conuly

The above makes many good points. I'd also like to point out, many people do this. But ask someone within the field of psychology why the Holocaust happened, and you generally won't hear, "Hitler was a monster". You'll hear about Milgram's experiments that show thatr most people will kill someone if the person telling them to has sufficient authority and tells them it's in a good cause and that they (the person doing it) is not responsible but they (the experimenter) takes full responsibility for the consequences. Also the dehumanization, but that was covered well above. Milgram varied many factors, and dehumanization, such as putting the victim in a different room out of sight, makes it much easier to torture/kill them.

You'll also hear about Asch's (or is it Asche? it's been a while) experiments showing how difficult it is for someone to speak up with a dissenting view when there is a perceived unanimous opinion.

You might hear about Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, showing how people are highly prone to adopting the roles that they are given.

And yes, you might hear about psychopaths. A small percentage of the population actually is kind of monstrous. They have no concern for anyone's opinions but themselves, and the ones that get noticed are the ones who become serial killers. They are generally arrogant and viscious and actively different from all other humans, as best as is known. They actually could be described as monsters, and they are not like the average person. They will do things that most people will not. However, there is no evidence that I'm aware of that Hitler was a psychopath. And there is a lot of reason to believe that most of the people involved in the Holocaust were not psychopaths. They were acting the way most people will in teh circumstances they were put in. And that is what makes the Holocaust (or other genocides I know less about) so incredibly scary. Because they are people acting the way people are prone to act.