Gewaltlust

Abstract In his lecture „Lust for Violence. Affects and Mass Murder in National Socialism“, published posthumously here, Habbo Knoch (1969–2024) examined the role of affective motivations in Nazi violence and asked why the scholarship has for so long been reluctant to consider the lust for violence as a central feature of perpetrators’ actions. Knoch argued that Nazi mass violence cannot be understood solely as a rationally organised process of extermination; rather, euphoria, disinhibition and a sense of empowerment also play a key role. For many perpetrators, violence was not just a means to an end, but an act of self-fulfilment by which they became integrated into a new social order. Knoch questioned whether perpetrators might have perceived their actions as an ‚attractive option‘ (Jörg Baberowski) and noted that violence was reinforced by positive feedback loops. At the same time, he emphasised that research had long shied away from analysing these dynamics to avoid falling into an individualising or pathologising trap. By interpreting the desire for affective violence as an integral component of organised mass violence and as a coalescing, epiphanic phenomenon of ‚socialised‘ violence in Nazi-German society, he advocated a differentiated view of Nazi crimes that gives equal weight to structural and emotional factors.