Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Obedience Alibi

The Obedience Alibi Abstract Stanley Milgram’s work on obedience to authority is social psychology’s most influential contribution to theorizing about Holocaust perpetration. The gist of Milgram’s claims is that Holocaust perpetrators were just following orders out of a sense of obligation to their superiors. Milgram, however, never undertook a scholarly analysis of how his obedience experiments related to the Holocaust. The author first discusses the major theoretical limitations of Milgram’s position and then examines the implications of Milgram’s (oft-ignored) experimental manipulations for Holocaust theorizing, contrasting a specific case of Holocaust perpetration by Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police. It is concluded that Milgram’s empirical findings, in fact, do not support his position-one that essentially constitutes an obedience alibi. The article ends with a discussion of some of the social dangers of the obedience alibi. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Analyse & Kritik de Gruyter

The Obedience Alibi

Mandel, David R.
Analyse & Kritik , Volume 20 (1) – May 1, 1998
Download PDF
21 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/the-obedience-alibi-GYRWbriBap
Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by the
ISSN
0171-5860
eISSN
2365-9858
DOI
10.1515/auk-1998-0105
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract Stanley Milgram’s work on obedience to authority is social psychology’s most influential contribution to theorizing about Holocaust perpetration. The gist of Milgram’s claims is that Holocaust perpetrators were just following orders out of a sense of obligation to their superiors. Milgram, however, never undertook a scholarly analysis of how his obedience experiments related to the Holocaust. The author first discusses the major theoretical limitations of Milgram’s position and then examines the implications of Milgram’s (oft-ignored) experimental manipulations for Holocaust theorizing, contrasting a specific case of Holocaust perpetration by Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police. It is concluded that Milgram’s empirical findings, in fact, do not support his position-one that essentially constitutes an obedience alibi. The article ends with a discussion of some of the social dangers of the obedience alibi.

Journal

Analyse & Kritik – de Gruyter

Published: May 1, 1998

There are no references for this article.