Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

the nouveaux riche aspects of the German empire. The kaiser suffered from a

birth defect that left his left arm withered and useless. It was claimed that he

overcame this handicap, but the effort to do so left its mark, and despite

efforts of his parents to give him a liberal education, the prince became im-

bued with religious mysticism, militarism, anti-semitism, the glorification of

power politics. Some have claimed that his personality displayed elements of

a narcissistic personality disorder. Bombastic, vain, insensitive, and pos-

sessed with grandiose notions of divine right rule, his personality traits paral-

leled those of the new Germany: strong, but off balance; vain, but insecure;

intelligent, but narrow; self-centered yet longing for acceptance. [Editor’s

note.]

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PONEROLOGY

extremely typical that in many German families having a

member who was psychologically not quite normal, it became

a matter of honor (even excusing nefarious conduct) to hide

this fact from public opinion, and even from the awareness of

close friends and relatives. Large portions of German society

ingested psychopathological material, together with that unreal-

istic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of

arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selec-

tion.

This occurred during a time when a wave of hysteria was

growing throughout Europe, including a tendency for emotions

to dominate and for human behavior to contain an element of

histrionics. How individual sober thought can be terrorized by

a behavior colored with such material was evidenced particu-

larly by women. This progressively took over three empires

and other countries on the mainland.

To what extent did Wilhelm II contribute to this, along with

two other emperors whose minds also were incapable of taking

in the actual facts of history and government? To what extent

were they themselves influenced by an intensification of hys-

teria during their reigns? That would make an interesting topic

of discussion among historians and ponerologists.

International tensions increased; Archduke Ferdinand was

assassinated in Sarajevo. Unfortunately, neither the Kaiser nor

any other governmental authority in his country were in pos-

session of their reason. What dominated the subsequent events

was Wilhelm’s emotional attitude and the stereotypes of

thought and action inherited from the past. War broke out.

General war plans that had been prepared earlier, and which

had lost their relevance under the new conditions, unfolded

more like military maneuvers. Even those historians familiar

with the genesis and character of the Prussian state, including

its ideological subjugation of individuals to the authority of

king and emperor, and its tradition of bloody expansionism,

intuit that these situations contained some activity of an un-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

109

comprehended fatality which eludes an analysis in terms of

historical causality.36

Many thoughtful persons keep asking the same anxious

question: how could the German nation have chosen for a Fue-

hrer a clownish psychopath who made no bones about his

pathological vision of superman rule? Under his leadership,

Germany then unleashed a second criminal and politically ab-

surd war. During the second half of this war, highly-trained

army officers honorably performed inhuman orders, senseless

from the political and military point of view, issued by a man

whose psychological state corresponded to the routine criteria

for being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Any attempt to explain the things that occurred during the

first half of our century by means of categories generally ac-

cepted in historical thought leaves behind a nagging feeling of

inadequacy. Only a ponerological approach can compensate for

this deficit in our comprehension, as it does justice to the role

of various pathological factors in the genesis of evil at every

social level.

The German nation, fed for a generation on pathologically

altered psychological material, fell into a state comparable to

what we see in certain individuals raised by persons who are

both characteropathic and hysterical. Psychologists know from

experience how often such people then let themselves commit

acts which seriously hurt others. A psychotherapist needs a

good deal of persistent work, skill, and prudence in order to

enable such a person to regain his ability to comprehend psy-

chological problems with more naturalistic realism and to util-

ize his healthy critical faculties in relation to his own behavior.

The Germans inflicted and suffered enormous damage and

pain during the first World War; they thus felt no substantial

guilt and even thought that they were the ones who had been