The Banality of Courtesy and the Depth of Evil

As a translator who has witnessed numerous court proceedings firsthand, I have often observed how stress, guilt, and shame can surface unexpectedly in defendants or witnesses. People lose their composure, break down in tears, or lash out defensively under pressure. These emotional ruptures are not uncommon. That is why, when I read about the behavior of the defendants at the main Nuremberg Trial, I found something deeply unsettling - not in their anger or denial, but in their composure.

According to Gustav Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diaries, the principal Nazi defendants, including those accused of organizing or enabling the Holocaust, presented themselves as courteous, polite, even respectful toward their prosecutors, judges, and the court process itself. Some, like Julius Streicher - a rabid antisemite despised even by his fellow defendants - appeared calm and friendly in manner, despite showing no remorse for the hatred he preached. This contradiction, between their monstrous deeds and their civil demeanor, is difficult to reconcile. We expect mass murderers to be visibly monstrous. We want to see their guilt on their faces, in their voices. But instead, what emerged was a group of men who - externally - seemed entirely human.

The image is even more chilling when one considers Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of Auschwitz, who was later called as a witness at Nuremberg. Höss spent time in the same prison wing as the main defendants, and Gilbert describes him similarly: quiet, respectful, emotionally controlled. He was not like Oskar Dirlewanger or Amon Göth, who were by all accounts sadists. Höss, instead, comes across as a cold, dutiful functionary. A man who administered the deaths of over a million people not with fury or glee, but with efficiency.

I read Höss’ memoirs - written while in Polish custody awaiting execution - and what struck me most was not the vividness of his descriptions, or the horror of what he did. What haunted me was his tone. He writes as though recounting a career, not a crime. He presents himself as a man with a normal childhood, a traditional military path, and a life of order. His account is devoid of rage, ideology, or sadism. But it is also devoid of guilt. He speaks of logistics, of stress, of staff management. He discusses the psychological strain on his men when carrying out gassings, but barely acknowledges the suffering of the victims. He does not deny the killings. But he describes them without emotional texture. It is this lack of guilt - this vacuum where a conscience should be - that chilled me most.

Yet not all perpetrators were like him. There are numerous instances of individuals who broke down, who confessed in tears, who expressed genuine remorse. I think of Hans Stark, who sobbed in court when describing pouring Zyklon B into the gas chambers as a young SS man. Or Franz Stangl, the Treblinka commandant, who after years of self-justification finally collapsed in grief and admitted his moral responsibility in interviews with Gitta Sereny. There is also Albert Speer, whose willingness to accept a share of guilt at Nuremberg set him apart from most others. These men were not innocent, but they were capable - eventually - of moral reflection. And perhaps that, in itself, is a thin thread of human redemption.

There is a dangerous temptation to categorize all Nazi perpetrators as monsters, to strip them of their humanity because their crimes were inhuman. But the true horror lies precisely in the fact that they were human - that they came from normal families, had children, hobbies, even affections. Rudolf Höss loved his garden. He went home to his family each evening while people were murdered on the other side of the fence. He was not a sadist. He was something worse: a man who could orchestrate mass murder without needing to dehumanize himself. A man who could compartmentalize duty and conscience so thoroughly that he never truly reflected on what he had done.

Some may argue that such people are emotionally defective or brainwashed beyond hope. But others, exposed to the same ideology and orders, later felt remorse. That tells me there is always a choice, even if it is buried deep. The human conscience may be suppressed, but it is not easily extinguished. Some perpetrators were capable of guilt - even if it came too late.

In confronting evil, we look for signs. We want villains to wear their cruelty on their faces. But history teaches us that evil can be banal, quiet, polite. It can wear a uniform, speak gently, and go home at night feeling no conflict. That is the lesson I take from Höss and his peers. The absence of guilt is not proof of strength or discipline - it is evidence of a soul evacuated of empathy. And that, to me, is the most terrifying thing of all.