On Moral Behaviour and Cognitive Dissonance: Reflections on the State of Humanity During World War II

It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander.

This haunting passage encapsulates the central message of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, a 2010 book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. Snyder offers a sprawling, meticulously researched, chilling account of the mass murders committed before and during World War II in the “Bloodlands”—the region of central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and parts of Romania and Russia) where Stalin and Hitler’s regimes intersected in the 1930s and 1940s. 

While I had some prior knowledge of the horrors of this time and place in history, I could never fully grasp their magnitude. In reading Snyder’s comprehensive treatise, I learned a great deal about the political and cultural context of the war, and specifically about how the Nazi and Soviet regimes interacted (and sometimes cooperated) to cause untold devastation in the Bloodlands. As a result of the collective crimes of Hitler and Stalin, 14 million unarmed men, women, and children were killed in the region. The victims died via executions, human-made famine, and death camps, all of which were planned and implemented through deliberate government policy. 

A thought that struck me throughout Bloodlands, as Snyder details the Soviet Famines, the Great Purge, the German Hunger Plan, and the Holocaust, was how the perpetrators attempted to justify their actions. According to Snyder, “No major war or act of mass killing in the twentieth century began without the aggressors or perpetrators first claiming innocence and victimhood.” The perpetrators had various motivations, but in general, they believed that they were the true victims and that their actions were a just and logical response to the supposed misdeeds of their enemies.

One of the most disturbing elements of Bloodlands is the depiction of the perpetrators, whether Nazi or Stalinist, as fundamentally ordinary human beings. How could regular civilians inflict such unspeakable harm? What does it reveal about human nature? These questions have been pored over extensively, and numerous theories have been suggested. The concept of the banality of evil was put forth by Hannah Arendt in her reporting on the 1963 trial of the infamous Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann. Arendt believed that evil can manifest through basically well-intentioned people who are simply doing their jobs. 

A related explanation is that the perpetrators engaged in a form of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that was first investigated by Leon Festinger in 1957. It refers to the mental discomfort that arises from simultaneously holding two conflicting beliefs or values. 

Festinger argued that ideas can be either consonant or dissonant. Consonant ideas connect and flow logically from one another. Dissonant ideas, by contrast, are in opposition. Human beings instinctively seek consistency between what we believe and how we behave, i.e., consonance.

Consider, for example, a person who habitually smokes cigarettes. They are aware of the copious evidence that smoking cigarettes is unhealthy. Yet they continue to smoke. 

This leads to cognitive dissonance—the tension that arises when one’s belief (smoking is unhealthy) contradicts their actions (smoking). Such a conflict between one’s beliefs and one’s actions can be deeply stressful and unpleasant. To alleviate their discomfort, the smoker might adopt one of the following three strategies:

1) Avoidance: In this scenario, the smoker tries to ignore the dissonance by actively avoiding information that brings their conflict to light. They might look away from anti-smoking ads or skip over studies articles that highlight the dangers of smoking. 

2) Delegitimization: This strategy involves undermining evidence of the dissonance. The smoker might engage in delegitimization by discrediting the person or group that provided the dissonant information. They might suggest, for example, that anti-smoking campaigns are unscientific or exaggerated. 

3) Minimization: A third way to mitigate the discomfort associated with cognitive dissonance is to minimize the importance of the contradictory belief. The smoker might produce rational arguments to minimize the negative impact of their behaviour, e.g., by arguing that the benefits of smoking, which include stress reduction, outweigh its harmfulness.   

Each of these defence mechanisms allows the individual to believe that they are acting in accordance with their values, and can therefore reduce cognitive dissonance, thereby restoring a sense of psychological harmony. The theory of cognitive dissonance might provide insight into the internal rationalizations that underlie the human capacity for evil.

Snyder’s Bloodlands reveals the intricate dynamics between the Nazi and Soviet regimes, and lays bare the unspeakable horrors of World War II. In addition, it raises questions about the complex psychological mechanisms that allow ordinary people to become perpetrators of mass violence. It is illuminating, thought-provoking, and well worth a read.

Note: I blogged about another one of Timothy Snyder’s excellent books, The Road to Unfreedom, earlier this year.