Re: Very good post, and several notes

It is not realist to only point out to the aggressive tendencies in humankind. It's easy to see that nobody (bar sociopaths) is universally aggressive towards everyone.

Interestingly, even most sadistic serial killers are evidently not sociopaths:

For these killers, the presence of empathy may actually be essential for two reasons. First, in order to trap their victims, they require highly tuned powers of cognitive empathy (Fox 63). If the killers didnt understand their victims, they could not con them effectively. Ted Bundy provides a direct example, for he knew just how sensible his female college victims were. He tricked them by appealing to their sympathetic sides by appearing to be disabled and asking for their help. Bundy would not have even attempted this strategy if he did not possess some cognitive empathy.

The second, and more pronounced, reason empathy may be a necessary component in a serial killers psychological makeup is that without empathy, these killers would not be able to derive enjoyment from their victims suffering. According to James Fox and Jack Levin, for sadistic objectives to be realized, a killer who tortures, sodomizes, rapes, and humiliates must be able to understand and to feel his victims suffering in order to enjoy it (63). Empathy is necessary for serial killers to experience their victims pain as their own pleasure (Fox 63).

Although most psychological as well as criminal literature depicts lack of empathy as a defining characteristic of the psychopathic or antisocial personality disorder, from which many serial killers supposedly suffer, a study conducted by Heilbrun in 1982 supports the conclusion that serial killers need and do possess empathy. ...

As for Hitler, if anything he was practically the opposite of a sociopath. A sociopath would certainly not give a shit about national honor or, by the same token, feel a burning need to avenge a national humiliation. Although he may have became a tool of sociopaths with time, he himself was probably a true believer.