Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century

A unique and compelling study of history and morality in the 20th Century, this book examines the psychology which made possible Hiroshima, the Nazi genocide, the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia. In modern technological war, victims are distant and responsibility is fragmented. The scientists making the atomic bomb thought they were only providing a weapon- how it was used was the responsibility of society. The people who dropped the bomb were only obeying orders. The machinery of political decision-making was so complex that no one among the politicians was unambiguously responsible. No one thought of themselves as causing the horrors of Hiroshima.Drawing on accounts of participants, victims and observers, Jonathan Glover shows that different atrocities have common patterns which suggest weak points in our psychology.