Emotional Traumas Made Nazis into Serial Killers

Nazi leaders, to be more precise – and perpetrators of the Holocaust and other serial mass murders, to be precise completely. Serial mass murderers, sure – but still serial killers. Textbook mission-oriented serial killers.

Now the existential (for four million Jews and millions of other Nazi victims) question is: How on bloody (literally) earth did smart, talented, well-educated (mostly) individuals, well-integrated into German society, with normal loving families become serial mass murderers??? What the hell (literally) happened?

To answer this genuinely existential question, we must turn to the studies performed on such well-known serial killers as Ted Bundy, Westley Allen Dodd, Arthur Gary Bishop, Keith Jesperson, and Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber).

It was not limited to men – infamous Aileen Wuornos was diagnosed with PTSD that likely stemmed from her abusive childhood and continued traumas in adulthood.

It turned out that these individuals acquired at some point in their lives (usually in childhood or youth) a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In other words, they received either one colossal emotional trauma – or s series of powerful such traumas over weeks, months or even years.

One of the consequences of PTSD is “fight-or-flight response”; another is the development of various phobias. In religious terms, it means that victims of PTSD often develop a lethal combination of rage and fear – two in this case literally deadly sins. In extreme cases, PTSD can make its victims deadly aggressive.

It appears that this is exactly what happened to Nazi leaders, other Nazis… and lots of other Germans (the latter could be rightfully called the “PTSD nation”). Hardships of war (first and foremost, hunger caused by Blockade of Germany), humiliating defeat in First Great War; grossly unfair terms of a criminal Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation, Great Depression; constant fear of being invaded from the West (by France) and from the East (by the USSR) … no wonder they got PTSD.

As all these highly emotionally traumatic events were directly or indirectly associated with Jews, it is no surprise that Nazi leaders (as well as other Nazis and ordinary Germans) developed acute Judeophobia: fear of and hatred for the Jews.

Which – combined with the “slabs” in the “slab stack” – ultimately transformed Nazi leaders into serial mass murderers and triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” that killed four million Jews. Obviously, it does not absolve Nazis of their crimes – it only explains them.