The Humanization of 20th Century Europe’s Perpetrators: How Humanizing Our History’s Perpetrators Can Better Our Future

Abstract

This thesis examines the need for the humanization of 20th-century Europe's perpetrators, the Nazis, through literature. The purpose of this project is to make clear why the standpoint that Nazis were once ordinary citizens is not detrimental but rather helpful in our understanding of the Holocaust. I focus on literary works Der Vorleser (The Reader), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and The Dutch Wife, as they support my argument that the humanization of perpetrators can be educational. Within these chapters, I discuss the psychological explanations of how and why a moral person dehumanizes him/herself in order to take part in mass genocide, the relationships between the Nazis and their complicit-by-extension loved ones, and how such ideologies affect future generations. Essentially, I propose that novels which humanize fictional Nazis are useful in our strife to create a future society in which extraordinary evil, such as seen during World War II, is a thing of the past.