The Joy of Pain (27 page)

Glick points out that if hatred toward Jews was simply a function of their being a threatening outgroup, this alone would not explain the nature of the hostility directed at them. If it was a straightforward function of threat, then once the basic threat was dealt with, hostile action should cease. Hatred of the Jews was a thing apart, however. The Nazis wanted to eliminate Jews arguably because, in part, their very existence created painful envy. Envious hostility predicts a willingness to suffer in other respects, as long as the envied object can be neutralized or destroyed. The goal of elimination trumps many other concerns.

Consider the Nazis' treatment of Albert Einstein. Imagine if Einstein had not been a Jew. He would have been feted as the best example of Aryan superiority. But, inconveniently, he was a Jew and, as would be the pattern expected by envy-inspired hatred, the Nazis undermined their full potential by virtue of their treatment of the Jews. If the talents of Einstein and other Jewish scientists had been harnessed by the Nazis, the German war effort would likely
have benefited greatly. Germany might have been the first to develop an atomic bomb. Instead, Einstein and other brilliant scientists were persecuted, forced to leave Germany, or delivered into the incomprehensible horrors of the extermination camps.
³⁵
But again, people feeling envy get little enjoyment over contemplating the achievements and brilliance of those whom they envy, even when these achievements might lead to some form of personal gain. And so, envy provides a way of understanding why the Nazis would act in puzzling, counterproductive ways.

Stereotypes alone can generate envious, prejudicial reactions—and one result is
schadenfreude
. A study done with Princeton University students by Mina Cikara and Susan Fiske assessed people's reactions to negative events happening to members of one of four kinds of stereotyped groups.
³⁶
Each group fit one of the four categories of the Stereotype Content Model. Cikara and Fiske predicted that members of stereotypically envied groups (i.e., a high competence/high threat type of group) would create more positive reactions to the group member's suffering than any of the other three categories. A self-report measure and a physiological measure both confirmed this prediction. Compared to the other three groups, the suffering of envied groups generated less empathy and more smiling.

Can we extrapolate such findings to better understand the Nazis, whose stereotypes of Jews were at the far extreme? As the Nazis rose to power, humiliation, violence, and destruction against Jews increasingly became the sanctioned norm and, ultimately, government policy. Keenly aware of the wealth, property, possessions, and professional positions held by many Jews, the Nazis focused on taking these things away, often violently. Sometimes property was simply destroyed, as in the events of
Kristallnacht
, in which many Jewish shops were damaged and synagogues were burned. Most average Germans were probably shocked and disturbed by these extreme actions. They did not have the stomach for it, especially since scores of Jews were also killed in the process. Some, such as pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, resisted the Nazis from the start. He noted, “If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor
in the opposite direction.”
³⁷
But it may be that these increasingly brutal actions occurred in part because not enough people were expected to object, because many actually turned a blind eye—and because some displayed their appreciation and pleasure.

We can be confident that Hitler was pleased. Although Hitler disguised his role in
Kristallnacht
as well as his enthusiasm for it, there is evidence for both. Historian John Toland relates a credible account from Fritz Hesse, one of Hitler's press agents. It occurred on the very night of
Kristallnacht
, during a dinner at which Hitler, the Propaganda Minister Goebbels, and other Nazi leaders were present. Hesse was also there, and he overheard Goebbels telling Hitler that the attack against the Jewish businesses and synagogues was about to happen. Hitler's happy reaction to this information was unmistakable. Hesse remembered that “Hitler squealed with delight and slapped his thigh in his enthusiasm.”
³⁸

Hitler also recognized that many Germans did not share in his exuberance, and so he pulled back from these violent tactics. Instead, a series of laws was passed and policies implemented that did the job in a “legal” manner more fitting the sensibilities of the average German. These actions may have pleased the mildly envious in a way that the violent approach could not. In any event, many Germans
benefited
directly or indirectly, whether it was the shopkeeper who was able to get rid of competition or the student who was able to take the position in a professional school that otherwise might have gone to a Jew.

There is ample evidence showing the common pleasure that some Germans took in the suffering of Jews, such as gathering to watch Jews scrubbing streets with toothbrushes or soldiers pulling the beards of old Jewish men. There was
schadenfreude
aplenty.
³⁹
Historian Donald McKale gives an example of how the Nazi leadership responded to the horrific conditions created by herding many Jews, mostly in Poland, into ghettos. A Nazi “leisure” organization,
Kraft durch Freude
(literally meaning “Strength through Joy”!), supervised bus tours. German soldiers took these tours through the ghettos and laughed at suffering Jews as if they were visiting the “zoo to see animals.”
⁴⁰
Funerals were interrupted so that the soldiers could pose for photographs with rabbis and the grieving family members.

Of course, inferring the
actual
emotional amalgam associated with these and other actions is difficult. Nonetheless, envy provides one credible explanation
for some of the behavior that emerged and the pleasure this behavior often produced in witnesses—and in perpetrators.

I suggested in the previous chapter that once
schadenfreude
becomes the normative response to the mistreatment of a group of people, worse behaviors, even genocide, might enter the imagination of the envious person. In this sense, as Russell Spears and Colin Leach note,
schadenfreude
can be a kind of deliberate passivity which provides encouragement for others willing to commit further and more extreme mistreatment.
⁴¹

Schadenfreude
may motivate action in the observer too. When envy is at the root of
schadenfreude
, I argue that the line between passive and active becomes quite blurred. Enjoying misfortune evolves into longing for misfortune and then the willingness to bring it about. Mina Cikara and Susan Fiske did another study testing the Stereotype Content Model. This one assessed
actions
associated with envious prejudice. They showed that members of stereotypically envied groups might also suffer more
harm
compared to the other three groups.
⁴²
Participants in the study were asked to imagine that they were participating in a
Fear Factor
–type game show. They were further told that they had the power to choose various ways that other group members should receive punishment in the form of a painful (but not lethal) shock. Members of stereotypically envied groups were most often chosen.

I have stressed envy's habit of transforming itself. For one thing, envy begins to “feel” like resentment, and, if a misfortune occurs to the envied person or group, it will “feel” deserved. Also, when
schadenfreude
is rooted in envy, there arises yet another incentive toward action because the envying person will not want to admit to his or her envious motive. Such an admission would be to concede inferiority and unjustified hostility, which in most people would cause shame. These are powerful reasons for people to deny their envy. Who wants to admit inferiority, and who wants to admit this as a reason to hate others? The shame in this blend is a terrifying threat to one's self-worth and, as so many scholars have pointed out, leads to all sorts of
less than conscious
defensive strategies to avoid both the public
and
private owning up to these feelings. The late social theorist Leslie Farber put it well when he suggested that envy has a
protean “talent for disguise” that may fool others as well as “the envious one himself, whose rational powers may lend almost unholy assistance to the need for self-deception.”
⁴³
Thus, if the envied target is harmed, the deservingness of this outcome is emphasized and justifications work backward, in part from the action to the reason for the action. The target will be vilified, dehumanized, and then seen deserving of this treatment. The invidious roots of this pattern are usually well buried or camouflaged. Disgust rather than sympathy prevails.
⁴⁴
As Mina Cikara, Susan Fiske, and others also suggest, the addition of the intergroup element (“us” vs. “them”) probably enhances these processes.
⁴⁵
Now, one is acting for the group and against the enemy. Collective, group goals rather than personal “selfish” goals seem to be the motivation for Germany and the Reich, rather than a personal grudge.

In Hitler's case, as I argued earlier, once he could convince himself that the Jews
deserved
his hate, without attributing to himself an envious motive, he could vow to destroy them. And vow he did. In a speech to the Reichstag in January 1939, he foretold the fate of the Jews. He claimed that, during his long struggle, Jews laughed at his prophesies of gaining power and enacting a “solution of the Jewish problem.” But he claimed that these same Jews were “now choking” on this laughter. As if he believed he would have the last laugh, he prophesied the “destruction of the Jewish Race in Europe.”
⁴⁶

On January 20, 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, the SS led a meeting of many leaders of the German bureaucracy whose cooperation would be needed in enacting the full-scale, systematic genocide of the Jews. The Wannsee Conference was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Nazi security agencies. Adolf Eichmann, who would later hold chief responsibility for planning the killing operation, also attended, along with various other SS officers and Nazi officials. The plans were not unanticipated by the representatives; many already knew of mass killings that had already been taking place as the German army advanced into Eastern Europe. A written record survived from this meeting, only slightly altered by euphemistic phrases to veil its full purpose. This record, along with retrospective accounts obtained later from, for
example, Israeli interrogations of Eichmann, reveals the eager, accommodating attitude attendees had for the plans.
⁴⁷
Given our understanding of
schadenfreude
, I suspect there was more eagerness over it than we can know.
⁴⁸
But investigation by Donald McKale indicates that, after the meeting, cigars and cognac were shared merrily by Heydrich and other attendees. Eichmann, himself, later recalled how satisfying it was to know that the “Popes of the Third Reich” had put their seal of approval on the plan, thereby seeming to rid everyone of doubts. He said, “At that moment, I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feelings, for I felt free of guilt.”
⁴⁹

In his book on the Wannsee Conference, historian Mark Roseman also infers that
schadenfreude
was part of how Heydrich and others Nazi leaders felt about the meeting.
⁵⁰
It was probably true that almost all the attendees supported the goal of exterminating the Jews, but there were a few sticking points that might have created objections. One had to do with the many Jews of mixed parentage or Jews who were married to non-Jews. Heydrich probably expected that Wilhelm Stuckart of the Interior Ministry would advocate greater protection of Jews in these categories. Not so. Just about all of the officials voiced their desires to exterminate the Jews quickly and completely. Eichmann's recollections may reveal a desire to exaggerate the enthusiasm of the attendees so as to lessen his own accountability—nonetheless, this was his assessment:

[N]ot only did everyone willingly indicate agreement, but there was something else, entirely unexpected, when they outdid and outbid each other, as regards the demand for a final solution to the Jewish question. The biggest surprise, as far as I can remember, was not only Bühler but above all Stuckart, who was always cautious and hesitant but who suddenly behaved there with unaccustomed enthusiasm.
⁵¹

Roseman notes that the “galvanized” Heydrich sent copies of the protocol to the attendees.
⁵²
In an accompanying message, he wrote that “happily the basic line” had now been “established as regards the practical execution of the final solution of the Jewish question.”
⁵³
It was now official. Genocide was the plan, and it was a cause for celebration.
⁵⁴

Schadenfreude
in its most disturbing forms and guises was there to see, whether envy was part of the formula for its presence or not. Interestingly, the
2001 film
Conspiracy
, which attempted to recreate faithfully the actual Wannsee Conference, has
schadenfreude
as a dominant theme throughout—from the crude anti-Semitic jokes to the bursts of enthusiasm and rappings on the table generated by each step in the direction of finalizing the plans for the Jews' annihilation. There are hints of the role of envy, masked, as would be expected, by a transmuted righteous belief that the Jews deserved this fate. At first, Stuckart (played brilliantly by actor Colin Firth), as the historical record indicates, appears to have some resistance to the extreme measures being proposed. He reminds everyone that he was the primary author of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws establishing the legal definitions of various categories of Jews that were the basis for codifying their persecution. Indiscriminate deportation of Jews by the SS, in his view, would create legal chaos. He overhears one of the SS officers saying to another attendee that Stuckart must “love” the Jews. This triggers in him a vigorous defense of his “credentials” as a hater of Jews, and a more sophisticated one at that.