David`s

Obedience and the German People of WWII

According to Milgram , obedience remains a basic need in a society in which people live in close proximity . Obedience is demanded of everyone who lives within that society , in that only people who isolate themselves from other people are free from the tasks of daily living that require it . The situation in which the WWII German soldiers found themselves was not an ordinary one . However , at that time , the idea that may have grown from the mind of one person eventually enveloped large portions of

the German society (Milgram , 1983

Milgrim states that obedience is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority (Milgram , 1983 ,

. 1 . Two arguments prevail about obedience , however . Hobbes , a conservative philosopher argued for responsibility for an act resting on the shoulders of the one who ed it carried out . Humanists , however , state that the individual must , him or herself , depend on an individual moral compass in to decide on actions (Milgram , 1983 ,

. 1

When German soldiers acted under their superiors ' s to carry out atrocities , they would not have acted without feeling compelled to do so . Obedience is also , according to Milgram , a psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose . Therefore the soldiers were not only responding in obedience to an authority figure , their commander , they were also responding to the political ideology that united Germany . Because of their oaths of service and their self-perceptions as loyal Germans , they would not have felt able to be disobedient to their superiors ' s

Looking at Milgram 's experiments with individuals conditioned to give another person a shock , for example , it is possible to see how an individual might be driven to do something that is atypical for his or her behavior overall . The experiment did not study the individual who was under apparent duress . The people receiving the electric shocks were in not under any threat of pain , given that they were never , in truth , to any electrodes . The intention of the test was to examine the reactions of the individuals who allegedly gave the shocks to the individuals acting as subjects . The individuals giving the shocks were unable to break away from the authority figure of the researcher , who represented a civilian position of authority that while not as overarching as that of a military commander to a soldier , is still a person of considerable power in that given situation

The soldiers , then , were not twisted or evil . Instead , they were working as intended in the system of their society . Rather , it was the system and the leaders to which they were bound that had become corrupt which in turn corrupted their service and obedience

Reference

Milgram , S (1983 . Obedience to Authority . New York : Harper...