Nazi Revisionism and Terror Management Theory

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/22/berga.folo/index.html

Today is the 64^th anniversary of the liberation of American soldiers from Berga an der Elster, a slave labor camp in Germany during World War Two. On this 64^th anniversary, a new photo has surfaced depicting Nazi soldiers digging up mass graves of U.S. soldiers while American GIs who had just liberated the camp look on. As more and more pieces of physical evidence depicting the horrors of the holocaust surface, the case for Holocaust revisionists or denialists is weakened. Many Germans deny that the Holocaust ever happened out of embarrassment. One other explanation for Holocaust denial is the Terror Management Theory (TMT; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon).

The Terror Management Theory states that when images of death (i.e. photos like this one and others from the Holocaust)or any other triggers remind us of death and heighten our mortality salience, people will use different terror management tactics to rid death thoughts from the mind and return to a composed psychological state. Since culture is vital to ward off death anxiety, people should defend their worldviews after mortality salience by either criticizing the world views of others or praising those that share the same worldview.

Terror Management Theory can explain why Holocaust Denialists blamed a Jewish conspiracy for fabricating the story of the holocaust when criticized by the international community following World War II. When reminded of the horrors of the war (both committed and suffered by the Nazis) and in turn their own mortality, Nazi officials clung to their German identity and denounced all criticism of “Father Germany.” Meanwhile, they discredited the Jews, who held an opposing worldview, by suggesting that the Holocaust was a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy. Immediately following World War II, the recent memories of the war heightened mortality salience and boosted German nationalism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denialism. Terror Management Theory explains that as new evidence, such as this picture, continues to periodically heighten mortality salience among Holocaust revisionists, animosity between competing worldviews will continue to grow.