ibility and peer pressure. If a person is fed the same message over and over again, they become brainwashed and eventually believe the message themselves. Solomon E. Asch, a social psychologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, conducted a series of experiments on men to determine the effect of suggestibility and peer pressure upon them (Behrens 336). "Asch's experiment was conducted to prove the theory that every person's practices, judgments and beliefs is a truism to which anyone will readily assent" (336). It was shown in Asch's experiment that "monotonous reiteration of instructions could induce in normal persons in the waking state involuntary bodily changes such as swaying or rigidity of the arms, and sensations such as warmth and odor" (337). The results of this experiment proved that men's beliefs can be influenced, even though they know that what they are doing is wrong (336). If put in the situation of a Nazi soldier, one may not have had before the war the idea that he was superior to those the Nazis were oppressing. However, the soldiers were constantly fed a mass amount of propaganda telling them that they were superior to other races and therefore should enforce their power over them. Wanting to please their commanding officers and the fed notion of superiority are reasons why the Nazi soldiers carried out the crimes on humanity. Milgram's experiments, as well as Asch's, are in totally different circumstances than those the soldiers were placed in during World War II, however the results reached from both can offer explanations to the actions of the Nazis. Both the idea of suggestibility and wanting to please their commanding officers are reasons why the Nazi soldiers carried out their crimes. Those factors can influence a person so greatly that it can force someone to go against everything they have ever been taught or known. A person that has been raised in a good and upstanding family can have a strong c...
