Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Milgram experiment shows people will role-play if you put them in a role play situation. It doesn't tell you anything about what people do in the real world in real situations.
That’s just not correct. In the original form of the experiment (and several subsequent replications), the “teacher” was under the impression everything was real and wasn’t aware the “learner” (the person pretending to get shocked) was an actor. Today, you’d never get an ethics board to approve the experiment in this form, as several former “teachers” were distraught, after being told the true nature of the experimen…
Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
51–60 of 112 posts
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#52I recommend reading book - Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.
Well researched (based on testimonials) and well written.
Some men get used to the job, some enjoyed it, some kept refusing.
> Twelve out of 500 soldiers opted out when allowed to leave freely.[34] Those of them who felt unable to continue shooting at point-blank range of prisoners begging for mercy, were asked to wait at the marketplace where the trucks were loaded.[35] The action was finished in seventeen hours. The bodies of the dead carpeting the forest floor at the Winiarczykowa Góra hill (about 2 km from the village, pictured)[36] were left unburied. Watches, jewelry and money were taken.[3]
Unfortunately some of those men who refused were hanged after the war for made up war crimes. History has bitter sense of humor.
> For a battalion of less than 500 men, the ultimate body count was at least 83,000 Jews.[50]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...
[2] http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-Ordinary...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Milgram experiment shows people will role-play if you put them in a role play situation. It doesn't tell you anything about what people do in the real world in real situations.
That’s just not correct. In the original form of the experiment (and several subsequent replications), the “teacher” was under the impression everything was real and wasn’t aware the “learner” (the person pretending to get shocked) was an actor. Today, you’d never get an ethics board to approve the experiment in this form, as several former “teachers” were distraught, after being told the true nature of the experimen…
> That would have made the entire experiment worthless,
Welcome to psychology in the 1960s.
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's true both ways: for the German POWs who were sent to Russia, almost none of them made it back alive.
That's just plain wrong. German PoWs in the USSR had a death rate of 15% to 30% depending on the sources, while Soviet PoWs in Germany had a death rate of 57% to 65% depending on the sources.
Well I don't want to make this into an argument about who was worse but the Russians didn't honor the Geneva convention. The last German POWs weren't released until the mid 50s.
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#55The courage to stand up against your own ingroup is the highest form of courage and morals. It requires independence of thought and high principles.
The other one is to acknowledge and believe deeply that your acts were wrong. I cannot think of another country that breathes these values so sincerely and profoundly. I am sure everyone knows that Germany is in no way unique in its killing of millions. I have no German ties whatsoever but I am in deep admiration of their capacity to accept, correct and be vigilant of repetition. I know neo-nazism exists. I hope it c…
I moved to Germany from America precisely because of Germans' lack of hubris about their ability to take responsibility for the crimes of their nations' past - while America is, without doubt, not ready to confront its own heinous crimes, being committed in present time, as yet.
Neo-nazism doesn't scare me as much as the average American patriot, whose political cover allows many, many crimes to be committed in their name with, seemingly, no repercussion.
However, as a believer in karma, participating in such a society is not on - thus, I moved.
My only concern now is that the Germany of the future will have what it needs to address America - because it doesn't look like Americans are going to be roping in their criminal death cult any time soon ... and all signs point to an America, in the future, which will have to deal with the crimes being committed in its name, today.
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Don't encourage him. He obviously likes feeling morally superior.
Perhaps you misunderstand. This is an issue better approached with logic than with emotion.
I draw attention to the parent's false equivalency of Nazi Germany and 21st Century USA. I describe the Nazi regime's recognition of the morale toll on its soldiers of gunning down innocent souls. Himmler himself saw this as an "issue."
Conjecture basis the article that the Nazi German legal system is similar to the modern American system is logically fallacious and dangerous insofar as it suggests that Nazism is compatible with contemporary American political and ethical values.
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
(In some views) morals are relative and personal, not absolute.
They don't have to be objective or subjective. I've never understood the argument that morals are individually subjective. If individual people freely did anything all the time then where would morals come from?
Morals are for the individual, ethics is for the group. The level and state of each realm, defines the state of the other.
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#58The last line resonated with me a lot "In every case of documented refusal to obey orders to exterminate people, the coercive powers of the Nazi system proved to be impotent or ineffective." I would have expected the opposite. I guess this means, the structures of society and rule of of law were actually sort of still working, but that most people feared going against the zeitgeist.
This is an important point that is too often left unsaid. People today have an image of the Nazis organizing the deportation and murder of the Jews in a top-down fashion while everyone who wasn't German powerlessly looked on. But, actually, the Holocaust happened at the scale that it did because people went along with it. And not just the Germans; also the people in occupied countries, and in some cases even the Jews themselves. In places where people didn't go along with it, the Holocaust was ineffective, and survival rates were much higher.
Some places where people did not go along are (famously) Denmark and (less famously) Bulgaria. These countries managed to save the vast majority of their Jewish populations (though in the case of Bulgaria, Macedonian and Thracian Jews were murdered). 75% of French Jews survived the war because the French largely protected French Jews (though stateless Jewish refugees living in France fared much worse).
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#59[flagged]
Was this post intended as sarcasm, or did you actually mean to equate the torture of a small number of prisoners with mass executions of millions of civilians?
Come on, don't play the game that we are all Americans here. Americans might need to maintain ignorance about it, but most of the rest of the civilised world already knows that America is committing crimes against humanity and war crimes with its widespread extra-judicial rendition program, torture sites around the world, and the 500,000+ innocent human beings murdered in Americas illegal, criminal wars this century.
Trying to play it like America isn't the #1 cause of war and destruction in the world is just not going to work. Some of us actually care enough to pay attention and know that the stats are not in Americas' favour, when it comes to elevating ones moral principles with regards to heinous, criminal, illegal acts of war.
Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't have to be objective or subjective. I've never understood the argument that morals are individually subjective. If individual people freely did anything all the time then where would morals come from?
Morals are for the individual, ethics is for the group. The level and state of each realm, defines the state of the other.
Even if that's true, which I'm not sure it is, it doesn't necessarily mean that morals emerge from individual choice. Personally I think morals are emergent from groups.