“One of the things that is a prerequisite for carrying acts that are evil is to shed responsibility from your shoulders and hand it over to the person in charge”.
“It just really shows how far human beings will go to appease what they perceive to be an authority figure”.
Obedience and cooperation is indeed necessary for society to function. In this experiment, Milgram examines the dark side of blindly following those in power. I think that when given a task and one is conflicted about proceeding, it is often easier to look at the situation and remove responsibility from oneself. In this way, the conscience is said to be cleaner, and the dirt is not directly on one’s hands, but on the hands of those who commanded the given assignment. For the Nazi soldiers who carried out acts of destruction and death, I would say that many justified their actions by stating that they were only following orders. This goes back to the statement that demonstrates the extent of which people can reach to satisfy what they view as authority figures. For me, it also solidifies the idea that people will always put themselves first because if the order isn’t followed, the person who gets in trouble is the one who disobeyed. So to save themselves, they proceed without analyzing the morality of doing such a task.