If there were such a thing as a "Nazi inside all of us" I think the best way to suppress it would be to have an abundance of resources and freedom. People who are happy generally don't go out and kill people.

THANK YOU! While I have expounded upon the absurdity of linking the Nazi regime with “atheism” or “Darwinism” here: The Holocaust, this is a point that I forget to mention and that people often gloss over. From a cultural and ideological standpoint, the Nazis bear significant resemblance to the Christian wing of the far right in the United States. (This is, after all, the area on the political spectrum the Nazis were located on). Nazism was a highly reactionary ideology, deploring the decline of “traditional values” owing to the rise of Weimar democracy and foreign influence. They were firm believers in traditional roles and in reactionary, highly conservative society. For example, the Nazi attitude toward woman can be summarized by the “Three K’s”, that is, “Kinder, Kirche, Kuche”, children, church and cooking. The Nazis were fiercely anti-intellectual, despising rational discussion and preferring to exploit mass psychology by employing highly sophisticated propoganda techniques and appealing to crowds with mass rallies. They hated intellectualism and despised critical thinking, re-engineering the education system to eliminate these things. The education system in Nazi Germany was redesigned to reinforce the expected conservative roles that the new generation was expected to slot into. At the zenith of this Nazi obsession, school for boys had become almost Spartan in nature, with over 50% of curriculum time being taken up by military drills and physical education, whereas girls had the bulk of their courses based on cooking and sewing, and were only allowed to study rudimentary mathematics insofar as it would be required for the most basic tasks at home.These practices were only halted when officials were warned that the new generation they were creating was so overwhelmingly incompetent that they would be incapable of running a technical society. It may also interest you to know that as part of the Gleischaltung during the Nazi rise to power, they banned freethought organizations in Germany.

 The Nazis also developed an entire society based wholly on in-group/out-group morality. They emphasized the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, where a model Nazi society would be based on a select set of in-groups and the out-groups would be exterminated or employed as slave labour. As a result, Nazi society became quite simple. You were either an “insider” (a member of the Volksgemeinschaft), or an “outsider”. The Nazis aimed to create a model society in which these “undesirables” who the Nazis called Ballistexistenzen (literally a “waste of space” ) were dragooned into forced labour and/or exterminated. These “out-groups” included Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, anti-socials, the homeless, unemployed, alcoholics, the mentally and physically retarded, Slavs, conscientious objectors, Jehovah’s Witnesses*, etc. etc.

I would be hesitant to use the phrase “Nazi modules” and I would also not be so quick to say that any action in history made the Nazis appear “saints” by comparison. Whereas the emphasis on hatred of out-groups is certainly quite universal, the degree to which Nazi society was so systematically based entirely on this principle is quite unique. Additionally, the policy of Vernichtungslagern (extermination camps) is so unique (it has no analogue in all history) that it deserves to be considered far more overwhelming and appalling  than the “normal” human tendencies toward suspicion of out-groups. The fact that the Nazis engineered a continent-wide policy of extermination and slave labour based entirely on ideological beliefs and obsessive visions serves to indicate quite a unique event in history. The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer pointed that, paradoxically, the paroxysms of hatred that the Nazis were driven to by the idea of anyone different is what made them different. They obsessed with a vision of a new world where the Nazi jackboot would crush all those not part of the Volksgemeinschaft and the degree to which they actually pursued this and pursued it successfully also serves to indicate just how unusual Nazi society was.  

However, in answer to your question, I would say that the best way to “keep these tendencies at bay” is to understand them on an intellectual level. That way, you are more likely to recognize the tendencies for what they are and as a consequence. Certainly, I can tell you that possessing a firm understanding of instincts in terms of false positives/post hoc fallacies has helped me tremendously in terms of formulating sound methods in scientific investigation. Also, ironically, having a firm understanding of crowd psychology serves to…well, innoculate against crowd psychology.

*Actually, it may interest you to know that Jehovah’s Witnesses at Auschwitz needed only to sign a form indicating denouncement of their beliefs (the Nazis hated them because they refused to take part in the armed forces or production of arms)  to get released from the camp. Astoundingly, there are very few instances of Jehovah’s Witnesses actually signing them. Himmler was so impressed by the fanaticism of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that he exhorted his SS to have exactly the same attitude toward their work.

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The OP asked if Nazism could be analyzed through the lens of science. In other words, would it be possible to find a biological/neurological explanation for the actions of the Nazis as opposed to a purely cultural/ideological one. Your post does not appear to have anything to do with the topic at hand.

I believe its more of a combination of things, from cultural hatred (Europe at the time, especially Germany followed Luther's version Christianity for a long time), they had been morally crushed from the previous war, financially destroyed, high unemployment and in the end mob mentality. All these conditions where there and the broiling anger of a society destroyed by it's previous leaders and it's enemies, all it needed was the proper leader to direct that anger and hatred. Hilter choose a few things, the most easiest target was the Jews, having always been thought as controlling money and banks (even today those conspiracies are there) as well as homosexuals and eventually non Aryans (as eventually the Nazis used Aryan Christianity to spread it's hatred towards non-Aryans). However the first targets were Jews and gays, traditionally the ones the German Church and well Christianity was against in Europe at that time (even up to the early 1900's the catholic church would take the child from Jewish parents if the child had been baptized a catholic, almost always in secret), these groups where always targeted by the church and viewed that they would destroy the values and traditions of a society if they were allowed to continue.

Much like Rwanda, where the church used its traditional values and of course it's desire for power, it sided with the government and the government used the church to spread it's hatred towards Tutsi, and the hutsis followed through with a mob mentality and cultural hatred of tutsi's and the blessing of the church commit the genocide against the tutsis.

Had they been financially ok, none of these atrocities would have occurred. Pot Pol, Russian communism and Chinese cultural revolution, all have very similar things, poverty, desire for power, a common enemy and a dogmatic beliefs. Even before there were all these things from previous atrocities. As a society that has been morally devastated by poverty and ill leaders has lead to these problems. There are a few exceptions of course, with in regards to exploration and expansion. However normally they attack within their own country or others within their society as most of the time to attack other nations it would have taken money they didn't have to do such attacks. Of course in the 20th century technology helped easily move beyond a countries boarders.

But that's my take on it.

Here is an excellent article on this police squad whose aim was the extermination of Jews, homosexuals and non-Aryans:

http://www.wzaponline.com/BrowningReview.pdf

I concur with all of the arguments put forth regarding the effects of extremist ideologies on crowd psychology, the impact of WW1, the desire for power, etc.. Yet there were groups such as the Police Battalion 101 who consisted of ordinary men no different than us who were not under the direct influence of the Nazi ideology and were not hateful of Jews to begin with. All of the sociocultural arguments put forth have no bearing on the transformation of ordinary Germans such as these into killing machines. I would also point out that these Germans had every opportunity to avoid killing and received no threats to their lives (or their families) for disobeying. They were a voluntary police unit who acted like exterminators ridding a house of insects!! These folks at the outset were not wholly different than the sane empathetic individuals like you or I.

The question I have is that among these ordinary folks, what exactly went on in their heads. It is analogous to asking why a devoutly religious individual who was kind and compassionate then become a suicide bomber. I am not saying that their behaviors arose out of a vacuum or that Nazi genes made them do it. But it doesn't take a lot to transform anyone into a heartless killer. There must be innate cognitive mechanisms which predispose us to violence  that are present to begin with (that are present in us all) which even in very subtle sociocultural circumstances can make us brutal killer savages.

I think to better understand hate and violence (as seen in extremist societies), it would be a mistake to shoulder the blame solely on the ideology. I think that the prevailing ideology and other sociocultural circumstances must trigger innate tribal mechanisms of violence toward other groups. I think this is worthy of scientific investigation to prevent genocides.

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but I was bored and reading it again.

Previously, I had stressed one of the most terrifying aspect of the Nazi dictatorship was it's anti-intellectualism, it's use of mass psychology, bland and simplistic rhetoric and sophisticated techniques of propaganda. I thought I would share a bit of irony with you. You are all no doubt aware of the constant pointing by apologists at the slew of dictatorships throughout the 20th century as examples of the horrors of atheism.

I've never discussed this with anyone before, but ironically, it was partially the study of precisely these dictatorships that pushed me to active atheism, and to science as a profession. The fact that it was the study of history that led me to this may seem odd, but let me try to articulate. I first studied modern history in detail at the ages of 15 and 16 and then in more detail at 17. My study focused entirely on the single party states of the 20th century: the USSR, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, China, Japan, Iran and Italy. In the course of my studies, the common link between them that interested me was not atheism (certainly not in the case of Iran or Japan) but anti-intellectualism. Even today, it chills my blood to think about the collective insanity of the Red Guards during the cultural revolution, or the savage and deliberate murder of anyone even remotely suspected of being educated at all in Cambodia. Not all the dictatorships of the 20th century were atheist. Some, like that of the Taliban and that of the Iranian theocracy, are quite the opposite. But if you want something to link the many single party states of the 20th century, look no further than anti-intellectualism. During the course of my study of these dictatorships at 15-17, I was so horrified by the countless examples of collective insanity that gripped people under the barrage of absurd propaganda and groupthink. From the book burnings of Nazi Germany to the denouncement of professional education as bourgeois by the lunatic Red Guards, the deliberate and calculated assault on learning, rationality and thinking in the case studies I encountered made me sick. I swore to myself that I would do everything in my power to inoculate myself against the mass psychology, and to firmly commit myself to the principles of intellectualism and learning. Because I was simultaneously discovering a talent for science and mathematics, the course I embarked on was natural. I had always been atheist, but the study of modern history was a key factor in pushing me toward active dislike and then disgust with religion since it is grounded on the very same corrosive nonsense discussed above.

So, yeah, irony.

While we're here, something funny:

Isn't it cute that you'll often hear about the apparent dangers of an intellectual elite seizing power and 'dogmatically' forcing people to act intelligently? You'll hear the standard rhetoric about Hitler being a misguided genius or Mao being the stern-faced and totally objective yet simply 'too ruthlessly cunning' to be an effective leader; even in contemporary times you'll have people insist, refusing any possible alternative, that Bush was secretly a mad genius all along.

It's obscene bullshit.

Upon anything deeper than a cursory examination based on hearsay, we get a much different picture. Hitler, for example (in keeping with the OP) was, by all accounts, completely insane (likely due to brain damage he recieved via a mustard gas attack). We see that intellectual support is among the very first things destroyed by most totalitarian regimes, that education is often crippled to some extreme extent (if not entirely outlawed) and that tremendous, glaring mistakes and misunderstandings - not intentional acts of destruction - have caused some of the most horrifying tolls of death we've ever seen (there are arguable exceptions in the case of Stalin, who very clearly intended - for example - to enact the Ukrainian genocide. Stalin, however, is himself the exception to rule, as he was - through and through - a clinical sociopath).

For a real case study that is fresh in my mind, Alison and I recently had a heated argument about Enver Hoxha's leadership in Albania, as she argued that he still caused plenty of death and misery even though he enforced policies to encourage secularism and intellectualism. Yet, if we look at what happened in Albania, we see that it was not the policies geared towards the goal of educating people that caused the misery (quite the opposite, in fact: Hoxha's insistence that Albanians become educated and lose their superstitious beliefs resulted in Malaria virtually disappearing from the country and the literacy rate skyrocketing): it was the policies Hoxha implemented that he was utterly wrong about that invoked the horrors. His abolishment of abortions, for example, exacerbated what was to turn into a fod crisis; his silencing of political rivals and illegitimate arrests of clergymen created waves of unrest; his insistence that Marxist communism and Stalinist dictatorship would eventually bear him unattainable fruits eventually disintegrated the economy after it's brief recovery; etc.

While Hoxha certainly did some smart things, it was the stupid things he did that resulting in Albania's binding into a police state and the eventual collapse of 'Hoxhaism'.

If we do wind-up killing ourselves off, it will not be because we were 'too smart'. It will be because there were too many stupid people taking advantage of what a few smart people concieved, that they themselves simply couldn't understand fully enough to safely handle.

Not fer Nuthin'...But if nothing else,  those Nazis were snappy dressers.