Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of Their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust

<p>Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated "Obedience to Authority" (OTA) experiments at Yale University. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram's personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his first official experiment, he was able to convert the majority of his ordinary subjects into torturers of other people. It is argued that Milgram's experiments were in themselves structured as a bureaucratic microcosm, and say less about obedience to authority, per se, than about the ways in which people in an organisational context resolve a pressing moral dilemma. The thesis uses insights gained from Milgram's experimental innovations to assist in answering the question posed by Bauer and by Browning, focusing on the Nazis' progressive development of mass killing methods, from 1941 to 1944, during Operation Barbarossa and Operation Reinhard. It is shown how these methods were designed to diminish perpetrators' perceptual stimulation, in order to make the "undoable" increasingly "doable", in ways that were later reflected in Milgram's development of his own experimental methodology.</p>

Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of Their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust

<p>Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated "Obedience to Authority" (OTA) experiments at Yale University. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram's personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his first official experiment, he was able to convert the majority of his ordinary subjects into torturers of other people. It is argued that Milgram's experiments were in themselves structured as a bureaucratic microcosm, and say less about obedience to authority, per se, than about the ways in which people in an organisational context resolve a pressing moral dilemma. The thesis uses insights gained from Milgram's experimental innovations to assist in answering the question posed by Bauer and by Browning, focusing on the Nazis' progressive development of mass killing methods, from 1941 to 1944, during Operation Barbarossa and Operation Reinhard. It is shown how these methods were designed to diminish perpetrators' perceptual stimulation, in order to make the "undoable" increasingly "doable", in ways that were later reflected in Milgram's development of his own experimental methodology.</p>

Mass Murder in America: Trends, Characteristics, Explanations, and Policy Response

Mass murder, especially involving a firearm, has been a subject of increasing interest among criminologists over the past decade. Lacking an existing and reliable data resource for studying these crimes, several organizations have launched their own database initiatives with, unfortunately, little consensus on definition. As a result, there is confusion regarding the nature and trends of such events. In this paper, we rely on the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database, which provides the widest coverage of incidents in the U.S. with four or more victim fatalities, regardless of location, situation, or weapon. First, we present trends in incidents and victimization of mass killings from 2006 through 2020, followed by an examination of various incident, offender, and victim characteristics, distinguishing among the major subtypes. Next, we detail a motivational typology of mass murder and identify the common contributing factors. Finally, we consider the potential effects of certain policy responses related to media coverage, mental health services, and gun restrictions on the prevalence of mass killing.

COVID-19 vaccines: the dilemma when thinking as a patient

What is the truth about the conspiracy theory of the COVID-19 microchip vaccine? The outbreak of the COVID-19 witnessed a vicious race of pharmaceutical firms to develop a vaccine that ends this disaster. Claims were forwarded that some firms funded by well-known foundations are in the process of developing such a vaccine so people wide world can be tracked. Such claims may have been based on Mr. Bill Gate’s announcement in an interview that through vaccination "we will have some digital certificates" which would be used to show who had recovered, been tested and ultimately who received a vaccine but he made no mention of microchips. The conspiracy theory is spreading around the world and its supporters are on the increase among the public as well as many healthcare professionals. The spread of the virus has been attributed to the introduction of 5G technology and many religious leaders attributed the crisis to punishment from God to the spread of local wars and mass killing, torturing and killing of Muslims in China and Myanmar gay and lesbian movement and marriages.

Responding to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

This is the first of four chapters scrutinizing villainy in the French Wars of Religion (1562–98). Chapter 11 considers the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572, a mass killing that began with the murder of the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny. Partisan responses to Coligny’s murder soon followed; of particular interest is La Tragedie de feu Gaspard de Colligny (1575) by François de Chantelouve. The latter, a militant Catholic, makes a vindictive mockery of the erstwhile admiral in the course of his tragedy. For Chantelouve, Coligny was a villainous traitor and a threat to France’s monarchy; Charles IX was thus justified in sanctioning Coligny’s death. Yet Chantelouve does not straightforwardly echo the official legal justification for the Massacre that had been commissioned by the Crown in 1573 from the leading jurist Guy du Faur de Pibrac.

Postgenocide

This volume deepens and broadens considerations of genocide’s aftermath. It conceives postgenocide as an approach to study genocide effects after mass killing has ended. In line with an interconnected understanding of past and future, the ‘post’ in postgenocide signifies the entire period following the inception of genocide. Postgenocide implies that the era following genocidal killing is shaped by genocide; hence the necessity of understanding and explaining effects of genocide in moulding realities of societies subjected to cruelty of this heinous crime. Effects given attention in the contributions in this volume vary from various permutations of genocide harms, and legal recourse, after the fact; to scrutiny of the efficacy of the genocide law and prospects of its enforcement; to socio-political responses to genocide—including efforts to recovery and reconciliation; to genocide’s impacts on the victims’ communities and their efforts for recognition and redress; to genocide’s effect on the communities of perpetrators and their attempts to denial and revisionism; to the (re)construction of genocide narratives via the display of victims’ objects in museums, galleries, and archives; to impact of intersections of geopolitical order, climate change, warlordism, and resource exploitation on the re/occurrence of genocide. In doing so, some formerly opaque and overlooked themes and cases are analysed from the standing of several disciplines—such as law, political science, sociology, and ethnography—in the process exploring what these disciplines bring to bear on genocide scholarship and the rethinking of the existing assumptions in the field.

Introduction

This chapter highlights ways in which the volume broadens and deepens considerations of genocide’s aftermath and introduces the notion of ‘postgenocide’. In line with an interconnected understanding of past and future, the ‘post’ in postgenocide signifies the entire period following the inception of genocide. However, postgenocide does not have merely a temporal meaning. Paying attention to social processes in the aftermath of genocide, their correlations with genocide, and related meanings affords high explanatory purchase. The era following genocidal killing is shaped by genocide. Hence the necessity of understanding and explaining effects of genocide in moulding realities of societies subjected to cruelty of this heinous crime. Conceiving postgenocide as an approach to study genocide and its effects after mass killing has ended, this introductory chapter shows how the volume casts light on a multitude of genocide effects in thematic terms and also in the setting of some formerly opaque and overlooked cases.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter starts by describing SS and SA men who had become addicted to violence and intoxicated by murder. Even in its final weeks, as the Third Reich crumbled into ruins, these men continued to murder their racial and political enemies and even their own colleagues. As the fighting fronts collapsed in the spring of 1945, SS and policemen now reached for the bottle in order to escape the reality of the impending German defeat. The chapter then takes a look at how these perpetrators cited alcohol use as simply an alibi to excuse their behavior during the trial of the major war criminals at Nuremberg. Heavy drinking as a psychological defense mechanism and excuse for their actions became a prevalent alibi in postwar statements and testimony by those involved in genocide. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the correlation between alcohol, celebratory ritual, and acts of mass killing or sexual assault was not simply a Nazi phenomenon.

Stunning and slaughter.

This chapter discusses welfare issues in animals on the following aspects: euthanasia and humane killing; humane killing in the slaughterhouse; religious slaughter without stunning; gas stunning and killing; low-pressure stunning; stunning and carcass quality; and mass killing for disease control.