A sociobiological model for the Holocaust: Analyzing anti-Semitic behavioral patterns with ingroup-outgroup theory

Abstract

The sociobiological model developed in this thesis demonstrates that the genocidal policies employed by Germany during World War II were the result of an ingroup-outgroup survival strategy based on the evolutionary group survival strategy of traditional Judaism that uses a progressive pattern of prejudicial behavior to reduce the economic capacity of competing groups. Group survival strategies allow human groups to win more out of nature than can be achieved by individual effort, which increases survivability and reproductive rates. Group survival strategies were a cultural adaptation of Paleolithic man that became an evolved characteristic through the process of natural selection. Group survival strategies worked well for millions of years. Problems, however, appeared when humans began the rapid transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes into a territorial agrarian lifestyle. This sociobiological model demonstrates how the Nazi Party was able to exploit ingroup-outgroup behavioral patterns and turn ordinary people into genocidal killers.