3 ideas
Under Theodor Eicke at Dachau, SS guards were trained to treat pity for prisoners as a sign of weakness that made a man unfit to serve. Once this was internalized, Höss read his own flickers of distress, such as watching mothers and children walk to the gas chambers, as a test of resolve to be passed rather than a warning to heed. Conscience was converted into evidence of the perpetrator's inadequacy, so each suppressed doubt deepened his commitment.
Höss's account frames mass murder mainly as administrative difficulty: too few resources, incompetent subordinates, overcrowding, crematorium capacity, and his own overwork and loneliness. Translating a moral question into a technical one lets the narrator present himself as a conscientious manager who is burdened and even victimized by the job. Reading any institutional account for which problems get described as 'efficiency' issues shows what the institution has stopped treating as a choice.
Höss argues that once Himmler gave the order, questioning it was unthinkable for a sworn SS man, and he calls himself a 'cog in the wheel' of the extermination machine, placing responsibility with those above him. He admits to private doubts and mostly frames not acting on them as loyalty, yet he also concedes that his guilt began when he chose to remain in camp service. The account shows obedience offered as a defense while leaving room for a partial admission of guilt.