During the Holocaust, Nazi soldiers followed Hitler’s orders without question. Whether the order was to send people into gas chambers, or performing torturous experiments, it was followed. In hindsight, we can look back and see that all of these “orders” were actually horrible atrocities, but can we really say that we wouldn’t have followed these same orders? How can we really say that we are so different than the Germans of the time? How can we truly deny the fact that we, too, would have done as we were told, without thinking of the genocide as just a job? We can’t.
In the sociology class that I took last semester, I was assigned a reading that I have yet to put in the back of my mind. When I read the title, I thought it to be a bit ridiculous and far-fetched. The article assigned was titled, “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably.” by Philip Meyer. However, upon reading, I discovered that this article was FAR from ridiculous, and instead, made me question if we Americans truly are any different from the Nazis in Germany. The discovery made in the article: We aren’t.
Meyer describes an experiment performed by Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist. Milgram set out to perform an experiment to test the extent of a person’s obedience. Through an ad in the newspaper Milgram drew volunteers to his experiment for monetary compensation. He then placed a volunteer into the position of “teacher.” The “teacher” was told to follow directions by asking question and shocking the person labeled as the “learner” if the “learner” answered a question incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the “teacher,” no shocking was actually done, because the “learner” was part of the team conducting the experiment. The two individuals were separated, so that they were not able to see each other. Milgram expected that in America, people would discontinue the experiment when they heard that the “learner” was in pain. Levels of shock were supposedly increased with each wrong answer. However, during the experiment, Milgram found that sixty-five percent of the “teachers” continued to “shock” the “learner” all the way up to 450 volts, despite the sounds of excruciating pain from the “learner.” He then determined that the level of obedience in America was saddeningly just as high as in Germany.
Milgram had expected that Americans would be different than Germans, only to find out that the level of obedience was almost exactly alike. Personally, I can’t even fathom causing harm to a person just to follow orders. But who’s to say that any one of us would disobey a higher authority if it meant that we weren’t the ones getting hurt? Milgram’s study found that a majority of Americans would have been inclined to continue following orders, as long as they were the individual giving the punishment rather than receiving it.
Works Cited:
Meyer, Philip. “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably.” Esquire. 1970
4 comments:
I can completely understand this. Nobody wants to get harmed. If it means harming someone else to protect yourself, people will. I mean, most people put into a situation like "shoot that person or i will shoot you" will shoot the other person. I don't know if i would be able to do that... probably not. I would rather hurt someone then to get hurt. People mindlessly obey orders. A teacher tells us to do something and we do it without question. We may grunt and grumble but normally we do it.
This post reminds me of an experiment where researches made volunteers read an essay that made them think about their death, and then ask them to allocate hot sauce to be used on the food of another person. The people who read the article allocated a lot more than those who did not. Things like that are shocking in how they reveal the potential vindictiveness in all of us.
To be honest, I honestly am not too surprised at this study. Everybody is looking out for themselves. Movies like Saw can show what we are willing to do in extreme life or death situations. This study just shows it even farther. It’s pretty sad when you actually think about and how most people wouldn’t associate themselves with the Nazis at all when in reality most of us would have participated if we were in that situation.
Interestingly, Milgram came up with his experiment after the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He was the paper-pushing bureaucrat that was responsible for the transportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and the death camps. It was one of the first televised trials a high ranking Nazi official. People were expecting some horrible man, a monster. And they got this really ordinary man who insisted that he had merely been following orders. It really made people wonder if they were any different from the Germans who killed so many people.
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