Nestar Russell I . L O V Milgram’s Obedience Experiments and the Holocaust Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 1 Nestar Russell Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 1 Milgram’s Obedience Experiments and the Holocaust Nestar Russell University of Calgary Calgary, AB, Canada ISBN 978-3-319-95815-6 ISBN 978-3-319-95816-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95816-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950507 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover image: © Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Dedicated to Valerie Morse and other unruly troublemakers I’ve met… A cknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank what I term my contract f aculty sabbatical (cancer), which provided me with the necessary time and space to finish this book. This book would simply never have come to fruition without it. Special thanks goes to my long-standing mentor, pri- mary Ph.D. supervisor, and collaborator Robert Gregory, a scholar with both intelligence and wisdom whose vision, support, and influence has been essential to my growth and development as a scholar. For many years his belief in this project has been unwavering. Also, I must thank my secondary Ph.D. supervisor Simone Gigliotti and postdoctoral super- visor Hilary Earl, both of whom have had a great influence on me. As Holocaust historians, their rigor and balance in such a complex and con- troversial research area have been invaluable. A special thank you goes to Tim Pearson, my copy editor, who so frequently was able to help me see the forest for the trees. Thank you to Rachel Daniel at Palgrave Macmillan who pushed hard for the publication of this book, along with the help I obtained along the way from her assistant Kyra Saniewski. I am also grateful for the efforts of Preetha Kuttiappan and Azarudeen Ahamedsheriff during the production stage of this book. Alexandra Milgram and Michele Marques must also be thanked for allowing me to publish materials obtained from the Stanley Milgram Papers (along with their provision of a photo of Stanley Milgram with his shock machine). The reviewer’s critical insights were of great use when completing the final draft. The ever-reliable Kate MacIntyre and Tony Anderson did not fail me when I somewhat desperately asked them for help. Thanks vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS to Mél Hogan for helping me with the illustrations in Volume 1 and the Holocaust historians—Hilary Earl, Karl Schleunes, and Annette Timm— who kindly offered advice on certain chapters in Volume 2. I am also very grateful for the help and insights of the following peo- ple, who in various ways all kindly offered valuable advice and support in the lead-up to and during the writing of this book: Dean Hay, Sal Renshaw, Mark Crane, Annette Bolton, Wayne Pihema, Augustine Brannigan, Omer Bartov, Serena Kataoka, Madona Saad, Trevor Bradley, Gillian McCann, Jim Edmondson, Elizabeth Stanley, Johanna Fraser, Brian Thorn, Stacey Perkins, Steve Cook, David Tabachnick, Gina Perry, Sarah Anderson, Jane Snaider, John Picard, Graeme Whimp, Mark Thornton, Anna McKenzie, and Sarah Winters. Finally, I must thank my partner Susan and family—Mum, Dad, Kelly, and Shelena—for all their support and understanding during the occa- sional hard and many good times. Susan, especially, bore the brunt of the stress during those hard times and therefore it was her unconditional support that really made the writing of this book possible. For this I will always be grateful. Risks are taken in this book that made some of the more careful peo- ple around me a little nervous. But because I think these risks are worth taking, I must emphasize that all responsibility for this book (and I mean it) rests with the author. c ontents 1 Introduction 1 2 Germany’s “Ordinary Monsters” and the Holocaust 17 3 The Origins and Evolution of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments 37 4 How Milgram Ensured Most Participants Completed the First Official Experiment 55 5 The Obedience to Authority Variations and Milgram’s Agentic State Theory 79 6 Academia’s Response to Milgram’s Findings and Explanation 111 7 A New Theoretical Path: The Emergence of Milgram’s Bureaucratic Machine 155 8 Explaining the New Baseline Condition’s High Completion Rate 199 ix x CONTENTS 9 The Shock Generator: The Most Powerful Single Factor in the Obedience Studies 239 Bibliography 269 Index 285 l f ist of igures Fig. 3.1 A circa 1960 document titled “Studies in Obedience” 49 Fig. 4.1 Milgram’s sketch of an eleven-switch control panel dated “1960.” Participants could see the person being “shocked” through a semi-translucent screen (SMP, Box 17, Folder 246) 58 Fig. 4.2 12-switch prototype labeled (top left) “SHOCK GENERATOR TYPE ZL DYSON INSTRUMENT COMPANY WALTHAM MASS” (SMP, Box 45, Folder 160) 62 Fig. 4.3 Stanley Milgram with his 30 switch shock generator (Photo courtesy of Alexandra Milgram), labeled (top left) “SHOCK GENERATOR, TYPE ZLB, DYSON INSTRUMENT COMPANY, WALTHAM, MASS. OUTPUT 15 VOLTS—450 VOLTS” (Blass [2004, p. 79]) 69 Fig. 5.1 Milgram’s early post-experimental theoretical contemplations (SMP, Box 46, Folder 164) 100 Fig. 5.2 Factors that contribute to the agentic shift and maintain the participant within the obedience-generating agentic state (For the original diagram, see Milgram [1974, p. 154]) 104 Fig. 6.1 An “IRATE” participant’s response after having taken part in the Obedience studies (SMP, Box 44, Divider “T.R.”, #0216) 117 Fig. 7.1 The protective measure “against legal claims” (SMP, Box 46, Folder 163) 173 Fig. 8.1 Completion rates from 23 of the 24 conditions where siding with the learner did or did not require participants to initiate then engage in a confrontation with the experimenter (Condition 21 is not included in this graph xi