The authoritarian personality– Adorno- F scale – many Germans had authoritarian personality types due to the disciplinarian socialisation common at the time.
Crimes of obedience state crimes involve obeying higher authority-the state- as part of a role into which individuals are socialised. Green and Ward note that torturers are often socialised through propaganda about the enemy.
Modernity Bauman argues that four features of modern society made the Nazi holocaust possible; a division of labour, bureaucratisation, instrumental rationality, and science and technology. However, not all genocides involve an organised division of labour and in the Nazis case, racist ideology was also important.