Perpetrators of Genocide and Mass Violence: Comparative Perspectives from Sierra Leone and Nazi Germany

In this Conflict, Confrontation and Justice research seminar, organised in collaboration with the UCL Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Dr Kieran Mitton (King’s College London) and Franziska Anna Karpinski (Loughborough University) will consider perpetrators of mass violence in different geographical, historical, and political contexts from multiple disciplinary perspectives in the context of Sierra Leone’s civil war and the Holocaust. Offering a global, comparative view of perpetrators' motivations and behaviours, and the role played by emotions and values, the papers will raise challenging questions of guilt and responsibility, race, ethnicity and gender, and the legacies of mass violence.

Speakers

Dr Kieran Mitton, Lecturer in International Relations, King's College London: Rebels in a Rotten State: Understanding Atrocity in Sierra Leone

The atrocities of civil wars present us with many difficult questions. How do seemingly ordinary individuals come to commit such extraordinary acts of cruelty, often against unarmed civilians? Can we ever truly understand such acts of ‘evil’? Based on a wealth of original interviews with perpetrators of violence in Sierra Leone’s civil war, this presentation offers a comprehensive picture of the complex individual motives behind seemingly senseless violence in Sierra Leone’s war. Highlighting the inadequacy of current explanations that centre on the anarchic nature of brutality, or conversely, its calculated rationality, it sheds light on the critical but hitherto neglected role played by the emotions of shame and disgust. Drawing on first-hand accounts of strategies employed by Sierra Leone’s rebel commanders, it documents the manner in which rebel recruits were systematically brutalised and came to perform horrifying acts of cruelty as routine. In so doing, it offers fresh insight into the causes of extreme violence that holds relevance beyond Sierra Leone to the atrocities of contemporary civil wars.

Franziska Anna Karpinski, Ph.D. Student in Modern History, Loughborough University: Masculinity, Honour and Shame in the SS - Leadership Views and Regimes of Punishment

Exploring perpetrator peer dynamics within the SS and based on a close reading of archival material such as SS directives, SS court documents and internal correspondence amongst the SS leadership, this paper illuminates how the concepts of collective and individual honour and masculinity were defined, negotiated and practised within the SS, as well as how these concepts fuelled violent peer interaction. This discussion will be embedded into the socio-political conditions of the Third Reich: the Nazis envisioned the re-structuring of German society among the lines of a 'racially homogenous' Volksgemeinschaft led by an authoritarian leader. The paper will examine, in particular, what virtues and ideals the SS leadership prescribed for SS members, how, why and with what consequences masculinity and honour were appropriated by the SS and woven into mandatory SS directives, and how masculinity and honour were implemented to inform SS peer interaction. It will also highlight how shame and shaming within the framework of the SS functioned as a tool of social control and punishment. An analysis of honour, masculinity and emotional dynamics within the SS can help understand its processes of radicalisation and its both immensely violent and self-destructive nature. Hence, this paper provides an empirical and conceptual contribution to the extant historiography about what drives Nazi perpetrators.