Quotes from James Waller

But EP also warns us that self-congratulation about our human nature is premature. In Ridley's words: "We have as many darker as lighter instincts. The tendency of human societies to fragment into competing groups has left us with minds all too ready to adopt prejudices and pursue genocidal feuds.

Despite their continuing efforts of denial and revisionist interpretation, however, there is now widespread recognition that the Turkish destruction of the Armenians between 1915 and 1923 stands as the first "total genocide" of the twentieth century.

One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. If all the Nazis had been psychotics . . . their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. Thomas Merton, Reflections

The announcement of the verdicts was completed on October 1, 1946. Appropriately, this date fell on Yom Kippur, the climax of the High Holy Days in Judaism. This sacred Day of Atonement is the day to face up to one's sins and their consequences. On this day, the tribunal would announce the consequences of the sins committed against humanity by the twenty-two Nazi defendants.

As anthropologist Michael Ghiglieri writes: "Xenophobia and ethnocentrism are not just essential ingredients to war. Because they instinctively tell men precisely whom to bond with versus whom to fight against, they are the most dangerously manipulable facets of war psychology that promote genocide. Indeed, genocide itself has become a potent force in human evolution.

Gilbert computed that the average IQ for the twenty-one Nazi defendants, with a high of 143 and a low of 106, was 128—falling in the superior to very superior range of intellectual abilities. (For purposes of comparison, the average IQ is 100; that of college graduates is 118; that of doctoral students is 125.)

These observations verify that chimpanzees are a second species—in addition to humans—that deliberately seek out and kill members of their own species. The remarkable violence of humanity is not uniquely ours. The species most closely related to us genetically—chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.4 percent of our DNA—also have a dark side to their nature.

That same year, in an interview with the New Yorker, Kelley continued his dismissal of the "mad Nazi" thesis: "With the exception of Dr. Ley, there wasn't an insane Joe in the crowd. That's what makes this trial important—there are twenty-one ruthless people with counterparts all over the world, none of them sufficiently deviate to be locked up by society under normal conditions.