"The Perils of Obedience"

I am an avid fan of WWII history. I have a collection of war movies and I jump at new ones with insatiable hunger. Also, I enjoy re-watching the movies I’ve seen (have watched Enemy at The Gates hundreds of times) and it was just after watching the ninth episode of Band of Brothers again that my keen interest in the topic led me to discovering a fascinating, yet a bit frightening story of Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. His famous experiment was intended to find the answer to one of the most bewildering questions of humanity. Did he find it? I think yes, by and large, with the results surpassing anyone’s wildest expectations.

So what was in that episode that prompted me to dig deeper in the topic? The ninth episode “Why We Fight” depicts perhaps one of the most shocking scene in the whole history of war movies. After moving their CP to a small town of Landsberg am Lech, the chaps from Easy Company are sent as scouts to the surrounding forests. With the prospects of them staying alive boosted after Bastogne, they take every step forward with great caution. Suddenly they reach a very quiet place – too quiet for them. Yet, there is no ambush nor any sight of a single enemy unit. But they do find something. “What is it?” asks their officer. “We don’t know, sir.”

What makes them so petrified in that forest is a displaced person camp. A DP in Germany housed the people labeled “die Unerwünschte” by the Nazi regime, meaning “the disliked, the unwanted.” These were mainly Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union and the Baltic states. Unlike concentration or death camp, a DP was not created for extermination, yet the scenes the Americans saw there were equally disturbing.

The residents of the nearby town claimed they hadn’t known anything about the camp. “They’re gonna have hell of an education tomorrow” an officer said. And hell of an education they had; the residents were made to bury the corpses bare-handed as an action to “increase their awareness”. Whether they and the whole of the German population did or didn’t know remains a controversy even today. Nevertheless, the people of that time Germany (not this time), and the military and SS leaders especially, bore the blame for what happened, and this seems a matter beyond dispute today. Yet, the question of blame, indisputable as it is now (certainly in the case of SS leaders), was not so clear for the accused themselves. During the Nuremberg trials many of them claimed to have merely followed their orders, and even seventeen years after the war – a time sufficient for deep reflection – Otto Adolf Eichmann stuck to that same claim. For what it seems, every scream of these people’s morality had been stifled by the call of duty. If that’s true, how on earth did it happen? Were the Germans, as it was supposed, exceptionally prone to surrendering themselves to authority? Such questions intrigued Stanley Milgram and lead him to conduct his famous experiment.

I will not elaborate on the details of the experiment as this would make my post far too lengthy. For details see – here. For the time being suffice it to say that the whole experiment relied on an elaborate set-up that made the subjects think they were testing the influence of punishment on learning. This punishment was low amperage electric shocks, and the subject-teacher was to apply these shocks each time the subject-learner made a mistake. In reality, the subject-learner was an actor and there were no electric shocks. The subject-teacher was told by the experimenter to continue with higher and higher voltage. The idea was to see how far the subject-teacher would go despite the subject-learner’s pleas to stop. Milgram intended to do the experiment in the US first and then in Germany, eventually falsifying or verifying the myth of German obedience. But after the first stage, he said “I found so much obedience here (in America) that I had no reason to go to Germany.”

In a poll conducted by Milgram before the experiment, several Yale seniors estimated that on average only 1.2% of the subjects would go as far as the maximum 450V shock. Moreover, these were labeled the “sadistic few”. In fact as much as …65% of the subjects applied the highest shock, nobody steadfastly refused to continue the experiment even when the subject-learner asked them to or screamed out of pain (these were audio recordings in reality). As much as 80% of the subjects continued the experiment although the subject-learner told them about his heart problems. The striking thing is that the results in other countries were similar so it can’t have been a national trait. Shocking, isn’t it?

Subsequent variations of the same experiment revealed that not personality of the subjects but rather the situation was a determining factor. Physical proximity to the subject-learner or the experimenter, experimenter’s confidence, the presence of allies, and a few others had a great impact on the results. Be it as it may, the results of the initial experiment showed people’s proneness to submit to authority. Where does it come from? In childhood we are to listen to our parents, in school to teachers, in adulthood to employers and the authorities. It seems that the system we are born into fosters obedience, which – in the right circumstances – can override our conscience. Perhaps that’s what happened in Germany before and during the war. The Treaty of Versailles gave rise to much resentment, the Great Depression spread hunger and poverty, and the political chaos of the Weimar Republic grew feelings of instability. In the final analysis, people’s primary needs such as nourishment and security were not satisfied so a vociferous political leader who promised to settle the scores quickly gained ground. Under such circumstances, when told they acted for the benefit of the bereaved nation and then against the enemy of the public, the people could be readily commanded.

After reading about the experiment, I tried to imagine myself as a subject and, honestly, I had no idea how I’d behave. I might as well go as far as 450V or I might quit, I don’t know. But even though I did not take part in the experiment, I’ve drawn some conclusions for myself. I realized how valuable each individual’s independence is and what a threat an excessive demand for obedience poses. Independence allows for wider perspective – constant evaluation and rethinking of someone else’s point of view. It prevents us from blind obedience and, at the end of the day, may prevent dangerous ideas from being turned into reality. Independence creates diversity of viewpoints and ensures balance. Excessive obedience, on the other hand, kills all of that. It turns people into possession to be used at every whim of the owner’s fancy. This is something to remember about.

I’m glad that the foundation stone of Democracy, Europe’s predominant political system, is personal freedom (at least in theory). It may have already saved us from another surge of blind, devastating obedience.

Read a memo of one of the participants - here.