THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENEMY CREATION
Richard A. Koenigsberg

Why do I focus on Hitler, Nazism and the Final Solution in order to understand the dynamics of collective violence? My strategy grows out of the hypothesis that enmity lies at the heart of political violence. Collective forms of violence are initiated when a national group conceives an enemy as a mortal threat. There may be an actual conflict justifying this idea, leading to the belief that one's nation has no other choice but to wage war to defend one’s nation.

         In the case of Nazi Germany, the Jewish enemy constituted no actual threat. Jews in Germany and throughout Europe and the Soviet Union possessed little or no political power. Nevertheless, Hitler believed Jews constituted a mortal threat, necessitating defending the nation against this threat. Jews everywhere had to be eliminated in order to prevent the destruction of Germany.

         Nazi Germany is an ideal case illuminating the psychological dynamics of enemy creation: a certain group is defined as a mortal threat, yet does not actually constitute a threat. What led Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and other Germans to experience Jews as a mortal threat? What was the symbolic meaning of the Jew? What was the nature of the threat  Jews were imagined to pose?

         Hitler and Himmler required that SS-men kill all human beings identified as Jews wherever they could be found. They killed old ladies, three-year-old babies, pregnant women, and so forth. It didn’t matter who you were or where you were. Jews by their very nature were conceived as a mortal threats and therefore enemies of the German people.

Perhaps an understanding why Jews were conceived as a mortal threat to Germany will illuminate the broader dynamics of enemy creation or construction. What is the nature of the threat "enemies" are imagined to pose? I hypothesize that enemies constitutes a symbolic or psychological rather than a genuine threat.

Perhaps there is a profound desire or need to create enemies. Perhaps political situations are created or brought into being in order to create enmity so that war can be waged.