of the Second World War saw 150 wars, involving more than 60 member states of the United Nations, and only 26 days of world peace — and that does not even include the innumerable internal wars and police actions. Buried in the midst of all of our progress in the twentieth century were well over one hundred million persons who met a violent death at the hands of their fellow human beings in wars and conflicts. That is over five times the number from the nineteenth century and more than ten times the number from the eighteenth century.³