The photo of Waldemar Klingelhöfer from the Nuremberg Trials captures his expressionless expression, in which no remorse is read.
In 1948, he was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. Later, however, his sentence was reduced, and in 1956 he was released early.
How an opera singer became a Nazi murderer
In fact, before becoming part of the Nazi machine, Klingelhöfer was an opera singer. In 1935, he took control of the cultural department of the SD - the security service of the Reichsführer of the SS. As such, he analyzed, for example, the effects of Nazi propaganda.
In 1941, Klingelhöfer joined “Operation Group B“, and according to his own words, initially worked as a translator. The Operation Groups were special units of Heinrich Himmler responsible for the extermination of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
Klingelhöfer rose to the rank of “Sturmbannführer“ - a position in which he ordered or personally carried out countless executions.
But why would an opera singer leave the stage, and then his comfortable office job, to kill in the name of Hitler?
"Profane careerism"
Political scientist Christian Glesel, author of the book "Making a Career in Dictatorship", has a very simple answer - "purely profane careerism".
Thirty years ago, the Jewish author Hannah Arendt challenged the widespread understanding that ideological convictions were the guiding principle when she followed the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. "I don't think he had a particular thirst for power. He was the typical functionary. "I don't think ideology played a particularly big role," she said back in 1964.
Empirical evidence for Arendt Glessel and his co-author Adam Scharpf's observations is found in thousands of documents from the Argentine army. In data collected since 1870, they found the following trend: the worse an officer performed, the greater the risk of being thrown out of the army and then joining the secret police. During the military dictatorship in the South American country, the secret police were full of so-called failed officers who were willing to torture, kill and kidnap to prove themselves and advance their careers.
Are the secret police full of "idiots"?
"Often these are people who have been thrown out of the system or who have not been able to rise up. At such a point, people resort to extreme measures and prove their loyalty by doing the regime's dirty work that no one else would want to do," explains Glessel.
Scharpf's interest in the subject began with a chance conversation. While he was in Argentina, a man told him that everyone in the country's secret police were "idiots". He really wonders why a dictator who depends so much on his secret police would rely on idiots?
In fact, everything stems from the structure of the army, which is very meritocratic. Those who fail simply drop out, and when they drop out, they go to the secret police to save their careers. They work there for a few years, and then as a reward they receive better positions in other military structures.
“The failed are actually a resource that an autocrat can take advantage of“, commented Glesel. In this regard, meritocracy does not protect against autocracy and the collapse of democratic systems, he believes. On the contrary - such a structure can motivate people to commit extreme crimes.
Failures in various fields, even priests
“The insidious thing is that results are what motivates. "When you know you're falling behind, you make extra efforts," says Glessel. The two researchers do not limit themselves to Argentina, but also look at individual examples from Nazi Germany, Gambia and the Soviet Union. This is how they come across the opera singer Waldemar Klingelhöfer.
Many such "ordinary people" enter the Nazi structures without experience and have to prove themselves. This is exactly what functionaries like Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler, who led the SS, take advantage of.
In addition to Klingelhöfer, the ranks also include lawyers, professors, historians, dentists, and even a pastor - Ernst Bieberstein. He works in the church ministry, but they are dissatisfied with his work there. At the same time, however, he collaborates with the SD, and when he is released from the ministry, he builds his career there. In 1942, Bieberstein became head of Operations Detachment 6 of Operations Group C in Kiev, where he was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews.
Losers are ready for anything
Heydrich and Himmler purposefully created an environment of competition in the SD. The former said of the operational groups that they gave "a chance to prove oneself and earn distinction."
All this does not mean that ideology had no place. Klingelhöfer himself had joined the anti-Semitic "Order of Young Germans" in 1920 and, even before joining the SD, had written a book about "the influence of Jews and Freemasons on political events in Russia."
With the book "Making a Career in a Dictatorship," Glessel wanted to issue a warning - because even in stable democracies there are winners and losers. It is the latter who want to rise and are ready for anything.
He gives examples of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who used to be a TV presenter. And former Brazilian police officer Marcelo Xavier da Silva, who was appointed chairman of the Indigenous Peoples Agency under former President Jair Bolsonaro - despite being an outspoken opponent of indigenous rights.
“Those who do not learn from history, history catches up with them“, Glesel summarizes.
Author: Jamila Prange de Oliveira