Good & Evil / The Human Conscience

Gitta Sereny reports that she wanted to be able to see what happened to Franz Stangl, how it was that he transformed into the man put on trial and held directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths during his tours of duty at death camps during World War 2. In order to figure out what happened, she conducts numerous interviews.

Sereny writes much of the preliminary discussion. It seems that Franz Stangl was a perfectly ordinary man, and rather a good one. After developing some work skills but seeking something that would pay better, he decides to become a police man in Austria. He describes the training as very tough and requiring the development of independence, renouncing the need to place trust in those surrounding the person. Later, he explains how Nazis go from being an illegal group the Austrian police normally arrested and...