Max Weber and Auschwitz

"In organisational ideology, readiness for such an extreme self-sacrifice is articulated as a moral virtue; indeed, as the moral virtue destined to put paid to all other moral demands. The selfless observance of the moral virtue is then represented, in Weber's famous words, as the honour of the civil servant; 'The honour of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own conviction. This holds even if the order seems wrong to him and if, despite the civil servant's remonstrances, the authority insists on the order'. This kind of behaviour means, for a civil servant, 'moral discipline and self-denial in the highest sense'. Through honour, discipline is substituted for moral responsibility. The delegitimation of all but inner-organisational rules as the source and guarantee of propriety, and thus denial of the authority of private conscience, become now the highest moral virtue." (Zygmunt Bauman Modernity and the Holocaust)