Hitler’s Monstrous Regime – (The Shock Experiment)

Hitler’s Monstrous Regime And All You Need to Know About Why The Nazis Worshipped Hitler?Why Did People Obey Him?

In our previous articles step by step, we mentioned fear, greed and many other motives for this type of human action. In this final part of the whole series, we’re gonna go all the way, so readers beware, and prepare themselves for the worst in humanity.

As you all know, Hitler committed a genocide, although even the word “genocide” sound too soft for what he did. So, let’s stick with an “extinction attempt”. That’s bone-chilling but sounds just right. The German Nazy Party, along with the SS elite division and Gestapo, the official secret police, and its allies, exterminated nearly 6 million Jewish men, women and children during World War 2, known as the Holocaust. Furthermore, they murdered approximately 11 million other people. Including Soviet civilians, prisoners of war, people from countries that fought against the Nazi’s, the handicapped, gay men and all those who disagreed to their twisted “ideology”. There were no exceptions, no mercy – just cold-blooded murder. Nearly 20 million people killed for no reason – let that sink in.

This post contains some affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I’ll earn a commission, at no additional cost to you.

And Anyone in Their Right Mind Would Ask Themselves – Why Would Anyone Obey Such An Order?

And, yes, we know – we all like to jump to accusations and hate right away. And it’s completely understandable. Although, as you know, there are always two sides to every story. Remember, back then, the people of Germany who supported the Reich, as well as the soldiers, were under the strong influence of propaganda, the influence of one man who promised them a better life. Not to say we’re defending them, far from it, but just trying to understand the psychology behind it. Later, when some of the Germans realised that it was all wrong, they were scared to do or say anything. Sure, we all love to think that, if we were in that situation, we’d know right away the difference between right and wrong. But would we? Yeah, it sounds easy from this perspective, but imagine being in those times. Do you really think that you’d be able to rise above it all? Of course, some of you could, just as some of the Germans did back then – they fought back and died. But the majority were just sheep following the herd, not knowing that they are manipulated into doing something horrible. Naturally, there were many of those who knew exactly what was going on and had no problem with it. In fact, they enjoyed it. Are they monsters? Yes, no doubt about it. I, as a half-Jew myself, can relate to this nightmare, but still, I can not ignore the other factors as well.

Hitler’s Monstrous Regime – Why Did People Obey Him? (The Shock Experiment)

Now, let’s take the Nazy guards at those awful prison camps, for example. Why did they torture innocent people? Again, some were just scared and felt they had to do it to protect themselves. Most of them said that they were just following the orders. Really? That’s your excuse for killing a bunch of people? Unfortunately for them, that’s not even close to an excuse. That doesn’t justify it, not by a long shot. On the other side, there were those who genuinely enjoyed it. How do you explain that? Could be pure evil. Also, it could be something else. Psychologists did an interesting experiment regarding this subject.

Also See: How to Stay Fit Forever – Day 38

The Milgram Shock Experiment (1963)

This experiment is one of the most known psychological studies of obedience to better understand the behaviour of World War 2 criminals. It was conducted by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. It focused on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. The participants who took part in this experiment were male. One test required two persons. One participant had electrodes attached to his arms. The other participant, who was in another room, was in charge of an electric shock generator.

Simply put, it was a big button he could to press every time he was told to. He thought that that would shock the other participant, he didn’t know it wasn’t real. And every time he would press it, the power of electricity would allegedly become higher. The leader of the experiment kept telling him to keep pushing the button, just to see how far he would go. However, he didn’t have to press the button, he had a choice, and he knew it. And yet, most of the participants obeyed Milgram’s orders. Long story short, the test was conducted to determine how much are people willing to obey orders even if it meant hurting others. Sadly, most of them were. Most of them were “simply following the orders”, instead of saying “no” and resisting such unnecessary terror. It’s a remarkable parallel to the Holocaust. It might help you better understand human nature, no matter how awful it is. You can watch the short video of The Milgram’s experiment here.

Also, we must not forget the famous Anne Frank, another Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Remember how we talked about the “Lizard Brain” and its functions in one of our previous articles? One of those functions was “flight” or run. Well, we could also connect “hide” to that one. Namely, Anne Frank spent a couple of years during World War 2 hiding in an Attic, in which time she wrote the most famous book of all time called The Diary of Anne Frank. However, in 1944 she was found and arrested, then transferred to a concentration camp in Germany, where she died. Can you even imagine being locked up in an attic for two years, hiding in fear? And then, after almost surviving, getting caught and dying. Terrible.

Also, this might be fiction, but can you imagine if the Nazis actually won the war? How would the world look today? What a tragedy that would be, even more than it was in reality. Well, there’s also a book about that – The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick. We strongly recommend reading both of those books.