How should those who have participated in genocide or mass murder (such as the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and the list goes on)be dealt with by society. To what degree should individuals be held accountable? What about those who give orders and those who carry them out? Do experiments such as those conducted by Milgram, Zimbardo and others mitigate responsibility? Why or why not? In order to get full credit on this response, you must cite specific evidence from Ordinary Men, as well as other class sources.
Due Monday 6/11
46 comments:
First of all, for anyone involved in mass murder or genocide, I think it should be made well known to society what they did and that they are capable of doing such things. However I do not think that every single person involved in mass murder or genocide should be punished by law. If you read the book "Ordinary Men" it portrays Reserve Police Battalion 101 and their part in the massacre of countless Jews in Poland during the Holocaust. The men in Battalion 101 were ordered to carry out the murder of these Jews by their superior officers. Although many of them couldn't go through with it and asked to be reassigned, most of the men carried out their orders without question. It's not that they wanted to kill these innocent Jews, but they felt that if they did not follow orders they would be shot themselves or seen as a coward among the rest of the men. Individuals such as these should not be punished by law because they already receive enough punishment on their own: through their conscience. The men that are ordered to carry out mass murders and genocides such as those that happened in the holocaust have to live with the memories of the killings for the rest of their lives. From the accounts recorded in "Ordinary Men" It seemed as though the men involved were haunted by their experiences every single day. I believe the mental stress those experiences have on a person are punishment enough.
For those who ordered such mass killings it should be a much different story. They are the ones who should be punished. They are the ones who wanted to kill others in the first place, and they're the ones who ordered it to be done. The ones in charge are those that are truly responsible. Those in command just order their lackeys to do the dirty work for them. For example, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq painful and humiliating forms of torture were being implemented on Iraqi prisoners. The soldiers conducting the torture obviously knew it was wrong, but they felt as though they couldn't go against the orders of their commanding officers so they continued to do it. And in the end, the officers ordering the torture spent less time in prison than the soldiers did when they should have been the ones doing serious time.
The experiments such as the ones conducted by Milgram or Zimbardo do mitigate responsibility because they show how innocent people can be turned ruthless while they are following orders. Like the mock jail put together by Zimbardo at Stanford University. When put in certain positions of power and given orders, the ones who were previously only university students became brutal jail guards. This shows that it can happen to anyone, and gives full reason why individuals who are just following orders should not be convicted.
PART 1 OF 2
Crime is a crime. Except, it would seem, for government-sanctioned war crime.
When faced with murder on such a large scale as in events such as the Holocaust, it is hard for people to say what punishment, if any, should be given. If a man picks up a gun and shoots his neighbor, that is murder; he is sentenced to death or life in prison. But when the government hands a group of men guns and points them to the neighboring country, lines of responsibility blur. It can be argued that these men had no choice, and they had to do what the authorities told them to do. This should be taken into account to some extent. As Milgram’s experiments have shown, nearly any person placed in a situation to hurt another human will do so, but only if directly ordered. The pressure to follow authority is ingrained into our society. So is peer pressure; other experiments have shown that, even when the majority of a group is obviously wrong, a single person will feel uncomfortable choosing what is obviously right if it disagrees with the majority. Both these pressures affect men in situations like the Holocaust, where they are ordered to do what they consider to be morally wrong as a group by a powerful authority. As unfortunate as it seems, it is an unavoidable aspect of human nature and must mitigate some of the responsibility.
But if the men cannot be blamed, where does the blame go? Once it is agreed that the men were only submitting to authority, it is too easy to shift blame until one man finally takes the hit regardless of if he deserves it. Just so, in the reserve Police Battalion 101, two men were sentenced to death and two more to prison after a trial in 1947. One of the two men executed was Major Trapp, who was known to be one of the most morally affected by the shootings and tried to avoid them if possible. Among the two imprisoned was Lieutenant Buchmann, who actively avoided any association with genocidal actions. They were not sentenced for their personal conduct; instead, they were targeted based on their rank. As officers, they gave orders and controlled the men. So, by the Milgram theory, it was their fault the men killed thousands of Jews and fugitives. If authority is to be blamed, it cannot stop at just the level up from the perpetrators; what of the men who ordered those men? Or who ordered them? If this is the way responsibility lays, it must go all the way to the top to the untimate masterminds. In the 101st’s case, it would go to Himmler, or even Hitler himself.
PART 2 OF 2
So at least some of the blame must move upwards. But surely not all of it. While some men, like Buchmann, actively avoided killing, other police threw themselves in whole-heartedly. The Battalion contained the full range of enthusiasts, compliers, dissenters, and avoiders. Zimbardo’s Stanford prison Experiment has reinforced this idea, that in a situation of the powerful trying to control the weak, reactions will vary in a full range. So while some men were only acting on orders, others were taking their own initiative; this aspect must bring some of the responsibility back into their hands. In a perfect world, men such as those in the 101st could be screened or tested to find who became active killers, and punish the men accordingly. But the world is not perfect, and the judicial systems have no proof. So all men who participate in such horrors must be punished; not as harshly as those at the top, but enough that the point is made that what they did will always be morally wrong.
Our society is based on principles, one stating that killing is wrong. In general, we let this principle slide during combat, but that opens our system up to ambiguities. When men perform horrors in the line of duty under orders, is it still a crime? It has to be to some extent, or our society would crumble. Then perhaps we should consider another option: what if all killing was a crime, no military exceptions? Just as problematic, certainly, but it would place a new stigma on warfare:
If you kill, you are punished. You have no one to hide behind.
Now pick up the gun, or walk away.
First of all, for anyone involved in mass murder or genocide, I think it should be made well known to society what they did and that they are capable of doing such things. However I do not think that every single person involved in mass murder or genocide should be punished by law. If you read the book "Ordinary Men" it portrays Reserve Police Battalion 101 and their part in the massacre of countless Jews in Poland during the Holocaust. The men in Battalion 101 were ordered to carry out the murder of these Jews by their superior officers. Although many of them couldn't go through with it and asked to be reassigned, most of the men carried out their orders without question. It's not that they wanted to kill these innocent Jews, but they felt that if they did not follow orders they would be shot themselves or seen as a coward among the rest of the men. Individuals such as these should not be punished by law because they already receive enough punishment on their own: through their conscience. The men that are ordered to carry out mass murders and genocides such as those that happened in the holocaust have to live with the memories of the killings for the rest of their lives. From the accounts recorded in "Ordinary Men" It seemed as though the men involved were haunted by their experiences every single day. I believe the mental stress those experiences have on a person are punishment enough.
For those who ordered such mass killings it should be a much different story. They are the ones who should be punished. They are the ones who wanted to kill others in the first place, and they're the ones who ordered it to be done. The ones in charge are those that are truly responsible. Those in command just order their lackeys to do the dirty work for them. For example, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq painful and humiliating forms of torture were being implemented on Iraqi prisoners. The soldiers conducting the torture obviously knew it was wrong, but they felt as though they couldn't go against the orders of their commanding officers so they continued to do it. And in the end, the officers ordering the torture spent less time in prison than the soldiers did when they should have been the ones doing serious time.
The experiments such as the ones conducted by Milgram or Zimbardo do mitigate responsibility because they show how innocent people can be turned ruthless while they are following orders. Like the mock jail put together by Zimbardo at Stanford University. When put in certain positions of power and given orders, the ones who were previously only university students became brutal jail guards. This shows that it can happen to anyone, and gives full reason why individuals who are just following orders should not be convicted.
When thinking about the way individuals who have participated in mass genocides should be treated I do not think there is one correct answer. My mind is torn in two when thinking about this issue. Part of me thinks “What caused them to do these awful things was beyond their control, and simply the result of being put in an unfortunate situation where their psyche caused them to behave this way. If you were put in this position it is likely that you would do the same.” Another part of me says “When is it ever okay to kill innocent men, women, and children? These people need to be held responsible for not only the murder of thousands of individuals but for making these peoples lives a living hell. If we never hold these people responsible for their actions we will in turn condone this type of behavior and it will be seen as okay in the future.” My heart feels for the individuals in both situations. I feel so much compassion for those soldiers who have set out to help the citizens of their country, and only seen themselves turn into monsters capable of mass murder. But my heart also feels the pain of those who were mercilessly tortured to death or murdered. These factors then bring me to the question of; “To what degree should individuals be held accountable?” And as with the other questions, I don’t really have a clear cut answer for this either. Overall, I feel that whoever authorizes this type of thing to happen should be held the most responsible and whoever was blindly following orders should be held this least responsible. Those who refused to participate should be awarded for their ability to stand up against the status quo, like the soldiers in ordinary men who when given the option to participate or not, chose not to do so. If the army was composed entirely of men and women like chose soldiers, these happenings of mass murder would never have happened and the world would most likely be a much better place.
The act of participating in genocide alone warrants the punishment of the individuals involved. Genocide is way too common and has not been dealt with seriously enough, such as the ruthless killings that have been taking place in Darfur. People have said never again, but it is. These people are getting away with these violent crimes and have been easily. We need to step up our efforts to end this and make sure it never happens again. I believe that the individuals that are committing the crimes and following orders should be held responsible. The ones how are following orders should not be put in jail or executed, they should be used to correct what they have damaged. Villages and cities have been demolished my groups committing genocide. The ones responsible should be put to use by repairing the damages to the towns and help repopulate it with the victims they have displaced. The millions in Darfur that have been displaced should be helped by having their homes rebuilt and the enemy pushed back. The same goes for what happened during the Holocaust. The men responsible for willingly killing the victims should have been made to work by rebuilding the towns they burnt down or the businesses they destroyed. The commanders and officers that are responsible for giving the orders should be treated a bit harsher by being jailed for a long time. Zimbardo and Milgram were correct when they said that people would follow the group but people should not be let go from murdering innocent civilians. Even some of the men in Ordinary Men tried to get out of killing the people they rounded up. These men had more common sense and should be treated less harshly due to their strong disagreement of the situation. These men were eventually forced to kill which they deeply regretted. These men should not be held responsible.
Genocide or mass murder is idea of killing a large number of people based on their traditions and customs. While this may have taken place long ago in Europe, I believe that it is so devastating to watch how people in various camps were treated. For example, one serious event led by Hitler was the Holocaust, which caused massive killings and suffrage for people. However, the people who were shooting and mistreating others were under the order of Hitler, which in this case, they were forced to complete orders by their leader. Whether it is under orders or not, personally I still believe that people should back out when they are put in these serious situation. Conversely, to an extent, people many times are demanded by others and if one tells your group to shoot others it may be difficult to say no and not complete the task. As shown in the movie, when the children were directed by adults, they had to do what they were told, but then when an adult was not watching them they all acted crazy. This connects to the Holocaust, because troops were put under certain orders that needed to be completed; and if the orders were not done correctly, then the government would realize that their troops were not trying. It still confuses me as to why one would think to kill or have people suffer without food and treat them with such rudeness. For example, in the book “Ordinary Men”, the troops were normal people that had to obey the rules given from their Lieutenants, which in this case was to kill the Jews. Even though these people never thought that they would have to kill people, after practice and sadness they still managed to complete their tasks by being forced and under pressure. However, at the time, Browning explains, “I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing…” (Browning 223). This quote explains the fact that during the Holocaust era in Europe, racism was a problem everywhere and the government failed to stop it and instead intensified it. Furthermore, as far as who gets punished and the degree that individuals should be held accountable for is that the people who have organized and are the leaders for these massive killings, are the ones that should be penalized. I believe that the leaders should be punished because if no one came up with such an idea then there would not have been a problem. Thinking about killing a poor, innocent family because of their ethnicity is strictly unacceptable. Not only does it hurt their family, but it leaves you with a feeling of guilt. I also believe that only the leaders organizing the shootings should be punished and should be held accountable to face the consequences; and not the people that are told to accomplish such order.This is because the troops have no choose, they have to obey the rules. Lastly, I believe that the both Milgram and Zimbardo experiments play a huge role in the idea that people should not be ordered to complete a task by pressure. When people are put in pressure, it causes them to go crazy and therefore, these people should not be held accountable for any punishments. Their job is to follow the orders given by their leaders, and others telling them such orders have to remember that killing people is not the solution for a peaceful environment.
Societies today work because we have laws that govern our behavior. These laws make it possible for us to go grocery shopping or go out to a movie without worrying about our own safety. When these rules and laws are ignored, overlooked, or purposefully broken, there need to be consequences because, unfortunately, that’s the only way people will learn a lesson in some cases.
Genocide takes murder to a whole new level. There are laws in place worldwide about the killing of another human being in cold blood, but when genocides occur it is impossible to make everyone follow this law. The chaos that existed during the holocaust makes it difficult if not impossible to convict or try everyone involved. Even so, it is necessary to bring consequences down upon those who can be tried. While it is wrong to make an example of someone, it needs to be shown that murder, even in the chaos of situations like the holocaust, is not beneficial to society in any way. For example, in Ordinary Men, the soldiers were both directly and indirectly responsible for the death of over 50,000 Jewish citizens. To try every soldier for individual counts of murder would be impossible, as it is unclear just how many people each soldier murdered. Many soldiers instead received jail time or executions based on the clear accounts of their actions. Leaders suffered most harshly because there was an overwhelming amount of information about their commands. Trapp, for example, was executed because an entire contingent of men was able to point at him and say “he was in charge.” In situations of genocide and mass murder, I think it is necessary to convict as many people as possible. While not every person involved can be punished for their actions, it is necessary to show as many as possible that their actions were not without consequence.
While experiments by Milgram and Zimbardo help in giving explanations for the actions taken by people in stressful situations, they do not lessen the responsibility of those associated with a crime. The experiments of Zimbardo, for example, show that people in stressful situations sometimes become entirely different people. Their character traits change immensely and they take on whole new personas that are capable of doing things that their old self never would have done. However, in every experiment, there were people who didn’t change at all. For example, in the prison experiment, some guards became extremely corrupt and violent towards the inmates. However, there were a few who were polite, kind and generous towards to inmates. This proves that in nearly every case, the changes taken on by the people involved were in some part conscious choices. Responsibility can still be assigned in these cases because the actions taken were at least in some way the result of the free will of the individual.
I think that anyone who has been involved in genocide should be punished in some sort of way, whether it by law or their own mind. I do not think that every person who participated in mass killings should be punished by law because some men thought they had no choice other than to follow the order they were given. Even those who were given a choice, such as the men in Battalion 101, were afraid to be seen as cowards if they did not do what they were told. The men from Battalion 101 in the book “Ordinary Men” are the types of people who I do not think should be punished by law. From what the book stated, it seemed as though the men were already punished enough by themselves. They felt such guilt for the actions they took that they could barely even live with themselves. I think that type of punishment may be even worse than jail time because you have to live with the fact that you killed innocent people just because someone told you to. Everyone in society most likely knows what these people did and they will never be looked at the same. That is punishment in itself.
Then there are the cases of those who are in charge of the mass killings. Under no circumstances should these people be left unpunished. These are the people who are the start of it all. They had the control and the power to say no, we should not be doing this. But instead they said yes to killing millions of innocent people. And why? Just because they could. There is no exception for the leaders of genocides and what they did. They should be completely shunned by society and be in prison for life. They clearly do not have a conscious enough to haunt them so that would not be enough punishment for them. They need to be put away for life or even sentenced to the death penalty themselves because that is what they did to so many innocent people. There is a saying “Treat others how you want to be treated.” These leaders deserve to be treated how they treated their victim and should be in no way let off without punishment. For example Abu Ghraib is a prison in Iraq where the prisoners were tortured in painful and mortifying ways by the soldiers. I feel as though the soldiers who were just doing what they were told here should not be punished by anything other than their own mind. But for the man that was making the prisoners undress and form a human pyramid, there is no way he should be let off without punishment. He went above and beyond the commands given to him and that to me is just sick. The person who told him what to do should also be punished for giving such commands.
I think the experiments done by Milgram and Zimbardo do mitigate responsibility because they show how the pressure of a situation can turn someone into a completely different person. This makes it seem as though for soldiers like those in “Ordinary Men” it was not completely their fault for what they did because the pressure of the situation made them do it. It was not like they wanted to be killing all those people but in that situation they cracked and just did what they were told without thinking of their morals or anything because they were so pressured.
Let me be perfectly frank. To be involved in a genocide of any form, whether it be racial, cultural or both, is something that is abhorable on every possible level. However, it would be extremely detrimental to shun and ignore those who participated in such massacres socially, or to give them any substantial punishment. Although the participants of the brutal act did indeed commit the heinous crimes, they were, as many on the Nuremburg Trials stated, merely “following orders”. The very same situation is shown in Ordinary Men. Although there were only a few men that restrained themselves from the massacres of the Jewish population in Poland, no one really wanted to kill all of those unarmed men, women and children. Even the officers, including Trapp himself, saw the crimes as something atrocious, but still as orders that had to be carried out. The situation wasn’t that they COULDN’T back down, it was that they WOULDN’T back down from the task at hand. The horrendous situation that these ordinary men were placed in speaks a lot about how they acted and why. The social pressures they were under constrained them to acting with the majority, and thus not really themselves. To order any significant punishment for these truly innocent men would be something unfair and unjust in addition to the hellish memory they must relive when they recall their services in the military.
Punishing those who issued the commands to exterminate mass groups of people however is something completely different. These men and women in high command that can clearly make their own decisions, rather than those under the influence of their officers and comrades, are the monsters that should be punished to the fullest extent. In order to make the idea of genocide even more repugnant, those in high command should be made an example of. It were these people that wanted to kill innocent civilians, and completely uproot society: and they should face the maximum punishment. In Abu Ghraib for example, prisoners were completely and utterly humiliated and killed under the orders of those in high positions of power. They issued the orders that exerted pressure on those below them to follow orders and to stay in line, or potentially face consequences. As with those in Police Battalion 101, the soldiers of Abu Ghraib knew that what they were doing was horrible, but the officers above them made them feel as though they had no other option. They single handedly cause the genocide, so they should single handedly pay the price.
But I suppose that upon observing the findings of Milgram and Zimbardo, some of the responsibility of the heinous crimes is mitigated. Similar to the shock experiment performed by Dr. Milgram, those who were ordered to shock the subject into learning more efficiently did just that, and only a select few went against the orders to help the suffering man. Even more to the benefit of the troops of genocide was that not a single test subject went to help the man without asking the person they believed was in charge first. Similar to those who actually killed and tortured, these ordinary people were merely following orders, and acting under the situation they had unfortunately been cast into.
The accountability to be assigned to those who participate in genocide is a commonly debated question. Optimally, I would say that those who are suspected of the abhorrent crime of participating in a genocide should have their fates determined on a case-to-case basis. However, because I know that by definition, genocide involves a vast quantity of victims, and thus usually similar quantities of perpetrators, it would be difficult to recommend this while keeping in mind the issue of practicality. If, God forbid, a genocide of even half the magnitude of the Holocaust were to occur again, it would simply be impractical and rather idealistic to try to give each of the accused a fair trial. Thus, based purely on the matter of practicality, not every participant and henchman in a genocide can feasibly be prosecuted.
But who’s to say that these men should even be prosecuted in the first place? If Ordinary Men taught us anything, it’s that generally these people who become dehumanized to the point where they are able to take so many fellow humans’ lives are not necessarily natural killers. They are not monsters who society needs to be protected from. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were an assemblage of 500 or so Average Joes who needed to become desensitized to murder to be able to commit the heinous act. Thus, I suggest that we should not go after these people who are manipulated and dehumanized, we should go after those who engage in the manipulation and dehumanization: the leaders. Undoubtedly, those who have the original visions of murdering scores of innocent civilians are the ones who need to be put away for the security of society. They were not coerced into organizing these crimes, they were not manipulated in order to be able to take another human’s life, these psychopaths have inherent characteristics disposing them to these kinds of odious acts. As the psychological experiments of Zimbardo and Milgram illustrate, had the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, for example, not come into contact with the manipulators of the SS, they most likely would have led their lives rather benevolently. They were originally innocent humans, who, as humans, had the capacity of cruelty and this was brought out by the Nazis.
Murder is always considered a crime, punishable by law. The lines get blurred when this murder is committed by military personnel in the line of duty. Personally, although I believe that murder should have serious consequences, sometimes that doesn’t always make the most sense in terms of genocide. I believe that the soldiers who committed the actual killings are punished enough knowing that it was them who killed unarmed civilians. These people also didn’t feel like they had a choice. When they did have a choice, as the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 did, some men did avoid being killers. Sometimes though, the men did not think that they had a choice or knew that they would be looked down upon by their fellow soldiers if they refused to follow orders. However, the Reserve Battalion’s men talked of how they were haunted by their actions.
Instead of punishing the men who carried out the horrible orders, the men giving the orders should be punished. After World War II, Major Trapp, leader of the Reserve Battalion, was executed for his crimes. Although, in reading Ordinary Men, it was obvious that Trapp hated the job that he was given to carry out, he still followed his orders and gave his men orders to kill innocent people. The blame goes higher than the leader of the battalion though. In the end, Himmler and Hitler should be the ones punished for the crimes that they ordered to be executed. The actions that the men carried out began at the top.
The trials done by Milgram and Zimbardo do mitigate some of the responsibility of the soldiers. These trials showed that ordinary men can be transformed into killers very easily. People will follow horrible orders, especially if their peers are doing so as well. The trials showed that the men really just were following orders, although they did not agree with what they were doing, they still did it because they were fearful of the consequences. Both of the experiments show that almost everyone will turn into killers and abusers if they are given orders, and it is not the individual’s fault.
Those who have participated in genocide or mass murder either orchestrated the killings, did the killing themselves, or both. They are usually instructed by a higher power, like the men of Battalion 101 in Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men", in which the orders of the SS trickled down to the Order Police. Some men were afraid of being labeled 'cowards' if they did not execute the mission as instructed; when given the option, other men simply backed out, however in "Ordinary Men" that was a rare occurrence. I found this to be strange, because even the commander of Battalion 101, Major Wilhelm Trapp, became emotional when he had to introduce the mission to the men, "Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke..." (Browning, 2). Considering the emotional trauma of the killings, the orders came from the highest authorities, and it was the men's duty to carry the task out.
It is difficult to determine the "morally correct" way to handle these murderers - that is what they technically are. They were given orders by officers far superior to them, and even those officers - with the exception of the members of the SS - experienced emotional turmoil. Most men did not want to participate, but some were capable of putting their emotions aside and becoming robotic, like in "Band of Brothers: Carentan." Soldiers convinced themselves that they were already dead, and it wasn't worth letting their emotions get in the way of their duty. But every soldier - whether they wanted to kill or not - can be convicted of the same thing. They killed innocent people.
Genocide is not uncommon to the world, it continues heavily in third-world countries, and warlords use intimidation and death threats to make their soldiers carry out the macabre missions. But even those soldiers who are innocent themselves still kill - "I was told to do it by my superior officer" cannot be an excuse anymore, because genocide will keep happening. It's not fair that those soldiers may have to risk their lives for saying "no", but I believe that would put a halt to genocides quickly. Everyone who kills should be punished, at that time or fifty years later.
There have been many genocides throughout the course of history, some examples are the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, and many more. The people who take part in these genocides cannot be easily singled out unless they are in a position of high power. These people who take part in the murder of many others should not necessarily be arrested and punished by being put in jail. One example of why I believe this can be found in the book Ordinary Men. In the book the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were ordered by higher officers to shoot the innocent people, but they were all given the chance to withdraw from doing this and they could have been reassigned. The men who did not step down were ordered to kill people and they did so, although not necessarily because they wanted to. They were unsure of what the consequence would be to not joining in the mass murders which could have caused them to be afraid of a possible punishment. Another reason that they might have participated in the killings instead of stepping down is because they may not have wanted to stand out from the group. It was scientifically proven that in a group of people if the majority of the group decides on something, even if it is the complete wrong thing to do, then other people will simply conform to the group so as to not stand out. This does not justify the fact that these men participated in genocide, but it does show how their view of the situation could have been skewed. These men should be punished, not necessarily by being put in jail, but by being branded a murderer for others to see. Additionally, the men who were interviewed in the book Ordinary Men told how after killing large numbers of people they felt desensitized. They got to the point where they weren’t capable of carrying out killings anymore and had to be sent to do another job. The memories of killing innumerable amounts of people will stay with them for the rest of their lives, and I believe these memories and the mental trauma are essentially punishments. As for the people who ordered these mass murders to be carried out, they should be arrested and thrown in jail for good. They should have their lives taken from them as they took the lives of thousands and thousands of others. Without the orders to kill the innocent people, the ordinary soldiers would most likely have not done that and would have just lived their lives normally. In Ordinary Men it seems as if the blame is placed on higher officers. The soldiers say they were ordered to shoot the people. This is the only reason they actually give for shooting them, so unless they were ordered to do so then they most likely would have not killed anyone innocent.
The experiments that were conducted by Milgram and Zombardo show that ordinary people can be ordered to do something by a person for a reason, even one that seems as if it will result in injury to another person, and most of the time they will follow through. They also show that, under the right conditions, people can be changed from normal, innocent humans to much more aggressive animalistic people.
This all shows that although people know something is wrong, they may follow through with what it is they’re doing anyway. The ordinary people can’t be blamed fully; the ones giving the commands are to blame.
In cases such as these, of mass murder such as the Holocaust and other genocides, it is difficult to decide who and how people should be punished. We all know the things which anyone would deem crime worth, such as the murder of a neighbor, or stealing etc. When a group of our soldiers are equipped with guns and then asked to take down the enemy, men just like themselves only of another country, punishment decisions become tough. Some argue that these men were forced to do this being under the control of the government. This is a contributing factor into whether these men should really be blamed. The question is should these men have stood up against these orders and followed their own morals, instead of doing what they later claim they were forced to do? It was shown through Milgram’s experiment that most people ordered to do this, and harm others will in fact do so. People succumb to the pressures of authority and their peers. In the experiments you could see that the people were more likely to follow the orders if they saw one of their peers doing so, they do not want to be seen as a coward. This is experienced in many wars, especially the Holocaust shown through the book Ordinary Men.
If it is decided that these men are not at fault then who is, the next step is to pass blame on to those who ordered the other men. But what if they are ordered by someone above them? There were cases in Reserve Police Battalion 101 where two men were sentenced to death and two more sentenced to a life in prison. It is still not clear if these were the correct people to blame and if they were rightfully punished. According to the Milgram theory it was in fact their fault for killing thousands of innocent Jews, but is this theory correct after all. In all I believe men when put into this situation should not follow the orders that they know are wrong. With that said I know that is an act much easier said than done.
Those who have participated in genocide should absolutely be held responsible for any involvement they had. However, the degree to which these individuals should be held responsible is all in perspective. For example, the officers and higher order who give out the orders to murder should bear the brunt of the blame for the murders. Experiments conducted by Miligram and Zimbardo have proven that these men are the sole reason that the genocide is committed. When an average person is put into a situation where they are directed by a higher command to committ something they know is morally wrong, most people still do it out of fear from their higher command or obedience to that higher command. In "Ordinary Men" the members of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 participated in the mass murder of defenseless Jews. However, these directions were given under a certain connotation that if they were not followed, the soldiers would have been held accountable. Some even believed they would be shot on the spot if direct orders were not followed. Because of this, full responsibility cannot be held by the foot soldiers who carry out the orders to kill.
Many people claim that they would not partake in the mass murder if they were in fact put into that situation. In the video "Power of the Situation", however, this is proven an invalid argument. Almost all people state that they would not participate in genocide of any sort because of the legality of it and because it defies their morals. When an experiment was conducted, however, most people took part in the unfair treatment of the prison inmates. In fact, the prisoner guards became so in tune with their character, the experiment was ended after six days even though it was supposed to last 2 weeks. This proves that when put into a situation where one is given orders, he/she will almost always follow them without question. This certifies that those who were simply commanded to kill mass amounts of people should not be held fully responsible. Instead, the higher order giving the commands should be held much more accountable for the actions, lessening the punishment on the foot soldiers who carried it out.
I believe that those who are involved with genocide should not all be punished and blamed for a mass killing. It’s not possible to blame every person for these catastrophic events because certain people are ordered or instructed to so by superior officers. Although they are despicable and are considered to be human atrocities how do blame every single person or just single out one person involved. I believe it’s too difficult to blame everyone involved, however in a certain event the superior officer should be blamed due to his order and acknowledgement of what he ordered his troops to do. That would be the most reasonable way to punish a group of a people for a mass murder, because there is no perfect or right way to do it.
An example of this was from the book Ordinary Men regarding the Reserve Police Battalion 101 situated in Poland and Russia. When the initial order from the superior officer was to line up and execute civilians in a mass huddle at first a decent sized handful of soldiers refused the order. Over time however the men became desensitized and just followed the orders without question. This response of just following orders is the same used by countless other individuals involved with war crimes and genocides as well. An example of this was in the documentary about the prison camp in Iraq “Abu Ghraib ”. When the guards were asked in trial for their actions or techniques in interrogating the inmates they responded that they were simply following orders from the commanding officer in charge of the prisons activities and staff situated there. This was similar to the trials of the select few from the police battalion reserve 101 who also used this response as their defense while attending trials based on their sporadic murders of civilians during World War Two.
These actions and events that take place in genocide make the punishment or laws regarding the punishment of individuals extremely intricate and complex to comprehend. How can you blame every one who was following these orders from their commanding officers or how can you punish an individual out of thousands of troops and military personnel. This leads me to the conclusion that the only proper or reasonable way to punish people for genocide is to punish the leading officer or general in charge of a large order to attack or destroy any one in including civilians, women, and children to be executed. Examples of these include men and dictators who were ordering these horrific attacks such as Hitler and Stalin who would even kill his own men to set an example for the rest to follow. In addition I would specifically punish the lieutenant general or person in charge of each military branch or the major general responsible for the actions of his division. Either way both actions or solutions for who to punish are really fair because in reality majority of the troops and soldiers did and still do participate in these events.
The experiments ordered out by Milgram and Zimbardo help support this claim that you cant really blame all individuals or specific ones because as seen in the experiment when put into a certain situation its only natural to act a specific way even if its dehumanizing of other people. It shows that when men are forced into these situations they cant help but to obey orders and decsenitize toward the life style their living on a consistent basis. Therefore there is no proper way to punish people for a genocide however I believe certain commanders and ranking officers in the chain of command should be held responsible for the men they’re in charge of.
Nothing is simple when dealing with genocide. When death tolls rise to such skyrocket figures, it’s hard to tell who the blame belongs to. Yet, it’s something that must be dealt with, as with the case of the 101 battalion of the reserve police battalion in the Second World War. Now, under normal circumstances, these men would be tried and found guilty of murder, and therefore either be executed or imprisoned for life. However, during a war, circumstances are anything but ordinary. These men were simply following orders. And, as the Milgram experiments show, that is something the average person excels at. Human nature shows that nearly all humans will harm, hurt, and even kill readily, when order to do so. Therefore, how can we blame individuals for that? Yes, the ‘ordinary men’ of the 101 battalion killed thousands of people; and the fact they were order to does not make it ok. But they were ‘just following orders’. Therefore, while these men should be punished for what they did, it should be rather light. For, one must remember that people often become the roles they play. Simply look at the Prison Experiment; within six days the average kids playing the guards had become savage caretakers, and the ‘prisoners’ were starting to develop real mental traumas and physical illnesses. These normal kids had become their part in so little time, so think of how people can transform on the battlefield. That is something which must be taken into account when placing blame. Therefore, should higher ups, such as Major Trapps, receive the blame, even though the thought of killing turned his stomach? He gave the orders. Yet these orders came from someone else. Therefore, this creates a vicious cycle of which everyone pushes the blame higher and higher. That would make, in the World War 2 scenario, Hitler the one that gets the punishment. And while he deserves to be punished, there were so many more that committed the atrocities he told them to. That’s what makes punishing war criminals so hard; that’s why so many of them get off with light sentences. After all, how much can you punish people for following human nature?
Maggie Kulpa
During the time of World War II and after many ordinary men and soldiers were being used to kill those killed in mass killings or torture people in prisons. These same men today are being tried for murder or the torture of people unethically and unlawfully, but at the same time they are also saying how they too are victims. Yet, there is still debate to whether these men should be held responsible for the deaths of innocent people, or the higher powers above them told them to act the way they acted and should be held responsible instead.
While there is this debate of who should be held responsible, I believe that there is not black and white answer as to who is completely responsible for this. Many men that were “forced” to participate in Abu Ghraib believe that they are the true victims of the happenings because they were also living in the dark, cold prisons with nothing to do but take orders from the higher aboves. Not only this, but the government at the time had signed a contract allowing for this torture to happen, even specifying specific methods that needed to occur. Yet, these same men took part in torture so cruel and deeming to those around them and the victims that any man, whether they be in right or wrong state of mind, should know better than to do. In cases like this, the men were at fault for going above and beyond the ordered cruelty of the higher powers and still giving in to the higher powers, but at the same time the higher powers are still at fault for their orders.
Ordinary Men is another case just like this, ordinary people given orders to participate in mass killings of towns. Yet, there is also another aspect of the story that sets these men apart from the ones at Abu Ghraib, these men were given the opportunity to back out. When the men were first ordered to start the mass killings many could not believe was they were being told to do, but at the same time they did it anyway. However, this changed when they were told they could back out then, or stay and continue to kill, it was then that only less than a dozen out of hundreds of men walked away and did not participate. The other men, on the other hand, killed the innocent people, even if they were apprehensive about it. Yet, at the same time, they are exactly like the men of Abu Ghraib, responsible for their actions, while the higher powers are also responsible for their orders.
The responsibility of the torturing and killing that took place is hard to blame on just one person or on a specific group of people. Collectively these people killed mass amounts of people, but they would not have done so without the orders from the higher aboves. It’s hard to look at these men and blame solely them for their actions because of the difficulty most would have walking away from the orders of powerful people, but it is necessary to understand that they acted in such ways. The same is for the higher power, the killings would not have taken place without the men killing them, but they were the ones giving orders, so they also had taken part in the murders.
This is a very tough question to answer, but a few weeks ago it may have been much easier. Before reading Ordinary Men, watching the two famous psychology experiments, and discussing this question in class, I would have easily said that the people who commit the offense would clearly be to blame. However, now this simple answer has come to bring a lot of doubt to my mind.
Many people have argued that the people who do the actions are not directly to blame. Some psychologists say that many people do it simply because they are told to do so. They do not want to disobey. An experiment at Yale univeristy was set up where one person, in on the experiment, was to answer questions. The test subject was to shock the answerer when they were wrong. Now this was not a real shock but the subject did not know that. Each question they got wrong a high voltage would be used. The subject was told to keep going up and up and the results were shocking. Many predicted that not many would follow through or go much farther than 150 volts. However what actually happened was 2/3 went all the way to a lethal level of electricity. Put in a certain environment a person could do anything no matter how morally wrong it may seem to somebody on the outside.
An example can also be made out of the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in a Iraq. They used harsh interrogation techniques and did odd and inappropriate things with the inmates. They were cast as evil and unhuman for their actions. However, they say nobody can judge unless you were in that environment.
Just like the book Ordinary Men says, anybody, even an ordinary man can do the horrific actions that take place during the Holocaust. You may think, "well I would never do that.", but unless you are in a situation like that, you will never know, and chances are you probably would do something like that.
I think that the blame should be spread around to all people involved. The people who do it, the people who give the orders, and people all the way at the top of the leadership. You can not simply blame the people who do the action because in a lot of situations they simply can not stop themselves psychologically.
It is a difficult to come up with one correct solution to the question regarding what should be done with those who are involved in mass murders, or genocide. While it seems painfully obvious that those who kill should be punished severely, in these rare situations it becomes less clear. Many individuals who become active participants in genocide killings and mass murders never imagined they would be doing such awful things, but an order given to them is one that they must follow. This raises the question as to who should be blamed for the murders- those who issue the order, or those who follow through with it? In Browning's "Ordinary Men" this becomes extremely evident. Of the 500 men who were involved in the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101, less than 20 of them back out of the killing spree, meaning that the vast majority of these seemingly ordinary men became malicious and dangerous killers of countless Jews during the Holocaust. This controversy has what seems like no easy solution.
Experiments previously conducted by Milligram and Zimbardo have proven that when people receive orders from a higher authority figure, they will in most cases carry out the given instruction. This perspective puts the blame for these atrocities solely on the higher authority figures who come up with the orders that they issue to the lower ranked foot soldiers who have to do the dirty work. It seems fair, that those who start the problem should be punished. But how severely? In my opinion, the people who give the orders to massacre any number of people should be the ones who deserve to be punished in a more serious manner, considering they initiated the action and were the sole reason that the less important members of the police group or military group committed the murders that they did. While I believe that anyone involved should be punished in some way, I believe that the ones who give the orders should face the most severe consequences.
Those who actually commit the crime however, should not be able to escape punishment. While they were given the orders by higher authorities, they were also given the option to back out of the action and be reassigned. Since the majority of the men did not choose to be reassigned, they ultimately accepted the responsibility for killing the hundreds of thousands of people that were murdered by their battalion. Based on this perspective, these soldiers should also be punished. I personally believe they should not be punished as severely as those who issued the order because in their position, any orders given to them are orders they must follow.
Conclusively, those who kill should be punished. However, the situation that they are put in makes it sometimes unclear who should take the blame for the atrocities that are committed.
Everyone has a mind of their own and everyone has a conscience. When people are told to do things that are morally wrong, then they should not be done. It falls back on the common saying “If someone told you to jump off a bridge would you do it?” Most people when asked that would say no of course not, but what about the military policemen who are asked to torture and harass prisoners of war? In the case of Abu Graib and the Holocaust, the police battalion did as they were told. They rarely questioned or refused what they were being asked to do, even if it involved shooting children or making members of the Taliban get naked and stack themselves on top of one another as if they were high school cheerleaders. When soldiers are asked to perform tasks that they know are against military law and above all against their morals, they should not follow through.
When it comes to punishing the men and women who have been convicted of war crimes, I believe the people who followed through with the orders and tortured or killed the victims, should be held fully responsible. Although they were not the people who came up with the orders, they were the ones who went through with them even though they knew what they were doing was either illegal or wrong. In Ordinary Men, officers would ask to be excused from a killing, but eventually they became desensitized to the entire situation and were numb to the entire situation. In the video clips of Abu Graib, there were photos taken with a woman smiling with a thumbs up next to a corpse. Getting pleasure or being immune to such violent acts is disgusting, and therefore the individual should be held accountable. The people who give the orders, should also be punished. Although they are not the people who committed the crime, they are the ones who told the people to kill or torture the people.
Many of the perpetrators from the Holocaust went unpunished, or mildly punished. I believe that all those who commit war crimes should be tried and punished for their crimes. While Milgram’s studies showed that most people will commit terrible acts when ordered to by and authority, this does not make it right, or an excuse.
Many of the Battalion 101 used the excuse that they were ordered by their officers and they couldn’t refuse. However, as “Ordinary Men” revealed, they could have refused. They were all offered a chance to be reassigned; however, few took that offer. Already, that excuse has less meaning, as no one was ever punished for refusing.
Milgram and Zimbardo showed how easy it is for people to commit horrible deeds when ordered to do so. Rather than this data diminish the punishment on the perpetrators, this should make people even more cautious of war. Just because it is human nature, does not make it an unavoidable action.
However, I believe that those who gave the orders should be more punished than those who carried them out. They might not have been doing the killing, but indirectly they killed more than the lower ranking soldiers. And as shown in the experiments, the killers did what they did because they were ordered to by someone who had more power than them. No act of unnecessary killing should go unpunished. Those who ordered the killing should be equally, if not more, punished for their crimes.
However, in some cases, the soldiers had to choose: kill or be killed. In a scenario like this, I think that their punishment should be less than those who had a choice. To conclude, I believe that no matter our psychological tenancies, no act of brutal killing should go unpunished.
Without laws, man is a brutal nature in which every one would fend for themselves. The punishments are set in place to assure that most do not do something considered to be unlawful or immoral. These are the barriers that keep us from a barbaric society. Considered to be on of the most immoral acts of history are mass genocides. The Holocaust was considered to be the boldest and worst tragic genocide in history. However, those who were involved were not fully punished. There were the main leaders of the movements sentenced to death or prison, but for the most part, a lot of those doing the direct killing go unpunished. Once defeated, those who man the trenches are quick to point fingers and blame the commanders and officers. These are usually the bulk of those convicted of crimes. I believe that all of those involved should be punished in some way or another. Even though I also believe that the officers and commanders are usually the real villains in genocides. For example in the book Ordinary Men, after a total of about 50,000 individual murders by the unit, most of the common soldiers pointed the fingers at Major Trapp. They saw him as their scapegoat, even though he probably felt just as remorseful as most of the soldiers. This is clearly evident throughout the novel when for a few times, the book describes Major Trapp crying and reluctantly giving the orders to kill.
On the other hand, I believe that to punish every single person involved in mass genocide is nearly impossible, there should be punishments for as many as can possibly be convicted. This is a crucial step into reassuring that such barbaric acts never occur again. The conviction of as many crimes as possible after World War 2 ended could have easily diminished the chances of other genocides from occurring since then. The motto that is usually pulled from the Holocaust of the 1940s is "Never Again", which is the exact opposite from what has occurred. Sparks of genocide such as Rwanda and the modern-day incident in Darfur.
Many scientists and professors at prominent universities stress the importance of the environment that soldiers and others are placed is the real reason for their actions. They put hardly any blame on the infantry, but instead point the finger at the orchestrators behind creating the environment that they are placed in. Studies from Milgram and Zimbardo on the psychological effects from the environments are often called in as expert witnesses in defense cases of many wars and genocides. They argue that the psychological effects of being in placed in such an environment change the personality of the individuals, which could cause the irrational killing of innocent people. I agree with Zimbardo and Milgram in a sense that the real monsters of war are the ones that create the harmful environments, even though I also believe that those directly involved beyond their control should be held responsible to a degree. Maybe not a degree of as much importance as officers, but still enough to send a clear message to the future. This would portray the consequences of genocide and hopefully prevent the reoccurrance of such tragic events in history.
In my opinion anyone who partakes in a genocide or mass murder should be considered guilty, and should have to face severe consequences. While I believe that all parties involved in killing should be held responsible, I think that those who order the killing deserve more responsibility for what occurred and therefore have more severe consequences than those who carried out the orders. I feel this way because even though those in command didn't personally kill people, their soldiers and followers never would have committed mass murders or genocides without the orders from their superiors. The men who gave the orders to kill are the most responsible for the murders because they facilitate their followers' actions. However, I do not think that their followers should go unpunished. As humans, the people who were "just following orders" had the ability to determine right from wrong and had the option to reject the orders they were given. For this reason, they should be punished for their actions.
It is evident through "Ordinary Men" that all people involved in the killings should be held responsible. The members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were ordered to slaughter thousands of people. The superior officers who gave the orders to kill should be held responsible because they facilitated the actions of their soldiers, and these soldiers would not have gone around killing innocent people unless they were ordered to. With that being said, those who did the killing need to be held responsible as well. When the battalion is given the orders, the members are given the option to be transferred so that they don't have to carry out the murders. About 20 men out of the whole battalion leave and others want to leave because they know what they are about to do is wrong but they fear that they'll get killed for leaving. This shows that these men were able to distinguish between right and wrong, and that the ones who stayed chose to do wrong. Therefore these men should be punished. However, the punishment of those who carried out the actual killing should be lesser than those who facilitated it because the ones who did the killing wanted to resist but were just afraid to. This shows that they at least had some remorse unlike those who gave the orders. I also hold the superior officers more responsible because these ordinary men would never have committed such atrocities if it wasn't for the orders given to them by their superiors.
This idea of following orders is supported further by the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo. In one experiment, the interrogator is told to shock the person being questioned with an increasing voltage for each question answered wrong. They continued to shock the other person because they were told that they'd become the victim if they didn't. In another experiment, a fake prison was set up by students. Some students were prisoners and others were guards, and the prisoners did as they were told in order to protect themselves, even if it meant hurting someone else. Both of these experiments enforce the idea that the superiors have too much control over their followers' and should therefore be held more responsible.
In a more modern case, the US military prison in Albugrave, Iraq a similar thing has been shown. The prison guards were told to do terrible things to the prisoners and are now facing criminal charges for their actions. However, the only reason the guards did these things was because they were ordered to by people as powerful as the secretary of defense. This goes to show that superior officers are more responsible for any negative actions because the negative actions start with the orders that they give.
There are many cases in history where genocide occurs. It is a tragic and atrocious event, but it still exists today. Millions of innocent people have be killed by ‘ordinary men’ in Germany, Rwanda, and many other countries. These ordinary men are murderers and should be held accountable and punished for what they did. In many cases, such as during the Final Solution, these men had an opportunity to stop. In Ordinary Men, the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were given a choice at the start of the The Jozefow Massacre, to take part in the killing, or be free to step out if they felt uncomfortable. Of all of the men, only 12 stepped out. Therefore, all the other men to take part in the murders had no excuse for doing so. If they defend themselves by saying they were ordered, that is false, because they could have not taken part with NO consequences for choosing a less death filled path. Without an excuse for committing those atrocious acts, the perpetrators must be punished with either long jail sentences or even death. Some people, such as Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, would argue that anyone in their place would do the same thing. I disagree. In Milgram’s experiment with administering electroshock as punishment, many of the ‘teachers’ administered the full, 450 volt shock. On the other hand quite a few participants did not give that shock. Only around 65% of participants went fully through the experiment. Does that mean that if some people didn’t stop, that they didn’t have a choice? Why couldn’t one person stop when another person could? Why should that person not be punished for something that he clearly could have stopped doing? I believe that the men who took part in events like the massacring of innocent people, like in the Holocaust, should be punished because they had an opportunity to not take part, yet they did not, and expect to not be blamed for their immoral and horrible choice.
The ordinary man or women who partakes in a mass murder or genocide will be punished by his or her own mind. The memories and vivid pictures of thier actions will forever be imprinted into their minds, and will continue to haunt them to the grave. When it comes to punishment by law, personally, I do not think it is appropriate for us, from the comfort of our classroom or security of our daily lives, to make harsh judgements about soldiers in situations foriegn to us. In 'Ordinary Men' Reserve Police Battalion 101, Browning illustrates how the men of the battalion were given a choice to carry on with orders or decline. This is a certain scenario that not all soldiers find themselvs in. Unless you personally have been given orders in the military and make a desicion to decline and oppose the chain of command, then you are not in a position to judge the men who have partaken in such acts. This being said, I am not defending the actions of such men. A major problem in legally punishing someone is events such as the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is pinpointing who is responsible. With whom does the responsibility lay? The highest in the chain of command or thoses carrying out the orders? Every situation is different with numerous variables blurring the picture and making the whole ordeal somewhat obscure. The experiences such as those conducted by Milgram and Zimbardo have made this question even harder to answer, as they mitigate responsibility because they show how innocent people can be turned into ruthless men by means of simply obeying orders. Of course, there are some men who willingly and wholeheartedly commit heinous crimes, and most likely have no regrets. This subject is by no means black and white, and the grey area is larger than most people realize. Once again, we as students or people living within the comfort and security of our daily lives have no right and are in no place to judge soldiers who have taken part in such crimes nor decide what thier punishments should be.
What occurred in Europe during the late 1930’s and 1940’s was horrible. Millions of Jews were slaughtered and systematically killed. This is genocide. Genocide is unfortunately carried out by humans, some voluntary, some involuntary. In Browning’s Ordinary Men, we are given a look at what actually happened in the killings of these Jews. The men of Reserve Order Police Battalion 101 and many other battalions were ordered to kill thousands of Jewish people with their own two hands. Despite many men quiting and many others asking to be reassigned, a majority of the men carried out these orders. In places all over Europe like Lithuania, the Ukraine, Poland, and many more countries. In a report from a certain Lieutenant Westermann, he reported on his Battalion killing over 8,000 Jews in a deportation to concentration camps. The murder of that many innocent people cannot be justified under any circumstances.
Legally you cannot kill another human being without receiving harsh consequences. During the Holocaust, each individual may have personally murdered hundreds of Jewish people themselves. This makes it difficult to try all these people in court to make them pay for their crimes. Even though this is difficult due to the large number of men who are guilty, anyone who is able to be tried should be. This would be the best way to bring justice to the families and relatives of those murdered, and to allow the cruel actions to be paid for.
The experiments done by psychologists such as the Milgram Experiment do indicate how easy it is to turn a person from an average peaceful person to a cruel person. The magnitude of these peoples terrible crimes outweigh this evidence. Therefore, I believe that these men should be tried and should receive punishment for what has occurred because of their actions.
25When the thought of individuals who have participated in mass genocides, my beliefs are split in two. Part of me thinks “What drove these people to act in such a violent way? Were they just following orders given to them? Were they afraid that if they didn’t act that way they would be killed?” Another part of me says “How could they kill innocent men, women and worst of all children.” They need to be held responsible for there actions. I still can’t help but feel for the individuals in both situations. I feel so much sympathy for those soldiers who had to follow orders to kill millions of people and watch themselves turn into cold-blooded murders. I have more sympathy for those individuals who were the soldiers victims. Those were the ones who suffered and were tortured to death. When evaluating the situations I think that whoever empowers genocide to happen should be held the responsible and those who mindlessly followed orders should be held a little responsible. Those who thought for themselves and chose not to participate in mass murder should be awarded for their ability. If the army were composed entirely of men and women like those soldiers, there would never be mass genocide in the world.
Part One
It is easy to point a finger and call someone guilty. It is just as easy to judge someone based on second hand knowledge. It is easier to condemn than to understand. Surely it is important to try and place yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand what exactly it was that was running through their mind at a difficult time in their life. But are there limits to how far our compassion and empathy should go? The constant debate of our time, and no doubt for years to come, is who we hold accountable for atrocities around the world, namely genocide or mass murder.
Many argue that we cannot simply sentence every single person who was carrying out orders during war to jail. However, what if those orders involved the mass killings of thousands of people? Milgram’s study has shown that when a number of people have been put in a position to send a shock to a “patient” under the orders of a superior, the majority of the specimen will do so, and will even go all the way to 450 volts. Another experiment, the Zimbardo experiment, demonstrated that when presented with a picture of four bars of different heights, if all the other people in the room claimed that the tallest was actually the shortest, the odd ball out would go along with the majority, even if he knew they were wrong. What does this tell us about human nature? This shows us the immense power of peer pressure and the strong influence that the masses have on our society. We have become a generation of people who are willing to do or say anything as long as we are following orders or following a crowd. This in some way, does mitigate the responsibility that must be taken by the men who execute their orders, because it shows that the majority of us, if put in their place, would have done and acted the exact same way. However, it does not excuse them entirely, for there are limitations to the empathy that must be offered to these men and women.
Part Two
Some things are excusable, or if not excusable, then understandable. The actions of Police Battalion 101, for example, was a police battalion comprised of ordinary citizens, thus inspiring the title of Christopher Browning’s book, “Ordinary Men.” In this book, we follow the story of a group of average, middle class citizens, who came from the backgrounds of merchants, business owners, and average citizens and had been transformed into cold blooded, machine killers. Their mission was to carry of Hitler’s “Final Solution”: the extermination of Jews. These “average” citizens, men who could be compared to your father, uncle, brother, or grandfather, rounded up Jewish citizens all over Europe (namely in Poland), herded them to an isolated area in the woods, often times made them dig their own burial ditch, then ordered them to lie face down on the ground and shot them in the back of the head. How is it that these ordinary men could commit such vicious acts? Much like Milgirm’s experiment would suggest, many of these men claimed they were simply following orders. They thought that if they had taken the offer to step out from this duty, they would be looked down upon by their fellow comrades. Again, these men felt the pressures from their peers and the pressure from their superiors to follow orders. So how is it that Major Tapp, who was leading Police Battalion 101 but never actually shot anyone, was sentenced to death but many of the men who actually pulled the triggers got off without so much as a slap of the hand? Where does the responsibility lie? I believe that it is impossible to ever truly aquire justice for such acts, because each individual case is unique. These situations do not live in vacuums. One of the men in “Ordinary Men” said he only killed children because he thought he was doing them a favor by putting them out of their misery and not allowing them to grow up as orphans. Others say they were simply following orders and felt nothing remorseful, and only drank because they were physically disturbed by the blown brain bits on their uniforms. How do we discern the cruel from the obedient?
A different example of common people commiting acts of brutality were the U.S. soldiers who were stationed in Iraq at Abu Ghrab. In this prison facility, many of the prisoners were abused and harassed on a daily basis. Pictures began circulating that depicted young American men and women laughing and smiling near the image of naked Iraqi prisoners piled on top of each other in a human pyramid. Was it part of their orders to treat the prisoners in such a disturbing manner? In this case, I think the answer is clear: these soldiers needed to be punished for their disgusting behavior and choices they made while keeping watch in the prison.
It is important to keep empathy in mind when judging anyone, or trying to discern their fate. However, one must be careful that empathy does not turn into sympathy. Simply saying, “he told me to” is not an acceptable excuse. If we start to accept these excuses in every day court rooms, thousands of criminals would be set loose back on the streets. If a person is morally aware that what they are doing is wrong, and if they continue to proceed anyway, then that person must be held accountable for their actions in court. It cannot be denied that there is room to share the blame, spreading out to the higher circiles of their superiors, however all the blame cannot be placed on them. In order to break the cycle of human beings feeling this constant pressure from their peers and from society, we must start holding them accountable for their actions. This is the only way to break the curse that we have placed upon ourselves by becoming a mass-oriented society.
It is very difficult to determine how those who partake in genocide and mass murder should be held accountable. I believe the organizers and people in charge of the genocide should be responsible, not the ones that actually carry out the murders. This is proven in both “Ordinary Men” and the psychological experiment by Zimbardo. In “Ordinary Men,” average citizens were recruited into Police Battalion 101, which carried out multiple vicious duties for the Final Solution. The recruited men went from being average men to savage killers. They each carried out multiple executions of Jews. However, the situation was not that simple because the men were disgusted by what they were doing. Their main motive was to “take one for the team” because if one man backed out then another member would end up carrying out that quitter’s dirty work. Thus, there was a lot of peer pressure that kept them involved with the killings. They should not be held responsible for their own murders because of the situation they were in. It was the men’s duty to kill Jews. The leaders of the Final Solution such as Hitler and Himmler should have taken responsibility for the men of Police Battalion 101.
This is evinced by Zimbardo’s experiment. In the experiment, men in a prison were divided into two sides- guards and prisoners. The guards ended up treating the prisoners brutally after a long time in the prison. However, Zimbardo concluded that such behavior was inevitable. Psychology has proven that the behavior of the guards and Police Battalion 101 is not actually abnormal. It is expected. That is why the people who kill others during genocide should not be held responsible. Psychology is a form of science that is taken very seriously. To ignore the psychological side of genocide is simply unfair and unjust. The psychological experiments completely mitigate the responsibilities of men who carry out killings.
All of society is aware that genocide is unacceptable. So I believe that to send out a message, we must enforce strict laws against genocide, including the condemnation of all those involved; whether it be low or high rank. Although the higher ups should receive far more punishment, the lower ranking officers should still be persecuted by law. Killing is a mortal sin, no matter the scenario. Nobody should be able to escape their crimes just because they were able to find something to scapegoat their motives on. I am sure that the majority of the lower ranking people are just responding to commands from a higher power, but they still chose to follow the orders. I am aware that Milgram and Zimbrado's research says that most people will follow the command of their higher ranking officers even if told to do something immoral, but that does not excuse what they have done. The book "Ordinary Men" portrays many soldiers' contribution to the Reserve Police Batallion 101's initiative to slaughter countless Jewish people. In the book many soldiers feared that if they did not follow orders they would lose their lives. It's a lot harder said than done, but I believe that the soldiers were all able to stand upon their moral principles and refuse to kill the innocent. They can not kill everyone if they all decide to stand up against authority, otherwise they wouldn't have an army. If one does not oppose the slaughter then one is condoning it, they should all be persecuted. May be not to the extreme extent to which the higher-ups should be, but they do deserve some form of punishment.
The psychological experiments performed by doctors like Milgram and Zimbardo seem to reveal that the actions of an individual are highly dictated by the conditions of his or her surroundings. In a particular event, the majority of people will respond in a certain way. But, not everyone; thus, in my opinion, these experiments do not signify that the people who act poorly in these situations are without culpability because any average person would do the same, but because there is a specific expectation for the ordinary man or woman, we must all endeavor to be extraordinary. It’s difficult, but as was seen in Ordinary Men, there were people who were willing to refuse from the beginning to kill. But, for every person that refuses to take part in the action, the likelihood that another will also refuse increases. This conclusion can be made from the experiments that showed that the average person would doubt his or herself, even if the answer is blatantly obvious, when surrounding others showed doubt for the clear answer. Then again, we have to think that the situations are extraordinary in themselves. It seems the simplest decision to decide that the highest leaders, the Hitlers, Pol Pots, and Miloševićes, in the execution of genocides are to pay the ultimate price. What the ultimate price is varies by person and society, but I will go with the European choice of life imprisonment. On the one hand , it appears reasonable to think that further down, when the people begin to have less and less of an idea of what the leader’s premeditated plans are, they have less responsibility because they have to make decisions without any prescience or time to think. However, it is the responsibility of every human to start thinking of the power in their hands the very second that they are handed a weapon or given a position of power. And if someone is given power over another an asked to make a decision on that person’s life in the same instant, the decision is harder, but it simply means that it is a human responsibility, too, to think about what you would do even before these very important decisions arrive. Because of this, I think that child soldiers can be pardoned; they have not been given enough years to realize their duties as human beings and reflect on them. But, for the adults, nearly all of whom must have known or seen war and suffering in their first eighteen years of life, it is necessary that they be punished. Hitler once spoke the famous line, “who now remembers the Armenians?”, right before he revealed his plan to destroy the Jews of Europe. He was speaking of the Armenian Genocide, the systematic destruction of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks (who also systematically killed a great deal of Greeks) during World War One and were never entirely chastised for it. The Turkish government to this day has not admitted to it. So, what the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo do for the modern world is not the disservice of absolving criminals of their sins, but explaining that it is a crime to not think about the genocides that have been committed in history and decide what you would do if put in the position of the inflictor.
I am going to be very clear in saying this. Any person who participates in something as brutal or heinous as genocide should be punished and held responsible for their actions. However, while it may be easy to come to this conclusion and speak of how this should be done, actually finding a viable way of handling situations like this is difficult to say the least. As proven by the book “Ordinary Men”, it does not take an evil or special type of person to take part in a mass murder. Given uncontrollable circumstances, these seemingly “normal” people can commit unspeakable acts they never thought themselves capable of committing. Of the numerous members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 who took part in the systematic killing of Jews during the Holocaust, only a handful denied their orders to take such actions. This raises a few questions of who should be held liable for the actions taken and to what degree. Should the commanders and those delivering the orders be held in a higher degree than those who committed the act? Should those who refused to kill when given the choice be allowed to go unpunished? Questions like these make finding a solution to problems like this extremely difficult to find.
In “Ordinary Men”, some members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 took their option to refuse killing. However, most of the time this came only after they could no longer take the sight of another dead human. It was essentially a break from killing for that day. Only around 20 or so of these members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 took this option. That is because after a while they became desensitized to killing. After both seeing and participating in such violent acts, it became a part of their life. It no longer had as much of a haunting impact on their psyche as it did when the killings first began. They became accustomed to it and adjusted to the sight of killing. While I believe that everyone involved in genocide or a mass murder of some sort should be held responsible and punished for their actions, no matter how severe, the punishment should be held in perspective. I think the higher powers that delivered the orders should be held the most responsible for their actions. They made the call on the killings, the lives of those people were in their hands. However, this does not mean that the ones going through with the killings should be free. They did take the lives of innocent people so there has to be repercussions. They did have the option to be reassigned and most did not take advantage of this opportunity. While they were not completely forced to abide by their orders, it was still an order and realistically soldiers will not deny an order. Their punishment should be less severe than the officers who sent the order, but there should not be an easy escape.
Because of experiments conducted by Milgram and Zimbardo exemplify this idea that orders will be taken regardless of the negative effect it will have based on the situation. Most of the responsibility for the actions of these subjects is passed on to those who were giving the orders. The course of action taken by those who participated in these experiments was determined to have happened no matter what. In Zimbardo's prison experiment, the guards treated the prisoners harshly and he determined that was going to happen. In situations of power over others, the worst part of human nature generally reveals itself. This is no justification for brutal acts, however it does help to explain why things like this can happen.
To conclude, I believe everyone who participates in genocide should be held accountable and punishments should be dealt all around. The people who order the killings should be held the most responsible while the punishment of those who take the orders should be less severe. It is only until we as a society figure out a method to properly handle situations like these, that genocide will come to an end.
I do not believe that individuals who participate in genocide or mass murder should be treated with any degree of compassion. The fact is, murder is still murder, even when it is ordered by a superior officer. If we allow individuals to get away with such atrocities on the grounds that they were following orders, we will be fostering more commitment to obedience than to morality and compassion. In other words, we cannot continue to blame human nature rather than blaming the individuals that commit these atrocities. Janis Karpinski argued, essentially, that she did not deserve punishment for the horrors of Abu Ghraib because they were not her orders. In my opinion, however, she knew something of the torture and mistreatment occurring at the prison, and she did nothing to prevent it. Thus, she is guilty and deserving of punishment.
Experiments like those of Zimbardo and Milgram prove that human nature is flawed. They show that we do have the tendency to make the wrong decisions under certain circumstances. To resolve this issue, however, we cannot simply forgive everyone who commits murder. We must strictly administer punishment if we hope to get the message across that such behavior is unacceptable. Greed is a known aspect of human nature, but we do not release people who commit robberies on these grounds. Punishment is a way to convince others to make better choices, not only to reprimand the guilty. Excusing people who “carried out orders” sends the message that obedience is better than moral uprightness.
In Reserve Police Battalion 101, the men faced an incredibly difficult situation. Some were initially unhappy with the orders they received. Some were never comfortable with the situation. Nonetheless, all the members remained loyal to the orders they received. By the end of their service, they had directly killed thousands and sent many more to their deaths in concentration camps. Though they may have been ordered to commit these murders, they would not have been killed for refusing. They always had the opportunity to refuse to continue. In one instance, men were even offered the chance to avoid participation, yet most carried out the orders without argument. They acted heartlessly. One man convinced himself that killing children was warranted after their parents had been killed. Such acts of cruelty, killing innocent children, justifying murder, simply cannot be ignored. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that these people deserved significant punishment.
Experiments like those of Milgram and Zimbardo demonstrate that circumstances are a major component in the transformation of honest people into murderers, but they cannot completely mitigate responsibility. As powerful and convincing as Hitler was, he did not murder millions of people all by himself. He is not the only one responsible for the holocaust simply because the orders were his own. Others had to commit horrible crimes or the Holocaust would not have occurred. Thus, I think that, to a degree, there should be slightly different levels of punishment, since Hitler was clearly more to blame than any single inexperienced member of Reserve Police Battalion 101. But overall, a murder should be considered a murder. At some point, people must be trusted to obey their own moral judgment over the clearly unjust orders of superiors.
Part 1/2
The Hague and military commissions have grappled with the issue of prosecuting genocides for many years. It is easy to send the people who give the orders to the firing squads, as they should be, but dealing with the people who “follow orders” is a totally different task. Participating in genocide is an abhorrent act in itself, but in many cases the shooters were simply acting because of peer pressure. Often, the motivation for murdering thousands of innocent people did not exist as one would think. In the holocaust, for example, the prime reason that the men of the einsadtzgruppen murdered was not because of hate and lack of respect for life, but simply they were scarred of being punished themselves.
Psychologists have pondered over this issue of “taking orders” since the end of the war. One psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, decided to measure how effective orders are in making ordinary people do bad things. He hired a group of college students to test this. He had a few of his volunteers to be guards, and the large majority of them to be prisoners in a simulated prison. The guards would only be there for a few hours a day, and the prisoners would be there 24/7. The only task of the guards was to keep the prisoners in line. Simple, right? Wrong. Almost immediately, the guards, who were not violent people at all, started to abuse and harass the prisoners. Things got so bad the Zimbardo had to end the experiment only six days after it started, eight days short of completion. Stanley Milgrim did something similar. He had the test subject read questions to an actor. For every wrong answer, the test subject would give an electric shock to the actor, whom they could not see, increasing by 15-volt increments. Milgram would pressure the test subject to continue, but if the subject complained or questioned the experiment five times, it would stop. Most test subjects did not stop until a very high voltage, even when the actor banged on the door and complained of a heart condition. These two experiments demonstrate that orders and instructions are a very powerful thing. Character and morals seldom will cause someone to disobey a disturbing order. Therefore, the defendants as Nuremberg may have given a legitimate defense when they declared that they were following orders in the mass killing of innocent civilians. According to Milgrim and Zimbardo, it could have happened to anyone.
Part 2/2
This situation was highlighted in Ordinary men. Few men asked to be dismissed from the task of killing Jews. Even fewer felt it was justified and legal. But the large majority of the men of Police Battalion 101 followed their orders and killed thousands of innocent and unarmed men, women, and children. Even the officers who oversaw the deeds did not feel up to it. Major Trapp turned to extreme amounts of alcohol to forget about the killings. One lieutenant grew angry when a soldier specifically asked to kill more Jews. For the men of this particular task force, it wasn’t that they couldn’t say no, it was that they wouldn’t; they did not know how to disobey the orders. They were under enormous social pressure and feared drastic punishments that didn’t actually exist. It would be extremely cruel to punish these men for the crimes they committed. It may seem like a long shot, but the truth of the matter is that they did not have a choice, or at least they thought they didn’t. This situation is also similar to the actions of US Army MP’s at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. If someone looked at the prison from the outside, they would see the MP’s as brutal guards who abused prisoners on a daily basis, which they were. But one has to understand that MP’s are not trained to guard prisons filled with thousands of potential terrorists in a foreign country where bombs explode daily and people are trying to kill you almost constantly. The Americans who were given orders to abuse prisoners should not have had to face as harsh penalties as they did. The effect of orders is tremendous, especially in the military. Blame should go strait to the top when things like this happen. The executioners should not get off scott free, but it should be understood that it is extremely difficult and sometimes impossible to disobey an order with fear of repercussions, no matter how heinous, immoral, and illegal it may be.
There is no definite answer as to how punish those who killed or committed brutalities under the orders of a superior officer. Note how I deliberately used the term "punish" over "treat" in my opening statement as any human no matter what under what circumstances, even under the guise of orders, should recognize that taking another life or simple torture is a crime no matter how it is branded. My judgment is based off of the simple fact that being labeled as a coward or worse, social ostracization are petty concerns in the face of human lives. There is is also the fact that letting someone murdered or tortured for whatever reason off the hook undermines the value of human life even further. However, the superior authority who ordered those deaths should undoubtedly be given a far more severe punishment as they were the one's orchestrated the deaths and ultimately were responsible for the environment that encouraged their subjects to kill or commit atrocities.
Ordinary Men further reinforces the idea that merely "following orders" is not a justifiable cause for as the few men who actually refrained from slaughtering the Jewish minorities in Eastern Europe were merely reassigned to a different unit and were never in actual fear of being executed for not obeying orders. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the participants did not really desire the deaths of the innocent people they were executing, they still recognized the fact that murdering is a crime and there is no reason why anyone or anything should be pardoned for such a heinous crime such a murder of innocent civilians. The men in Battalion 101 who killed out of fear of being labeled a coward were ironically cowardly themselves for they had to the ability to simply unite and declare that they would not murder the Jews yet they choose not to and they should not be protected for failing to choose the morally correct choice of action.
The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments however do mitigate responsibility slightly in the sense for demonstrating the humans are inherently prone to obeying authorities without the influence of any rebellious individuals. Both of the experiments proven that people can change immensely when under the guise of being given a role that must be fulfilled. In the Zimbardo experiments, otherwise normal and kindhearted university students were transformed into brutal prison guards obsessed with keeping their prisoners in line in only 6 days.
Although I understand it is difficult for people to play a hero and protest the social ills of their environment, in the long run it is something that all people should be expected to do. If the law were to protect people who merely sit back and allow themselves to become machines to a great authority then people will have absolutely no incentive to do the right thing as they will receive no immediate benefit minus the potential social ostracization.
I believe that in cases of mass genocide, both individuals and those in position of command should be held accountable for their actions. Each man has a choice to decide their own future, in Germany during the Holocaust there were quite a few people that at the cost of their own lives and freedom; hid a few Jewish neighbors in their homes.In the beginning of Ordinary men, the people of the reserve police battalion were given a choice to participate in the murder, while some did accept the offer, many others simply followed commands and carried out the mission. However those in a high chain of command should be punished more heavily than the ordinary members of the Reserve Police Battalion. Seen in the Milgram experiment, people are inclined to follow the instruction of others, regardless of obvious consequences. Studies have shown that even those with a higher education still fall victim to this psychological process. in the Stanford Prison Experiment, college kids were used in this experimentation. The kids immediately fell into the respective roles, the situation of the experiment brought out a sadistic side to many ordinary college students. However, I'm still a firm believer that no one can make a single individual do something against their will. Regardless of the voice of authority each person has control over their body and should hold responsibility for their own actions.
In the end, people are expected to uphold the moral teachings of society, and not simply become impassive machines that do as their told. Those that don't have the self awareness to do such a thing should be punished with the rest.
The main theme of Ordinary Men, by Christopher R. Browning is that the Nazi’s literally took a group of ordinary men, no different then you and me and turned them into mass murderers. So the question is how do you punish them? If I was asked this question before reading the book or shown the scientific experiments on human nature, I would have easily answered that they should be put behind bars for life. Now that there is proof that an ordinary person can stoop down to the level of a Nazi makes things much more difficult. Without a doubt I do believe that they have to be punished somehow. Not to the extent of a mass murderer but at least punished. In the beginning of the book when the men had to complete their first task of mass killings at Jozefow they were given the option not to participate. I understand that they were under a great deal of pressure and felt it not easy to back out but it is really no excuse. They didn’t have to participate if they didn’t want to. Many men during the course of those first killings decided they didn’t want to participate anymore and were asked to be relieved, but that does not change the fact that they were given the original option of not participating. So all in all I think they should be punished. Not necessarily punished for an entire life, because the guilt of knowing what they did would be sufficient punishment enough. As far as people for other genocides I would say the same applies. If your life is not being directly threatened and you're given a clear option to not be involved then they have to be punished. As far as the experiments go that say everyone is capable of doing bad things in certain situations, I believe that they are irrelevant. Everyone is capable of doing bad things in certain situations but often times we put ourselves in those situations. If the soldiers in Iraq were so disturbed by what they saw in that prison then they should have reported it to higher command instead of letting it go on long enough until they were coerced into getting involved. The experiments show that situations can be very powerful such as the one where students were placed as guards in a prison. Orders given can also be very powerful, however if society uses these as excuses not to punish people then there will never be justice. If everyone has the capability of such evil then we need to punish those who had a choice to be evil. That is why I believe that the leaders, and the people giving orders should be held more responsible for mass tragedies. The people at the very top of the chain who make the decision to kill. Those who have a choice should be punished while those who don’t, should not.
Genocide is the mass murder of a particular group of people. Taking part in such a horrific act is reason for punishment. Although the most well known genocide is the genocide of Jews during World War II, genocide is still present today and is needs to be obliterated. Today people are getting away with committing the worst of hate crimes without much resistance. Regardless of what specific role a person has in the genocide every individual needs to be held accountable for their actions. The punishment should vary depending on the involvement of the individual. The people who are giving the order need to be given the harshest of punishments. These people should be facing severe jail time or execution. Their actions are unjustifiable. People who carried out the orders should have to fix what they broke. Although they can not bring people who they killed back they can try to rebuild the lives of those who were left behind. They could rebuild cities and towns, build schools, etc. The Holocuast can not happen again and Darfur must end. The only way to ensure this is to punish those involved. Actions speak louder than words. If you punish someone for doing something wrong they will understand that it is truly wrong rather than you just saying stop that’s wrong. Although the punishments of those who carried out the orders are harsh, the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments show how easily it is for ordinary people to do such dreadful things. Situations can make some people do the most unimaginable of things. In Ordinary men, a group of just ordinary people killed countless people. None of these men before being put into their situation would have ever thought they would be capable of doing such unspeakable things. This needs to be taken into consideration as well.
By no means was the actions of the men negligible. They killed hundreds of thousands but it was no their fault. They were thrown into the situation and as a result they changed from average middle aged men with a family and children into cold blooded murders who were able to take the lives of hundreds without hesitation. Their actions were a direct result of the upper commands. They forced these men into these situations. So at least some of the blame must move upwards. But surely not all of it. While some men, like Buchmann, actively avoided killing, other police threw themselves in whole-heartedly. The Battalion contained the full range of enthusiasts, compliers, dissenters, and avoiders. Zimbardo’s Stanford prison Experiment has reinforced this idea, that in a situation of the powerful trying to control the weak, reactions will vary in a full range. So while some men were only acting on orders, others were taking their own initiative; this aspect must bring some of the responsibility back into their hands. The experiments such as the ones conducted by Milgram or Zimbardo do mitigate responsibility because they show how innocent people can be turned ruthless while they are following orders. Like the mock jail put together by Zimbardo at Stanford University. When put in certain positions of power and given orders, the ones who were previously only university students became brutal jail guards. This shows that it can happen to anyone, and gives full reason why individuals who are just following orders should not be convicted.
6:00pm check. Get them in!
Those who have participated in genocide and mass murder should all be held accountable to some degree. However, I think some should hold more of the blame than others. The officers and commanders who give the orders to kill people brutally should hold the most blame, because they are the ones overseeing and giving orders to those who rank below them. For example, in the documentary we watched about Abu Ghraib, there was apparently a sign on the wall with an order from the commanding officer telling the prison guards to invoke humiliating, painful forms of torture on captured prisoners. However, there is something to be said for those actually performing these horrendous acts. While it seems incomprehensible that an ordinary person could heartlessly kill or torture many people unnecessarily, the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo clearly show that under the correct circumstances, even the most peaceful people could do tremendous harm to other human beings. Following orders and being obedient is an integral instinct of human nature, and getting one to go against this drive and stand out and rebel is no easy task. The book Ordinary Men certainly shows this as well. Some of the men were able to stand out at the very beginning when given the opportunity to claim that they could not, under any circumstances, kill innocent people. This was only a tiny percent of the amount of people who eventually decided it was too much for them to handle. The author’s main point was that these were, in fact, “ordinary men”. They needed no special character traits such as harshness or a mean streak to kill thousands of people unnecessarily. These people should still be held responsible for their actions, but the circumstances must also be considered.
Post a Comment