Obedience to Authority
Human beings are social beings that require some of the governance for peaceful co-existence. The governance is either democratic obtained through fair election or autocratic obtained through dictatorship strategies. Regardless of how the authority is captured, those in power expects absolute obedience to the authority by their subjects. It is the obedience to authority that either creates harmony or disharmony in society. For the purpose of this essay, the effects of blind obedience to authority will be discussed. The essay uses Stanley Milgram’s experiment in 1963 on the “Obedience to authority” to explain the Holocaust in which Nazi soldiers killed innocent Jews. The excuse was they were executing orders given by senior officers. Using human subjects in the experiment, Milgram was able to bring out the image of obedient people. Milgram’s experiment and the Holocaust are connected because the outcomes of the two events intensely relied on absolute obedience to authority.
Background of Milgram’s Experiment
No social organization can live in harmony without authority, even the most underdeveloped society. In addition to having the authority, obedience plays a significant role because some people have to rule the others, a strategy meant to avoid anarchy and chaos. An issue will only arise when the level of obedience is taken to extreme ends. This is precisely what Milgram’s work revealed. The experiment involved three volunteer human subjects with specific roles. The volunteers who played the role of “teachers” were led to believe that they were administering more painful and dangerous electric shocks to another volunteer who played the role of a “learner.” The “teachers” were to ask simple questions and allowed to give electric shocks through a generator in case of the wrong answer. Most of the teachers (60%) continued to provide the electric shocks to the lethal levels. Four hundred fifty volts (Stanley 371). The experiments were repeated in other countries like South Africa and Australia. As expected, the results were similar. “Teachers” continued to obey the command to give electric shocks. The highest score recorded by experiments was 85% (Stanley 372).
Though the experiment was designed to study memory, it actually focused on understanding the behavior of people imposing pain on others. As expected, participants acted against their moral judgments and responded in obedience to the authority, giving a shock. Considering history, obedience to authority happens time and again, often characterized by unfavorable results. Every individual with a morality needs to guard this blind obedience to authority. If I may borrow a biblical example, Abraham was expected to blindly obey the command to sacrifice his only son to God. As we all know, no such disturbing experiment can be 100%. However, this experiment gave crucial insight into how ordinary people would behave in response to authority.
Connection of Milgram’s Experiment and Nuremberg war crimes tribunals
The Nuremberg tribunal that followed World War II was characterized by several incidences of blind obedience to authority. The Holocaust organizer Adilf Eichmann wrote a letter to the tribunal in 1962. He confessed that together with other junior officers, they served as simple instruments and that killing the Jews was shifted to their seniors. This “Just follow orders defense” is the much popular in the trials (Ann & Tusa 64). Milgram experiments were meant to establish if ordinary people are capable of causing harm to other people by just following instructions form authorities figures. The superior soldiers involved in the massive killings of the Jews just gave orders which the juniors, including Adilf, were to follow without questioning (Ann & Tusa 60). This explains why the defendants felt disconnected from the actions though they actually committed the crime. They followed orders from their seniors enough to stimulate the feeling of being accused of any offense you were forced to participate in.
The Nazi extermination policy would not have succeeded in Milgram’s experiment if there was no blind obedience to authority. Therefore, obedience to authority is the primary psychological mechanism that helps understand how otherwise ordinary Germans massively killed innocent Jews. Milgram’s experiment was motivated by the desire to demonstrate how it was easy for destructive obedience, obeying orders to the extent of killing innocent people despite possession of emotional and moral resistance to such instructions could be brought about from an ordinary person (Dávid 386). The superior commanding officers expect obedience from their juniors because of their coercive power. This implies that it is possible to expect absolute obedience during a military operation, including the Holocaust.
Considering the gradual actions taken by the Milgram’s subjects and the perpetrators of the Nazi killings, it is possible to explain the Holocaust using the experiment. The Milgram’s “teachers” gradually delivered the shock from low harmless volts to a lethal level. Similarly, the first encounter of the Jews with the Nazi soldiers often involved humiliation, degradation, and brutalization before the most lethal stages of killing. This reinforces my argument that the Milgram experiment can be effectively used to explain the Holocaust.
Let us consider the relationships of the subjects in Milgram’s experiment and connection between Nazi soldiers and the Holocaust victims, the Jews. In Milgram’s experiments, the “Teachers” were aware that their actions caused harm to their peers. Despite the powerful knowledge and the possession of compassionate hearts as expected, they went on, obeyed the source of authority, and continued giving the shock. Similarly, the Nazi soldiers, human beings like those “Teachers” in Milgram’s experiment, knew that the Jews were innocent and did not deserve such inhuman humiliations. Despite their adequate knowledge on the innocence of the victims, they went on and killed the Jews.
Taylor, on his work, “Nuremberg and Vietnam: an American tragedy.” Argued that criminal responsibility should be attached to commanders who, despite knowing the consequences of war crimes, went ahead and gave orders to their subordinates to kill innocent civilians (Telford 94). Those commanders who had military responsibilities should also be held accountable even if they were unaware of the war’s actual events. By this argument, Taylor fails to see how civilians would be held responsible. Taylor was objecting to the injustice actions in which top Nazi civilians were held liable for war crimes.
Though there were some behavioral and circumstantial differences between the Holocaust and Milgram’s experiment, the differences are dismissed because they are not weighty enough to draw generalization. While Milgram “teachers” simply pressed buttons to give shocks to unknown “learners” whom they were repeatedly assured that they were not harmed, the Nazi murders knew they were murdering innocent Jews. The cultural context of Milgram’s experiment and the Nazi war is quite different. While Milgram’s experiment comprised college students drawn from various social-economic levels to participate in a scientific study, the Nazi soldiers were operating on war against innocent Jews. However, it should be noted that just like the “learners” in the Milgram experiment, the Jews were defenseless. This implies that the mentioned differences between the Holocaust and the Milgram’s experiments cannot be used to conclude that Milgram’s experiment does not in any way connect to the Holocaust.
Conclusively, Milgram’s experiment provided significant insight into understanding obedience to authority. Though authority plays a crucial role in maintaining harmony in the society, blind obedience to authority may adversely affect the community. it is because of blind obedience to authority that the “teachers” continued to press the buttons to give a shock to their “Learners.” Similarly, it is because of blind obedience to authority that the junior military soldiers killed the innocent Jews. Milgram’s experiment clearly helps in explaining the Holocaust. Without critical analysis, it is not possible to think that the “Obedience to authority” experiment by Milgram would have provided significant insights into understanding the defense excuses given by the perpetrators of the Holocaust during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals. Though there exist few differences between the experiment and the killings of innocent Jews, it is undeniable that both actions were performed because there was absolute obedience to the authority. If the “teacher” had questioned the authority, the experiment would have given different results. Equally, if the soldiers had challenged the authority, the killings would have been prevented possibly. This implies that even a seemingly typical innocent people can harm their peers by blindly obeying authority.
Works Cited
Kaposi, Dávid. “The resistance experiments: Morality, authority, and obedience in Stanley Milgram’s account.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 47.4 (2017): 382-401.
Milgram, Stanley. “Behavioral study of obedience.” The Journal of abnormal and social psychology 67.4 (1963): 369-372.
Taylor, Telford. “Nuremberg and Vietnam: an American tragedy.” (1970): 92-96
Tusa, Ann, and John Tusa. The Nuremberg Trial. Skyhorse Publishing Inc., (2010). 17-66