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Milgram experiment
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===Applicability to the Holocaust=== Milgram sparked direct critical response in the scientific community by claiming that "a common psychological process is centrally involved in both [his laboratory experiments and Nazi Germany] events."{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} [[James Waller]], chair of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at [[Keene State College]], formerly chair of [[Whitworth College]] Psychology Department, argued that Milgram experiments “do not correspond well” to the Holocaust events:<ref name="Waller-111" /> His points were as follows: # The subjects of Milgram experiments were assured in advance that no permanent physical damage would result from their actions. However, the Holocaust perpetrators were fully aware of their hands-on killing and maiming of the victims. # The laboratory subjects themselves did not know their victims and were not motivated by racism or other biases. On the other hand, the Holocaust perpetrators displayed an intense devaluation of the victims through a lifetime of personal development. # Those serving punishment at the lab were not sadists, nor hate-mongers, and often exhibited great anguish and conflict in the experiment,<ref name="ObedStudy" /> unlike the designers and executioners of the [[Final Solution]], who had a clear "goal" on their hands, set beforehand. # The experiment lasted for an hour, with no time for the subjects to contemplate the implications of their behavior. Meanwhile, the Holocaust lasted for years with ample time for a moral assessment of all individuals and organizations involved.<ref name="Waller-111">{{cite book |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=5QRHKMa_rqgC&pg=PA111 |title= Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing |chapter= What Can the Milgram Studies Teach Us about Perpetrators of Extraordinary Evil? |publisher= [[Oxford University Press]] |date= February 22, 2007 |access-date= June 9, 2013 |author= James Waller |pages=111–113 |chapter-format= Google Books |isbn= 978-0199774852 |author-link= James Waller}}</ref> In the opinion of Thomas Blass—who is the author of a scholarly monograph on the experiment (''The Man Who Shocked The World'') published in 2004—the historical evidence pertaining to actions of the Holocaust perpetrators speaks louder than words: {{Blockquote|My own view is that Milgram's approach does not provide a fully adequate explanation of the Holocaust. While it may well account for the dutiful destructiveness of the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven, it falls short when one tries to apply it to the more zealous, inventive, and hate-driven atrocities that also characterized the Holocaust.<ref name="Blass">{{cite web | url=http://analyse-und-kritik.net/en/1998-1/AK_Blass_1998.pdf | title=The Roots of Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments and Their Relevance to the Holocaust | publisher=Analyse und Kritik.net | year=2013 | access-date=20 July 2013 | author=Blass, Thomas | format=PDF file, direct download 733 KB | page=51 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029190232/http://analyse-und-kritik.net/en/1998-1/AK_Blass_1998.pdf | archive-date=29 October 2013 }}</ref>}}
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