ABSTRACT
In ordinary language group psychology differs from individual psychological development. The forces of life and destructiveness, while active in each individual, are expressed in groups in the psychosocial (Hoggett, 1998). In large group behavior there is often no clear division between truth and illusionary (hallucinotic) beliefs. This was exploited by the Nazi leadership to create a dangerous group alterity that transformed citizens into a “community of murderers” who believed they were purging evil that threatened them and their future goals. Thanatopolitics ruled Germany: the right of the government to determine whose life was worthy. The community of murderers was constructed by active violentization (Athens 1992, 2003) of the German nation creating a web of group structures devoted to murder and looting over time and place. State authorized murder, often appearing in nation building, was contagious in Germany, feeding on Nazi propaganda and a constructed imaginary belief that the world possessed infinite dangers that must be violently eliminated. This formed a dangerous death cult attracting various supporters creating a deadly violent force believing that killing unarmed other were remedial and necessary.
