2/13/02

Roy Summerford,

Saddam Hussein

AU PROFESSOR LOOKS TO HITLER FOR CLUES TO TODAY'S IRAQ

AUBURN -- Why are some rulers able to get their followers to commit heinous crimes that those citizens would never even consider as individuals? What can the larger-than-life villians of World War II teach us about today's confrontations with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden?

Peter Harzem, the Hudson Professor of Psychology at Auburn University, turned to political psychology in developing a framework for considering these questions. The AU professor has presented his findings at a conference of the International Society for Political Psychology in Germany.

Harzem says he sees two main approaches that seemingly monstrous leaders take in getting their followers to perform horrible deeds on their behalf. Rulers such as Hitler and Stalin, and more recently Saddam Hussein, manipulate the power of the state to set up a system that offers incentives for cooperating and severe penalties for resisting. Others, such as Japan's rulers during World War II and Bin Laden today, either work behind the scenes or outside formal governments to exploit emotional attachments for which their followers are willing to kill and die.

More than a half century after his death, Hitler remains an enigma. The German people, long noted as among the world's most analytical populations, would seem to be the last to fall under the messianic spell of any leader, Harzem said.

"On the surface, it makes no sense that large numbers of people would be so inspired by a leader to go out and commit absolutely horrible crimes on such a massive scale," Harzem said.

"It is too easy to say a ruler is able to get people to act against their basic instincts because he has a lot of charisma," he added. "Many leaders have had more charisma than Hitler, and many of those leaders also lack high moral standards, yet most of them did not inspire their followers to commit heinous crimes on a massive scale."

Even when a ruthless ruler has the will to inspire mass murder, he needs something more to convince significant numbers of people to participate. Harzem says tyrants such as Hitler and Stalin use the machinery of the state to manipulate their people rule through fear. Sometimes the fear involves the prospect of harm to one's self or family; other times it involves fear of losing gains made under the ruler.

"Fear of personal harm is often a factor, but it is usually not the only factor," Harzem said. "Many Germans who supported Hitler had suffered great economic losses before he came to power, and they suddenly found their conditions much better under him, at least at first. Even when there was no direct threat of physical harm, they were afraid of losing what they had gained if they went against him."

While proponents of a U.S. war with Iraq compare Saddam Hussein with Hitler as an "evil" ruler, Harzem avoids use of such subjective, hard-to-define terms. Instead, he bases his comparison on the Iraqi leader's ability to use the machinery of government to control his people. The Iraqi ruler remains in power, Harzem said, because those under him are willing to take any means necessary to avoid his wrath and protect their own interests. Each level of the hierarchy keeps the one below it in line, he added.

Harzem noted that tyrannical governments usually begin to crumble once the despot is removed from power. When they have the patience and ability to do so, outside powers will usually try to contain the offending government and keep it from spreading, as the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The communist government of the Soviet Union survived Stalin by four decades, but it eventually crumbled of its own weight in 1990.

The AU psychology professor said containment is a good strategy as long as the outside powers can keep the tyrant within his borders and the tyrant's abuses against his own people do not become unbearable for those watching from outside. But when the crimes of the tyrant become too heinous to ignore or the ruler overreaches in his quest for territorial gain, outside powers may feel they have no choice but to intervene, as they did against Hitler in World War II or Serbia's Milosovich in the late 1990s.

The other kind of tyrant, the kind who holds a messianic sway over his followers, is much more difficult to overcome, but usually stays on the scene a shorter time, Harzem said.

"Someone who can recognize and play upon the deepest emotions of a people can unleash a great deal of harm," he said. "It is only a small step from convincing large numbers of people to die for a cause to convincing them to kill for the cause."

Leaders such as Bin Laden do not depend on the machinery of the state to sustain their hold over the people, Harzem said. Instead they convince their followers that their cause is ordained by their god, anyone who stands in their way deserves to die and they, themselves should be prepared to die in behalf of their god. People are vulnerable to exploitation under such circumstances, he noted. In the 1930s, Japanese worship of their emperor as a god made them vulnerable to exploitation by warlords who led the country to devastation in World War II. On a smaller scale, cult leaders such as Jim Jones in the 1970s have led hundreds of followers at a time to death in the name of religion.

"Charisma is a factor but a much greater factor is the passion the followers hold for their beliefs," he added. "Charisma can enable the person to inflame the passion of belief that is buried below the surface; if the followers' belief is not strong to begin with, a leaderšs charisma alone will not work."

The cause that drives people to kill on its behalf will often outlive the leader who invoked it, Harzem noted. Only when people become disenchanted with the cause, as the Japanese in defeat abandoned worship of their emperor in 1945, will they cease fighting for it.

Disenchantment with a cause will often come of its own accord, Harzem noted. Signs from Iran indicate that young Iranians have largely rejected the religious fanaticism shown by their parents' generation during the late 1970s and early '80s. The country's ruling religious elite now relies on control of the government, like Hitler and Stalin before them, rather than religious fervor to hold the people in line.

Whether they are ousted by external or internal forces, most despots eventually fall from power as reason takes hold among their followers, Harzem said.

Harzem, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales, has been an AU faculty member since 1978.

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