Okay, before you come at me, I'm not antisemitic or anything. I just watched Apt Pupil and was in the mood for something that explored the same mindset.
(And yes, I know the film was based on a SK novella.)
I specified fiction only because I hardly think Nazis were sitting down and writing soul-baring memoirs after WWII. From what I understand, the memoirs we have are full of lies, justifications and half-truths.
No one actually goes into the twisted mindset, the hatred, that made them take joy in seeing people hunted down, tortured and gassed to death. Or… not seeing them, as it were, since they used gas chambers to remove the psychological toll so many killings would have taken on even the most hardened and eager SS overseers.
by saturday_sun4
3 Comments
Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
It’s more of a speculative fiction/horror novel, but *Tender is the Flesh* deals with a lot of the psychological questions of obedience, justification, dehumanization, sociopathy, etc.
It’s told from the perspective of a slaughterhouse worker in an alternate future where certain humans are bred to be butchered and eaten like cattle.