On the cover of Ron Rosenbaum's book Explaining Hitler is a compelling portrait of human contradiction. After your eyes leave the title, they are drawn to the background, where a photograph of an infant Adolph Hitler becomes more obvious. As one stares into the infant's eyes to search for clues, there are none to be found. This is a baby with all a baby's innocence, awe, and excitement of human life. The picture stands in stark contrast to the name that became synonymous with hatred and misery for millions. The simple juxtaposition of name and photo commands the observer to ask: between then and now, what happened?

DEFINING PERPETRATORS

The search for answers began with those who had fled an adult Hitler. Pioneering work by Theodor Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues resulted in an investigation called The authoritarian personality. Among other findings, their psychoanalytically based work emphasized childhood experiences feeding fascism. Yet their work fell short of linking punitive childhood experience directly to the adult genocidal mind. The lacuna was in part due to a lack of delineation between the groupings of perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers. In spite of the shortcomings, Adorno and his colleagues made several important discoveries.

The first discovery of the Frankfurt school was that there were indeed personality components to antisemitic persons – specifically types who in thinking were rigid, fearful, and closed to new experience.