Hannah Arendt considered this argument in her essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship":
> In the tumultuous discussion of moral issues which has been going on since the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the disclosure of the total complicity in crimes of all ranks of official society, that is, of the total collapse of normal moral standards, the following argument has been raised in endless variations: We who appear guilty today are in fact those who stayed on the job in order to prevent worse things from happening; only those who remained inside had a chance to mitigate things and to help at least some people; we gave the devil his due without selling our soul to him, whereas those who did nothing shirked all responsibilities and thought only of themselves, of the salvation of their precious souls… (p 34)
But, ultimately, she finds the excuse lacking:
> Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil. (p 36)
Oh absolutely! It's my hope that detailing the psychological mechanism at play is in some way an antidote to its acceptance. It feels if anything a bit naive when faced with the possibility that there exists a group who gleefully implements the most heinous practices so this line of thinking doesn't even enter the picture.
> In the tumultuous discussion of moral issues which has been going on since the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the disclosure of the total complicity in crimes of all ranks of official society, that is, of the total collapse of normal moral standards, the following argument has been raised in endless variations: We who appear guilty today are in fact those who stayed on the job in order to prevent worse things from happening; only those who remained inside had a chance to mitigate things and to help at least some people; we gave the devil his due without selling our soul to him, whereas those who did nothing shirked all responsibilities and thought only of themselves, of the salvation of their precious souls… (p 34)
But, ultimately, she finds the excuse lacking:
> Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil. (p 36)
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