Robert Heinlein's character Doc Graves describes the Devil Fallacy in the 1941 sci-fi story "Logic of Empire", as he explains the theory to another character:

"I would say you've fallen into the commonest fallacy of all in dealing with social and economic subjects—the 'devil' theory. You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity…. You think bankers are scoundrels. They are not. Nor are company officials, nor patrons, nor the governing classes back on earth. Men are constrained by necessity and build up rationalizations to account for their acts."