The Trials Of The Nazis During The Holocaust - 1913 Words

Can the average person, when confronted by authority and ordered to hurt another human being, be able to do so? According to the results of Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on Obedience to Authority and the numerous testimonies from Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials, the answer is yes, provided that the individual committing the act was ordered to do so by an authority figure and/or believes that responsibility will be deferred to said higher authority. There is therefore potential that the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust can be reasonably explained by the results of Milgram’s experiments and Milgram’s Agency Theory. To offer some background, the Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials held in Nuremberg, Germany between the†¦show more content†¦(Milgram, pg. 4) This series of experiments would end up becoming famous for its shocking results; two-thirds of subjects, when ordered to by experimenters, were willing to shock the learner to dangerous voltage levels. (Milgram, pgs. 6-8) This spawned numerous ideas about human nature and whether obedience is ingrained in our DNA. (McLeod) More importantly, these results helped Milgram to formulate a theory, the Agency Theory, in 1974. Agency theory states that there are two states of behaviour when in a social situation: the autonomous state, where people chose their own actions and are willing to take responsibility for those actions, and the agentic state where â€Å"people allow others to direct their actions, and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for a nother person’s will.† (McLeod) Milgram stated that there are two triggers that put a person into the agentic state: they must a) believe that the person giving the orders is qualified to give such orders, and b) believe that the authority that is ordering them to do something will accept responsibility for anything that may happen as a result of their actions. (McLeod) Milgram’s experiments gave some credit to this theory as when subjects â€Å"were reminded they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey.† (McLeod) This is contrasted by the fact that even the mostShow MoreRelatedTaking a Look at the Jewish Holocaust804 Words   |  3 PagesThe Holocaust a tragic catastrophe in which six million Jews were brutally murdered by the Nazi regime. Who were the Nazi’s and what punishments were brought against these war time criminals. During the Holocaust the Nazis used a form of indoctrination that contrived oth ers to believe that the Jews were the ones to blame for the country’s loss after WWI. This indoctrination then lead to the massive murder of the Jews. In later years to come the Nazi leaders were charged with many crimes. 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