Birds of a Feather Flock Together

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

This book takes place sometime during the 1960s after the Second World War. Some Germans would rather forget it ever happened than acknowledge the disgraceful events that took place during World War II “Adolf Eichmann's trial began on April 11, 1961 in Jerusalem, Israel. Eichmann was

Throughout the latter 1930s and early 1940s, many individuals experienced persecution. As Goldhagen mentioned in his novel, “Social death is a formal status...It is at once a culturally shared concept of the socially dead people and a set of practices towards them” (Goldhagen, 168). In Germany specifically, individuals part of a specific race were deemed to no longer be a human being in the eyes of the “superior race”. The social death of individuals such as Jewish people was obtained through the use of blame for problems faced and then the dehumanization of these individuals. Once the status of social death is reached, it is much easier for people to treat others in a degrading and violent manner. Those facing persecution, such as the Jewish, during World War II, faced immense atrocities. For individuals who were not killed themselves, the vast majority saw their friends and family killed, were stripped away from their homes and identity, were faced with torture, meager living conditions, and immense amounts of labor. On the opposite side, many individuals who took part in performing these atrocities against humanity were cognizant on some level to what they were doing, but were also obstructed

The Nuremburg Trials of 1945 were some of the most controversial military tribunals to be held in the 20th century. In the trials, Nazi war criminals were put on trial for the atrocities they committed against the Jewish population of Germany. When asked why they had committed such acts of horror, many of the Nazi soldiers attested by saying that they were under orders to do so. The trials questioned the motives behind instances of mass human torment which have led many scientists and psychologists to strive to understand the rationality behind human obedience. Two of these psychologists, Theodore Dalrymple and Erich Fromm explored the instances in which disobedience and obedience to authority should be applied. Fromm wrote his article

When Adolf Hitler first came to power in pre-WWII Germany, all of Germany was ready for a new Fuhrer to lead them into success and overcome the recent depression. Among his supporters was Adolf Eichmann, who began as just another German citizen, but transformed into something even he could not have imagined. “On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism” (Arendt 5). Eichmann was tried for crimes against humanity, but before deciding for oneself whether he was guilty of this charge, we must question whether he was acting out of service to his country or out of his own self-interest. After reading deeper into the results and proceedings of the trial, it is only logical for one to conclude that although he may have joined forces with the Nazi party as a patriot, his motives for continuing to assist in carrying out genocide on an unimaginable scale was largely self-interest.

20. ____ is based on the notion that people make implicit social comparisons with others when making ratings on scales, rather than relying on direct inferences about a private, personal value system (Peng, Nisbett, & Wong, 1997).

The finding that people pair of with others who are equally as attractive is known as

Christopher Browning describes how the Reserve Police Battalion 101, like the rest of German society, was immersed in a flood of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda. Browning describes how the Order Police provided indoctrination both in basic training and as an ongoing practice within each unit. Many of the members were not prepared for the killing of Jews. The author examines the reasons some of the police members did not shoot. The physiological effect of isolation, rejection, and ostracism is examined in the context of being assigned to a foreign land with a hostile population. The contradictions imposed by the demands of conscience on the one hand and the norms of the battalion on the other are discussed. Ordinary Men

But before this happened he writes on how “many prominent military men were worse than the average American when it came to ethnic and religious tolerance. On the surface, there was no real reason to expect that the army would be the great engine of change. Yet during world war II, it was the army that brought together Americans and taught them to get along.” in his book Bruschino continues to explain what brought the soldiers together with stories of soldiers who went through the War. One example came from a man named Frank Delgino who says “the CCC taught me discipline, how to take orders, how to be a good friend with your buddy in the bunk next to you. We were all good friends. I don’t think there was an enemy in the camp.” As Bruscino writes the men had to stripped down naked in front of the other men, shower and defecate in the open, share and sleep in the same camps with no privacy to have, as well as having to wear the same clothing and shave their heads bald. This made every man in that camp equal regardless of their race of religion. Furthermore, the men learned to get along with each other and see that there all the same and in those camps for one reason and one reason only; to fight for their country. About the men seeing themselves as each other Bruschino describes the time the men spent during the war. He goes on to say that the men had nothing to really

Eichmann built a defense during his trial by arguing that he was not responsible for his actions because he was acting under orders and in accordance with the law of his land. Since his orders came from Adolf Hitler himself, Eichmann

The capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann, which evoked legal and moral controversy across all nations, ended in his hanging over four decades ago. The verdict dealing with Eichmann's involvement with the Final Solution has never been in question; this aspect was an open-and-shut case which was put to death with Eichmann in 1962. The deliberation surrounding the issues of Eichmann's motives, however, are still in question, bringing forth in-depth analyses of the aspects of evil.

The ‘better-than-average’ (or BTAE) effect states that certain individuals would evaluate themselves more positively than the average person. Within this, there is argument to suggest that there are both positive and negative implications linked to this theory. The concept of ‘self’ plays a large role in discovering whether these factors affect the individual, whereas social comparison is also a great aspect in understanding how the better-than-average effect can include itself into everyday society, therefore creating an unrealistic divide between different groups.

In “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt analyzes Adolph Eichmann while he is on trial in Jerusalem for the crimes that he committed while being a Lieutenant Colonel in the SS during the Nazi Regime. In the book Arendt talks about how Eichmann’s actions were “banal” in the sense that he seemed to be an ordinary person who just committed acts that were evil. Italian-Jewish Writer Primo Levi, a Holocaust Survivor, states that SS officers like Eichmann lived in their own self-deception that made them believe that their actions were caused by just following their orders in the SS. In this paper, I will analyze the views that both Arendt and Levi had about the Eichmann trial and then compare and state the differences of their views. I will then explain the reasons why both Hannah Arendt’s and Primo Levi’s analysis of Adolph Eichmann that show that the actions that he committed were all truly evil actions.

In the case of Adolf Eichmann, the person in charge of planning the collection, transportation and extermination of hundreds of thousands of people, he stated that, “ The orders were, for me, the highest thing in my life and I had to obey them without question.” He had a role in the murders of thousands and thousands of people, yet he justifies it by saying that he was simply obeying orders. Eichmann was not a psychopath by any means in fact, he was described as very average and declared sane by six different psychiatrists. Authority had and

government to make us believe that we were the good side while they were the bad