The Nazi Party, or the National Socialist German Workers' Party, is a political party established in 1919 on the foundation of National Socialism. The party amounted to unrivaled power fourteen years later under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. It promoted extreme nationalism, German pride and the calamitous ideology of antisemitism, which resulted in the death of approximately 6 million European Jews.
What stood out was that the tremendous figure of 6 million was not achieved through any weapon of mass destruction. It was simply people killing people in ways so horrific history would never again be the same. The SS, German government and military officials clearly played a significant role in the Holocaust, but "ordinary" people like civil servants, lawyers, doctors, judges and even railroad workers participated in the horrendous crime as well.
How did Hitler make them his killing machines?
The answer can be found looking through the lens of the deindividuation effect, with ample consideration to the fact that it was artificially created by only one man - the notorious Adolf Hitler.
Hitler utilized the persuasion method to produce the deindividuation effect. He brought the people together through action-motivating speeches that awoke the German pride inside each of them. He painted a hideous pictures of the "enemy" - the countries that signed the Treaty of Versailles and forced Germany to assume massive responsibility and reparations for WWI, whose action Hitler called unjustifiable maltreatment. He convinced the German population that as Germans, they were the mistreated underdogs whose power shall rise once again from the remnants. Using his superb oratorical skills, Hitler created a common enemy and provoked a group pride and identity, or to quote Hitler himself, "the great feeling of comradeship of being part of the group." His people now share his values, and injecting the idea of antisemitism now seemed too simple a task. His order of killing was further backed up by the effect of deindividuation:
Anonymity: As the Nazi party became the only political party in Germany, Germans all belonged to one large group, which provided a sense of security because they would not be found out. The effect was more pronounced among the SS: they shared the same uniforms, wore the same hair cut and operated under direct command from the same leader.
Diffused responsibility: This aspect derived from the anonymity created from being in a group. No specific individual was responsible for the killing, which made the job drastically easier.
Group size: All right, this one we get it. The whole nation was involved.
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