Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

by Christopher R. Browning

Shortly after the war, Theodor Adorno and others developed the notion of the “authoritarian personality.” Feeling that situational or environmental influences had already been studied, they chose to focus on hitherto neglected psychological factors. They began with the hypothesis that certain deep-seated personality traits made “potentially fascistic individuals” particularly susceptible to antidemocratic propaganda.9 Their investigations led them to compile a list of the crucial traits (tested for by the so-called F-scale) of the “authoritarian personality”: rigid adherence to conventional values; submissiveness to authority figures; aggressiveness toward outgroups; opposition to introspection, reflection, and creativity; a tendency to superstition and stereotyping; preoccupation with power and “toughness”; destructiveness and cynicism; projectivity (“the disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world” and “the projection outward of unconscious emotional impulses”); and an exaggerated concern with sexuality.