One of the books I’ve been reading lately is Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, the autobiography–yes I said autobiography–of the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. An estimated 1 to 2.5 million people (mostly Jews) were killed at Auschwitz, and it was Hoess who perfected the techniques of mass killing which would make Auschwitz the most deadly concentration camp.
Hoess was captured in 1946 (pictured) and wrote his autobiography (pictured) while awaiting execution. He was hung at Auschwitz in 1947.
There are many, many things to write about this book, but in this post I’ll mention only one. The other day I was speaking with John Dias of www.dontmakehermad.com. John was telling me about his arrest on false domestic violence allegations and what it was like in jail. While Dias was eventually cleared, he told me “just being in jail for a little while was hell–you’d do anything, anything to get away from some of the criminals there.”
What he said reminded me of one of the themes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s prison memoirs The Gulag Archipelago, one of my favorite books. Solzhenitsyn said one of the worst parts about being in a labor camp was the way common political prisoners like himself were terrorized and manhandled by the prisoners who were ordinary criminals.
Solzhenitsyn said that one common theme among the political prisoners during World War II was “wait until the Red Army veterans start coming to the camps–they’ll put the criminals in their place.” Yet Solzhenitsyn reported with amazement that when the Red Army prisoners did begin arriving in 1945 and 1946, they were manhandled and terrorized by the common criminals just as badly.
Men who had defeated the Nazi armies–and 90% of Germany’s WWII casualties were on the Eastern front–couldn’t stand up to them. Men who had fought in the two most important battles in all of human history–Stalingrad and the Kursk Salient–were incapable of organizing and resisting the criminals. It amazed me when I read it.
Now, 15 years after pouring through the Gulag Archipelago, I see a passage on this same subject in Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz. Hoess fought in World War I and later was part of the German Freikorps, which resisted the French occupation. He was imprisoned along with many of his comrades in the early 1920s. Hoess writes:
“As a political prisoner I was kept in solitary confinement. At first I was not at all happy about this…but later on I was quite thankful, in spite of the many small amenities that life in the larger communal cells offered…[in solitary] I escaped the hideous bullying practiced by the real criminals in the larger cells…[their] bullying is directed mercilessly against all who do not belong to the criminal fraternity…even the strict supervision of a Prussian prison was unable to prevent this terrorism.”
The same theme as Solzhenitsyn–Hoess and his comrades were all World War I veterans who had faced machine gun fire, poison gas, and all the horrors of trench warfare, yet they were “terrorized” and “bullied” by common criminals.
I can’t say I really have much of an explanation for this. I suppose one reason would be that Hoess and Solzhenitsyn and all the military veteran prisoners still had their eyes pointed towards the outside world, whereas criminals are accustomed to the prison environment and are focused on how best to achieve advantages and privileges there. It would take quite a change of mind for a noncriminal prisoner to reorient himself this way.
Anybody else have any theories?
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Artfldgr said,
men like that who go to prison wish to preserve ‘their humanity’, and so they do not become sociopathic.
without the protections of free society (the things we have been deconstructing), the population breaks up into such groups where the more human ‘weakers’ are at the whim of the sociopathic and more overtly dominant. the time prefernce shifts to shorter time, so what is immediatly dangerous takes precidence. meanwhile normal social structure allows us to live lives of longer time preference. we think slower but deeper, not faster and shallow like instinct.
our old strictures of denying people the fruits and kindness of society for having a bad reputation was a social protection from sociopaths in the local group space. a gossip network would quickly inform the local social group that this person did this, and so that person would find that people would act elite then not let them in. (one way or another we get this. either we do this organically, or the state does, often by our own demand when the social network is degreded. however certain ideologies which do not allow for this protection, leave the general population unlinked and vulnerable causing the percieved need for the state to replace or deny the natural structure).
when we talk about cultural behaviors in the past, we rarely examine them with the concept that there are peoplel with different mentalities among us. some smarter, some without guilt, some devious, some violent, etc. and no gender having a lock on any of them.
that the successful habits of culture may just be abstractions with ulterior motives. that the abstract behavior creates a situation that results in some abstract protection, while to the people, it is some custom which survives. when you conserve these behaving ways, things are better, when you dont, things seem to fall apart and people become vulnerable. (sometimes they are double reinforced by a positive religious structure the reminds or helps tighten and amplify the better ones. religions that dont also amplify the better choices of culture die out or are anemic because the behaviors they enjoin tend to not create as positive an outcome. often the more productive ones are hated by the less productive ones. this is a whole other line of stuff)
if the culture is stable for a long time, without breaking, then many of these things become genetically reinforced (so when broken, we will converve on some similar equivalent. we have ‘natures’). we then want these situations because we feel more comfortable in them. we like beautiful healthy vistas and think they are more beautiful than sterile blighted ones for reasons, and not for nothing. those that gravitated to sterlil blighted lands, tended not to do as well)
for a pop psych kind of example: our female partners, want us to come to the store shopping with them, even though we dont give opinions and maybe dont even carry anything. just there. we feel useless and dont understand why we are in the store. the awareness of the trend and having no real explanation for it gives us a wealth of jokes on it too.
look around and see how the clothing store is all laid out. the clothing racks are like bushes… some tall as trees. on the wall its like vines, and she and you wander the trails as she gathers. she is oblivious to you. she is doing her thing (finding a sweater without a pulled thread. the perfect something), you feel dumb being there. well back when, when she wasnt gathering with the other ladies, she would need her man (when he wasnt hunting), to protect her when she is out to her secret locations where she knows she can get things and the others dont know where they are (advantage for her family).
as the guy, your there to protect her from things that are not there any more (lions, tigers, and bears). she feels better and likes it when your with her doing this, she gets upset when you dont (the bond reinforces or fails because these situations in the abstract are favored). it makes no sense to you. you dont understand that by not being there its like abandoning her to the wilds. what you do know is that your life and your relationship is better when you do go at least sometimes.
so somehow, without realising this, we kind of have this knowlege that we have to do these things (we dress them up in culture we like). those that do it better or match up on their action and reactions, do better. this behavior though silly in the store, can be seen in so many customs and behaviors we do and expect as ‘right’. its so embedded in us that we dont even realize that we take a stance without ever cogitating a valid reason why. sometimes with tomes of thought undecided on why. yet when we see porn, we know what porn is, even though we cant verbalize it.
culture gives meaning to the abstractions.
it allows us to do what we need to do naturally without having to understand why we feel the need to do them. freeing our minds to integrating these needs and choose how to fulfill them more in the longer term.
the sociopaths are wired differently. they are human parasites of humans. prison doesnt have this kind of interlocked supportive culture. prison has a more dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, if your ‘useful’ then your ok culture, that constantly shifts. prison type living is the abstraction as to why men watch boxing, to keep understanding who the top dog is and understand the new structure even as it shifts from day to day. the winners are the top dogs and the one people will have to rally behind. knwoing who the winners are day to day can be critical to survival. this is reinforced to feel good so that we converge on this when the time is needed. (thousands of different things like this overlayed on each other and the circumstances of life can tease them out if there)
the majority cant find the meanings in the behaviors in a way that they can project outwards, even though these behaviors make them behave when they are subjected to them.
the sociopaths understand how to keep them off balance, and they are too confused and cant prepare. they cant improvise violently without remorse, or respond that way fast enough like instinct (you can say they are domesticated).
in this structure they are like the person that always thinks of a good come back an hour later.
in a social culture that is interconnected, being late with a comback is ok, because thats no longer important, but in prison situations it results in being too slow to fight (or transmitting your intent way before you act), and knowing it. the prison criminals also have the advantage of biological reinforcement of winning. which is why they pounce on a new entry. they are dmoralized by having to be there, and by pouncing they drive his testosterone down, and put him out of their level. this is why they never stop for long aon anyone, that person would then no longer have a depressed level of hormone. get spunky enough, got to take him down a few notches. (abstraction, got to lower his testosterone, and raise mine, or keep it up).
its not having remorse is a weakness, its that the population unity tends to create a lot of things we take for granted that support us and in the prison, these are gone. we havent spent a lifetime acting this way, the real criminals (as you call them) have. (these things are also gone in totalitarian state or states with enough power to be equivalent on many levels. the state then acts like the thugs in ways that demoralize since that lowers testosterone and lowers people from taking action to change the system).
once the population sorts itself this way, the ones on the bottom work that area of the system. they try to be of value in exchange for some protection… others try to be invisable… etc.
there is always more… but i write too long anyway.
hows that for a kind of long hypothesis?
May 22, 2008 at 6:17 pm
lieweary said,
As for the soldiers being unable to beat down the criminals, that’s no surprise, since wars are fought with guns, while in prison it comes down to muscle.
May 22, 2008 at 10:06 pm
amfortas said,
Animal is another way of looking at the psychopathic criminal (most violent crims are psychopaths). We have a common genetic heritage drawn up from a prehistory which takes in most of animal forms. Much of the expression of some genes is dormant and overlain with civilisation and specifically human genes - these being adaptations in the main.
Some people have stronger genetic expression suited to cats which prey on birds in that gleeful carnage that takes place in the bushes of our back yards. Some of we ordinary folk are more like bower birds, busily collecting and parading and preening. The criminal predators and hyena-type scavangers will overwhelm any herd or flock animal in a trice.
May 22, 2008 at 10:40 pm
jackal1994 said,
Additionally sociopathic people are very persuasive. A lot has been written on how OJ didn’t lose very many of his friends because of his charm.
Also the criminals would have banded together and attacked in packs hyena-like so that individual toughness would have counted for little.
Not to mention the political prisoners would have (likely) been facing odds of probably 50 to one.
May 23, 2008 at 8:35 am
lieweary said,
May 23, 2008 at 12:40 pm