“Obedience to Authority” in Understanding Genocide

When Stanley Milgram first initiated his famous (infamous to some) studies of obedience in 1961-1962, relatively little psychological research into the causes of the Holocaust had been published, and what had been, focused primarily on personality interpretations. Milgram’s research inaugurated a new line of social psychological research which also changed the question from “Who could commit genocide?” to “Under what circumstances would genocide be more likely to occur?” Actually, Milgram’s question was even more defined than that: “Under what circumstances would people obey an authority’s orders to inflict harm on an innocent person?” His studies began the same year as Adolf Eichmann’s capture by Israeli agents and were then first published in 1963 as Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, which caused a sensation. His book even eerily supported her thesis that “evil doers” such as Eichmann were not pathological monsters but rather “normal,” albeit, banal people. Milgram’s work immediately came to be seen as “an answer” to the question of the Holocaust. To this day, the vast majority of psychology textbooks incorporate some mention of the Holocaust into their discussions of Milgram’s studies, often to the exclusion of other psychological theories.

Parallel to the association of Milgram’s studies with an explanation for the Holocaust have been critiques of that same explanation, ranging from the observation that a laboratory study is not the same as the Holocaust, and that subordinate-authority relationships in the laboratory are not the same as those that occurred in Nazi Germany, to the fact that often the historical record does not support obedience as a central explanatory factor. It has been shown that many Holocaust perpetrators freely chose even reveled in committing the most heinous acts. Thus, while Milgram’s findings might be relevant to the “desk murderers” (for example, those who scheduled the trains going to Auschwitz), they could not explain the 88 soldier who gleefully smashed the head of a baby against a tree.

Milgram’s results also implied that physical proximity between the victim and perpetrator should reduce the tendency to inflict harm on another, and indeed there is some support for this. In his 1992 book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Christopher Browning reported that “direct proximity to the horror of killing significantly increased the number of men who would no longer comply” (pp. 175-176). Yet in more recent genocides, such as in Cambodia, where killing was defined by close proximity, where hoes and iron bars were the weapons of choice, Milgram’s studies seem unable to tell us anything about genocidal behavior. Yet, as I will argue below, I do not think that the phenomenon of obedience is completely irrelevant in recent genocides.

Gregory Stanton (www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm) describes genocide as a process that develops in stages, each building upon the previous one, developing out of a history of (1) classifying people into distinct categories (“us-them”); (2) developing symbols or names that signify and simplify and dichotomize these categories (“Jews” versus “Germans”); (3) dehumanizing members of one group by equating them with sub-humans (rats, cockroaches, disease, vermin); and (4) then organizing

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these dynamics into some sort of hierarchical system where the non-dehumanized group is empowered to inflict terror and hostility on the other. Stanton calls this stage “organization,” and it is where the phenomenon of obedience would first become prominent. The fourth stage is followed by (5) polarization where venomous propaganda is escalated; (6) preparation where victims become “marked” and segregated from society; and finally (7) extermination where hostility eventuates in mass killing and genocide. Stanton’s theory tells us that in order to understand the relevance of “obedience” as a factor in genocide, it needs to be contextualized.

In Milgram’s analysis of why people obey, he states, “every situation …. possesses a kind of ideology, which we call ‘the definition of the situation,’ and which is the interpretation of the meaning of a social occasion” (Obedience to Authority, 1974, p. 145). Since both definition of a situation and ideology exert cognitive control, if you can get people to internalize the ideology/buy the definition, they will in fact act willingly. Milgram further asserts that “there is a propensity for people to accept definitions of actions provided by legitimate authority” (p. 145) although, as his own data indicate, this is not always the case; at times, the situation is so constructed that the authority’s command is overridden (for example, in experiment seventeen, in which peer confederates break off the experiment). In this condition, a new definition of the situation has been fostered.

Stanton’s stage theory of genocide, however, suggests it is less likely that people will seek alternate definitions presented during the fourth stage of “organization,” unless there has been prior active intervention and resistance to the classification, symbolization, and dehumanization of the targeted group. Still further, Milgram describes the important rote of propaganda in blocking the development of “alternate views” (p. 145).

As has been amply documented, the Nazis mounted a massive two-pronged propaganda campaign. The first focused on convincing people of the “goodness” of Hitler and the Nazis. For example, in Leni Riefenstahl’s masterful 1934 film, Triumph of the Will, Hitler descends from the skies, like a god, to an adoring crowd; viewers of the film learn that German industry is booming, a network of superhighways has been built, Germany is headed toward a glorious future, and all is due to the Fuhrer. Resonating with Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbel’s statement that “Guns are nice but to win the heart of the people is better,” the point of the film is to capture the hearts of the people.

The second type of propaganda was virulently anti-Semitic. Jews were variously depicted as exploitative usurers, power-seeking capitalists, godless communists, sexually perverse threats to Aryan women and children, and demons bent on destroying Germany. As depicted in the Nazi film Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew, 1938), the most insidious attribute of the Jews is the ability to camouflage themselves as normal Germans. Thus, an all-out war against them was necessary in order to uncover the Jewish “pestilence” before it spread.

Taken together, these two types of propaganda shaped the way people thought and felt. In addition to the cognitive function of propaganda described by Milgram, Goebbels emphasized the emotional function: one must win the people’s hearts. Once that is accomplished, people willingly, joyfully act on behalf of the authority even if the authority is not actually there, and if it means committing murder. Still further, as Albert Bandura has written (in his 1990 article, “Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control,” Journal of Social Issues, 46, pp. 27-46) that murder itself is then redefined to mean something positive: protecting one’s values, fighting against an evil enemy, and preventing the spread of pestilence.

Alexander Hinton (in a 1996 article, “Agents of Death,” in the American Anthropologist, 98:4, pp. 818-831) performs a similar analysis of the Cambodian genocide. Quoting a Khmer Rouge officer, he shows how the dual factors of obedience to his party and internalization of a hateful ideology drove the genocide: “We were brainwashed to cut off our heart from the enemy, to be willing to kill those who had betrayed the revolution, even if the person was a parent, sibling, friend, or relative. Everything we did was supposed to be for the party” (p. 825). Hinton also emphasizes the immense importance of loyalty in Cambodian culture, one characterized by a history of patron-client relationships and loyalty to those who helped you. Since the Khmer Rouge was the main support body for those it deemed “good” (the “us”), showing it loyalty and obedience became of paramount importance. As a collectivist society, honor could only be gained through dutiful behavior;

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killing then became more of a way to maintain a positive view of oneself (and a way to demonstrate one’s loyalty) and less about the killing of the victim.

Stanton’s stage theory of genocide allows us to view the phenomenon of obedience in a contextualized way. Analyses of both the Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide do not support the view that perpetrators tortured and killed victims merely because an authority figure told them to. This view of obedience, however, is to not understand that by the time the genocidal process has gotten to the stage of “extermination,” obedience has morphed into “loyalty” to a system that makes the perpetrators feel good about themselves even if that entails engaging in horrific acts of murder. When that happens, the presence of the authority is no longer needed; it has been deeply internalized to the point where, as one of the Khmer Rouge officers interviewed by Hinton states, “we didn’t want to spare even a baby in its cradle” (p. 826). When Milgram conducted his laboratory studies, we were not at the historical point where we could see this phenomenon being replicated in multiple genocides. Sadly, we are now at that historical point.

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