Worse still, the war also revealed an alarming side of his own character – a ‘viciousness’ and ‘cruelty’ of which he had, until then, been only dimly aware. He realised that, beneath the veneer of middle-class civility, he had the same instincts as the Nazis. And it wouldn’t take much for them to break the surface, either.

I once heard a talk by someone involved in microfinance/impact investing in poor countries. Through her work she met many people at all levels of government in the places she worked.

One thing that stuck with me was her comment that while everyone is capable of greatness and kindness, they also have the capability of becoming a "monster."

She cited the experience of one of her Rwandan contacts, who later became the Minister of Justice and was one of the senior government officials responsible for driving the genocide of hundreds of thousands of members of the Tutsi minority in the mid-1990s.

https://humanrights.ca/story/what-led-genocide-against-tutsi...