The Influence on World War 2

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verb, and that an act of deceiving is a perlocutionary act. (Note: According to Merriam-Webster’s, a perlocutionary is a speech act, as viewed at the level of its psychological consequences, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something) Whether or not an act of deceiving has occurred depends on whether a particular effect- normally, the having of a false belief- has been produced; if no such effect has been produced in another, then no deceiving has occurred. It is important to note that, in this respect, deceiving differs from lying. ‘Lie’ is not a success or an achievement verb, and an act of lying is not a perlocutionary act. Whether or not an act of lying has occurred does not depend on the particular effect- for example, the belief that what a liar says is true- has been produced in another; if no effect has been produced in another, then the act of lying may have occurred nevertheless. Properly speaking therefore, lying is not a type of deceiving. (Mahon 181)

Furthermore, these terms that were recently discussed all come down to a moral compromise of whether or not the Milgram experiment was ethical. Critics have questioned Milgram’s intentions of the experiment to whether or not “the ends justified the means?” and what that means in regards to whether or not, Stanley Milgram intentionally deceived his subjects. What that concept means is, if in a situation that if a goal is morally important enough, any method of achieving it is acceptable. In regards toward Milgram’s intentions of his experiment and based off of logical knowledge after being so familiar with this experiment after previous research studies, it is said that he lied to his patients that participated and made them think they were putting another in pain on the other side of the wall by shocking them every time that person on the other side of the wall got an answer wrong.

Causing emotional damage to some during their participation of the experiment due to the distress of hurting another, and living with the consequences of their conscience after they still decided to obey the orders of the leader who told them to “keep going”- you would assume Milgram was unethical in a sense. It has been said by many philosophers after Stanley Milgram, that the ends did justify the means, in the experiment because Milgram was able to collect sufficient data and receive justifying results from the behaviors of his participants through deception. In terms of the ethical issues surrounding Milgram’s study you can’t help but make quick judgement. Though no shocks were ever actually administered, the distress it bought to the true participants was clear. But in 1963 when the study took place there were no universal standards or guidelines of ethics that research was expected to follow. APA did not issue any guidelines until 1973. Therefore in terms of ethics it’s fair to say Milgram was ahead of his time.

After examining the retrospect of criticisms on the ethical side of the experiment, the first ethical concept that applies before the experiment is the concept that pronounces the dilemma behind the behaviors of the Nazi soldiers. Perhaps a little re-cap on what occurred in 1939-1945. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was chancellor of Germany where after the World War II defeat, he created a Nazi Party that became a mass movement that ruled Germany through totalitarian means.

When Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, they instituted a series of measures aimed at persecuting Germany’s Jewish citizens. By late 1938, Jews were banned from most public places in Germany. During the war, the Nazis’ anti-Jewish campaigns increased in scale and ferocity. In the invasion and occupation of Poland, German troops shot thousands of Polish Jews, confined many to ghettoes where they starved to death and began sending others to death camps in various parts of Poland, where they were either killed immediately or forced into slave labor. In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Nazi death squads machine-gunned tens of thousands of Jews in the western regions of Soviet Russia. (Nazi Party, pg. 3)

Getting deeper into the reason for such gruesome crimes we find ourselves at the feet of those who committed the majority of the crimes. What were they thinking? How could they do such things? Perhaps these are common questions when first learning the history of the Holocaust, and Nazi’s fight to dominate Europe. The behavior has been identified and examined of the Nazi soldiers and found the potential reasoning behind the actions that they have freely committed. A conflict of Loyalties occurred, and the final decision was not up to them if they wanted to live. The conflict of Loyalty applies in this situation when soldiers had the conflict of choosing whether to listen to their own good will (morals and ethical standards) by risk having themselves and their families killed and disobey orders of their dictators to continue with the murders of innocent and young lives or choose to go against their own good will and ignore their sympathy for these innocent lives and continue with the mass murders to portray obedience to their dictators for their own benefit.

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was a German General and was a part of the Nazi movement. He was imprisoned for motivated murders after the war and died in jail. According to Raul Hilberg, the author of The Destruction of the European Jews, Zelewski reported to have had “countless nightmares and hallucinations about the atrocities I had committed. I cannot sit here and regret, what has been done, was done. I remember once during a time where I had to execute a woman and infant simply because they had blue eyes and brown hair, for a moment I felt sympathy- no reason to kill for such absurd reasons, but the next I felt none, and the crime was done.” (pg. 216) You see here that there was a change in behavior, the morality of each soldier varied but majority of them still had morals, they just had no choice under the orders of their chancellor. By force of the written Supplementary Order given by Hitler to all his men stated, “Whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, enemies are to be slaughtered to the last man. It does not make any difference whether they are landed from ships and airplanes for their actions, or whether they are dropped by parachute. Even if these individuals, when found, should apparently be prepared to give themselves up, no pardon is to be granted them on principle. If any do not compromise, immediate execution to them and all whom they love.” (Yale Law) With that order these men were forced to commit crimes (which is considered coercion) they knew was wrong, but still continued to do it by order and for their own survival. This is a prime example of a conflict