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easier by the fact that those who'directed the bombingoffensives and those who carried them out remainedcuriously insulated and detached from the consequencesof their work. Photographs taken at thirty thousand feetgave no clue to the human effects of a raid, nor didother sources. "'~Euphemistic language plays an important role inenabling ordinary people to be involved in killingprojects. "' As Kelman has noted, "Moral inhibitionsare less easily subdued if the functionaries, in their ownthinking and in their communication with each other,have to face the fact that they are engaged in organizedmurder. . . The difficulty is handled by the well-knownbureaucratic inventiveness in the, use of language. "'~In the Holocaust, for example, deportation to the deathcamps was code-named "evacuation to the East, " andthe actual killing was termed "'special action" and"special treatment."'~ In World War II, likewise, thedeliberate fire bombing of cities crowded with civilianswas known as "strategic bombing, " and the specificattacks on neighborhoods filled with German factoryworkers, which killed thousands and women andchildren, was intended, in the official jargon, to"de-house" those workers. '~ The Persian Gulf War of1991 was no exception to the tendency to "sanitize"the killing by the use of euphemisms. Hence, bombingraids were called "sorties"; inadvertent killing ofcivilians was "collateral damage"; bombs of variouskinds were referred to as "ordnance"; and the accidentalkilling of American and British soldiers by theircompatriots was termed "death by friendly fire. "'"The bureaucratic organization of modern genocidesand wars plays an extremely important role infacilitating the participation of psychologically normalindividuals in projects designed to mass murderinnocent men, women, and children. As RichardRubenstein has observed: "Usually the progress indeath-dealing capacity in the twentieth century has beendescribed in terms of technological advances in weaponry.Too little attention has been given to the advancesin social organization that allowed for the effective useof the new weapons. In order to understand how themoral barrier was crossed that made massacre in themillions possible, it is necessary to consider theimportance of bureaucracy in modern political organization.Four features of bureaucratic organizations serveto promote the overall efficiency of modern genocideand warfare as well as to enable individual contributorsto carry out their tasks with a minimum of questioningor doubt. These four features are: hierarchical authority,division of labor, amoral rationality, and organizationalloyalty.Hierarchical authority refers to the formal,top-down decision-making arrangements ofbureaucra-cies which enable people at lower levels to have areduced sense of personal responsibility for either thepolicy they are helping to implement or its finaloutcome. They are, after all, only "following orders"that have descended through all the levels of theorganization above their own.'"Division of labor involves the breaking down ofcomplex tasks into compartmentalized sub-tasks. Associologist Fred Katz observes, "Bureaucracies aresocial machineries for accomplishing complex objectivesin relatively orderly fashion. . . The individualbureaucrat typically focuses on a particular task,without considering the wide implications, includingbroader moral issues. "'"Amoral rationality involves preoccupation withthe best means of attaining a particular goal, orcompleting a given task, while tending to ignore moralor human implications of the goal or task. Bureaucra-,cies deliberately strive to render moral and humanconsiderations irrelevant with respect to the task athand. ' As sociologist Helen Fein suggests, "Bureau-cracy is not itself a cause of the choice of destructiveends, but it facilitates their accomplishmentby routiniz-ing the obedience of many agents, each trained toperform his role without questioning the ends ofaction. "'"Finally, organizational loyalty refers to thetendency for members of bureaucratic organizationsto become preoccupied with maintaining or expandingtheir particular organization as an end in itself. Suchconcerns may obscure moral and human implicationsof given policies. Markusen has examined the role oforganizational loyalty in both the Holocaust and theBritish and American strategic bombing campaigns inWorld War II, as well as in the preparations for nuclearIn closing this section, it should be emphasizedthat all of the psychological and organizational forcesdiscussed above can mutually reinforce each other tocreate a powerful momentum toward genocidal killingCONCLUSIONSGil Elliot, one of the pioneers in the study ofcollective violence, was quoted above as saying that"the scale of man-made death is the central moral aswell as material fact of our time. " Unfortunately, theenergy and resources devoted to understanding andpreventing mass killing have been negligible. As IsraelCharny has written, "At this point in its evolution,mankind is deeply limited in its readiness to experienceand take action in response to genocidal disasters. Mostevents of genocide are marked by massive indifference,126 GENOCIDE