According to Wikipedia, Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 and died in 1945 from suicide. He was a austrian german politicitans who became the dictator of the Nazi Germany Party in1933 until 1945. Within that timline, Hitler committed some of the worst war crimes imaginable. Death destruction, startvation, it didn’t really matter what it was, the Nazis did it without thinking twice. A quote from wikipedia, “During his dictatorship, he initiated the European theatre of World War II by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.” Adolf Hitler was an unhinged psycopath with a taste for domination and death. Yet he didn’t do this much damage alone.
Joeseph Stalin was born in 1878 and died in 1953. He was a soviet politician and leader in marxism-lennism. According to wikipedia, “He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of government) from 1941 until his death. Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, Stalin consolidated his power within the party and state to become a dictator by the 1930s.” Continuing with wikipedia, “To eradicate those he declared “enemies of the working class”, between 1936 and 1938 Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge, in which over a million people were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps.” Stalin, like any other man, was not capable of doing this physically by himself.
I write about these both men to show the reader the power of obideance. According to oxford Launguages, obdience is a ” compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority.”
Authority is defined as , “the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.” As we see, in both defintentions, obdeince is tightly related to Authority. One cannot exist without the other. Simultansly, Authority is not authority if no one comlies. With these defintitions set, a question is asked. How far will people comply. how long will somone go because they’re just “following orders.” That questioned was aksed and answered through history and by a man names Stanley Milgram.
Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 and died in 1985. During his years, he worked primarily as an American psycholigist. He is most famously known for his experiments in the field of obidience during the 1960’s. Infact, those experiments still to this day are quite contriversal, and show a realism of a fear we all have.
Obeidence to Authority is one of the more soberig books I have read. I mean this in all seriousness. Obidence to Athority is a realization that other people are willing to inflict pain because they are told to.
During the 1960’s, Stanley committed a serious of tests testing peoples Obidence to Authority.
One of the tests included a shock test in which a person would shock another person with increasing intensity and pain. The purpose for this test was to show how long people will listen to authority and how long it would take them to stop. This book demonstrates something that is truly horrifying. Others will inflict pain just because they’re “following orders”.
This book has helped me see the weakness in people in that, they will continue to do what they are told, and when they stop it is too late.
I can’t say I enjoyed reading this book because it demonstrated the insanity and the lengths people will go to just because they were told to. I am glad I read this book however as it shows how far people are willing to go, and it shows that Authority can be just as dangerous.
JBSchool 