Examples Of Blindly Following Orders

‘Is Eichmann a rotten, soiled and evil man, and were his motivations boring, mundane and obvious?’ Why did Eichmann kill so many Jews if he ‘supposedly’ no real hate or motivation to do it?

Adolf Eichmann was a remorseless perpetrator who conducted the death of an innumerable amount of Jewish people. The information provided in quote one explains what unethical actions Eichmann pursued. Eichmann did his part during the Holocaust by going to different locations in order to massacre them. “Eichmann played his central role in the deportation of over 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe killing centers and killings cities in occupied Poland and in parts of the occupied Soviet Union” (“Adolf Eichmann” ushmm.org.) This quotation from Eichmann’s biography explains what he did to the Jews while serving as a Nazi soldier. He went to the extent of hunting them in different locations like wild animals. Eichmann was aware of his wrong doings, yet he still pursued with all of the Jews’ execution. Therefore, he is nonetheless a

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.

The third reason for why people obey is when a person shifts from the autonomous state to the agentic state; this is called the agentic shift. Milgrams participants believed they were ‘just following orders’ and did not consider themselves responsible; his participants even sighed with relief when the experimenter said “I am responsible for what happens here.” Evidence from war criminals, has shown that Eichmann, who was trialled and found guilty for the Nazi war killings as he was the man who organized which camps the Jewish people would end up at, said “it wasn’t my

“How can this happen?” one might ask. In Germany specifically, a variety of brainwashing tools were utilized. Early on in school, children were taught the ideology of the Nazi party. Additionally, “throughout the Second World War children played war games... None of us cried and we won” (Stargardt, 39). Children became so desensitized to war and brutality that when such events actually occurred, emotion and rationale became separate. Furthermore, the concept of the “master race,” certain people are better than others, was ingrained into their subconscious. Adults experienced similar techniques, albeit in a different environment. Individuals in the police battalion were also directly involved with some of the atrocities committed. For these men, “there was to be continuing ideological training during the war, with planned daily, weekly, and monthly instruction of the men in police battalions. The daily instruction informed the men of political and military developments. The weekly instruction was intended to shape their ideological views and build their character” (Godhagen, 184). As shown above, both children and adults were similarly trained to view the outside world the way the party wanted them to. In effect, the brainwashing was so severe that it seemed to change individual’s sense of morality. One woman in Lower’s

There are many reasons why a soldier should follow the orders they are given and every single one is important. An order is a tasking given to a soldier of something that needs to be done in a timely and efficient manner. The three main reasons why it is important for a soldier to follow the orders they are given is to be combat effective, disciplined, and to just be a good soldier. When a soldier doesn't follow the orders they are given in not only hurts themselfs but it hurts the team and the goals of the mission. When the mission objectives are hurt by not following orders this weakens everything that is necessary to win the war.

The Eichmann trial reveals a lot about the strengths and limitations of the “the trial” to achieve justice in such cases. The reason of a trial is to render justice; even the ethical of underlying motives, as mentioned in the novel, “the making of a record of the Hitler regime which the withstand the test of history… Nuremburg Trials, can only detract the laws main business: to weigh the charges brought against the accused, to render judgement, and to mete out due punishment” (253). The judgement in the Eichmann case, whose first two sections had been written in respond to the better cause idea as it was changed into expanded both inside and outside the out room, could not have been clearer in this respect. As proven in the novel, it states

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

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.

Once the plane landed Eichmann was immediately put in jail with guards watching him 24 hours a day. Once Eichmann had been identified by a Jewish agency representative Israel announced that they had captured the notorious SS officer. He was soon tried and convicted of 15 counts all having to do with genocide and sentenced to death.

The experiment was a controlled in the sense that each ‘teacher’ heard the same cries of distress from the next room, they all met the same ‘learner’ and so on. This point of the experiment is important because although they were encouraged to continue, surprisingly few exercised their right to stop, most just did as they were told, which was the basis of the defence for many of those at the Nuremburg trials, which preceded the study; “I was just following orders” Banyard (2012). The results seemed to support the hypothesis that people obey those in a position of authority, and Milgram (1963) carried out many variations of this original study.

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

Even as people call themselves individuals and claim to do as they please, it is in their encoding to follow a simple command from a superior even if it objects their own judgement. In a simple experiment, such as that performed by Stanley Milgram, one command can make or break your own sense of self. Even if the command isn't compulsory, as seen by the marines in the movie A Few Good Men, orders can be extremely hard not to follow.

Hannah Arendt’s essay suggests she believes that the motives steered by Adolf Eichmann to commit monstrous acts, where “once banal to all human” ( Arendt, Cp). Eichmann was viewed as a demonic monster for his immoral and corrupted mind. Banal evil shares similarities with Radical evil, such that they can both result in extraordinary evil. Unlike radical evil, banal evil can be committed by ordinary people. Eichmann lacked the ability to reflect and he seemed to think in terms of clichés as his goal was to follow Hitler’s orders to undo God’s creation and complete his job successfully and

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