Sources of Inspiration for Zimbardo

"For Hitler, government intervention to segregate the races, to promote the reproduction of those with the “best” characteristics, to prevent the reproduction of those with inferior characteristics, and to prepare for wars of expansion brought the German nation in line with its natural, biologically determined instinct to survive. In addition it fostered a “natural” race consciousness among the German people, a consciousness that the Jews sought to suppress through parliamentary democracy, international agreements on cooperation, and class conflict."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology, Pg. 10.

"For the Nazis, survival of a race depended upon its ability to reproduce and multiply, its accumulation of land to support and feed that expanding population, and its vigilance in maintaining the purity of its gene pool, thus preserving the unique "racial" characteristics with which "nature" had equipped it for success in the struggle to survive. Since each "race" sought to expand, and since the space on the earth was finite, the struggle for survival resulted "naturally" in violent conquest and military confrontation. Hence, war-even constant war-was a part of nature, a part of the human condition."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology, Pg. 3-4.

"Adolf Hitler, the Führer (Leader) of the Nazi Party, formulated and articulated the ideas that came to be known as Nazi ideology. He thought of himself as a deep and profound thinker, convinced that he had found the key to understanding an extraordinarily complex world."​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology, Pg. 3.

"The Nazis believed that superior races had not just the right but the obligation to subdue and even exterminate inferior ones. They believed that this struggle of races was consistent with the law of nature…For purposes of propaganda, the Nazis often framed this strategic vision in terms of a crusade to save western civilization from these “eastern” or “Asiatic” barbarians and their Jewish leaders and organizers."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology, Pg. 5-6.

" Hitler warned, the German “Aryan” race was threatened by dissolution from within and without…The o"spring of these marriages were said to dilute the superior characteristics reflected in German blood, thus weakening the race in its struggle against other races for survival."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology, Pg. 7.

"If Germany did not act decisively against the Jews both at home and abroad, Hitler claimed, hordes of subhuman, uncivilized Slavs and Asiatics that the Jews could mobilize would sweep away the “Aryan” German race."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology, Pg. 10.

"First, a series of thoroughgoing historical examinations have challenged the idea that Nazi bureaucrats were ever simply following orders. This may have been the defense they relied upon when seeking to minimize their culpability, but evidence suggests that functionaries like Eichmann had a very good understanding of what they were doing and took pride in the energy and application that they brought to their work." Stanley Milgram was interested in researching this idea further.
Haslam and Reicher, Contesting the "Nature" Of Conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show, Pg. 2.

"He asked the question, "could the Holocaust happen here, now?" People say, "No, that's Nazi Germany, Hitler, you know, that's 1939." He said, "Yeah, but suppose Hitler asked you, 'Would you electrocute a stranger?' 'No way, I'm a good person.'" He said, "Why don't we put you in a situation and give you a chance to see what you would do?"
Phillip Zimbardo, The Psychology of Evil.

"Recall that one of Milgram's motivations for initiating his research project was to understand how so many "good" German citizens could become involved in the brutal murder of millions of Jews. Rather than search for dispositional tendencies in the German national character to account for the evil of this genocide, he believed that features of the situation played a critical role; that obedience to authority was a "toxic trigger" for wanton murder.​​​​​​​"​​​​​​​
Phillip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, Pg. 291.

Milgram's procedure was as follows, "so, you go down, one of you will be a learner, one will be a teacher. The learner's a genial, middle-aged guy. He gets tied up to the shock apparatus in another room. The learner could be middle-aged, could be as young as 20. And one of you is told by the authority, the guy in the lab coat, "Your job as teacher is to give him material to learn. Gets it right, reward. Gets it wrong, you press a button on the shock box. The first button is 15 volts. He doesn't even feel it." That's the key. All evil starts with 15 volts. And then the next step is another 15 volts. The problem is, at the end of the line, it's 450 volts. And as you go along, the guy is screaming, "I've got a heart condition! I'm out of here!” You're a good person. You complain. "Sir, who will be responsible if something happens to him?" The experimenter says, "Don't worry, I will be responsible. Continue, teacher." And the question is, who would go all the way to 450 volts?​​​​​​​”
Phillip Zimbardo, The Psychology of Evil.

"Milgram was actually interested in seeing how far the men would go in carrying out the task. To his—and everyone else’s —shock, the answer was ‘‘very far.’’ In what came to be termed the ‘‘baseline’’ study all participants proved willing to administer shocks of 300 V and 65% went all the way to 450 V. This appeared to provide compelling evidence that normal well- adjusted men would be willing to kill a complete stranger simply because they were ordered to do so by an authority."
Haslam and Reicher, Contesting the "Nature" Of Conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show , Pg. 1.

"The data clearly revealed the extreme pliability of human nature: almost everyone could be totally obedient or almost everyone could resist authority pressures. It all depended on the situational variables they experienced."
​​​​​​​Haslam and Reicher, Contesting the "Nature" Of Conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show , Pg. 1.

Zimbardo said, "the most extreme instance of this hostile imagination at work is of course when it leads to genocide, the plan of one people to eliminate from existence all those who are conceptualized as their enemy. We are aware of some of the ways in which Hitler's propaganda machine transformed Jewish neighbors, co-workers, even friends into despised enemies of the State who deserved the "final solution." …I will show how one aspect of this complex psychological process, the dehumanization component, can be studied in controlled experimental research that isolates its critical features for systematic analysis."
​​​​​​​Phillip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, Pg. 11.

Psychologists Reicher and Halam note that, Zimbardo was inspired by Milgram's study as his " Stanford Prison Experiment took these ideas further by exploring the destructive behaviour of groups of men over an extended period."
Haslam and Reicher, Contesting the "Nature" Of Conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show, Pg. 1.

"In 1949, seated next to me in senior class at James Monroe High School in the Bronx, New York, was my classmate Stanley Milgram. We were both skinny kids full of ambition and a desire to make something of ourselves so that we might escape from life in the confines of our ghetto."
Phillip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, Pg. 508.

Zimbardo recalls, "when I was five years old, I got double pneumonia and whooping cough at the same time. I spent five months in the hospital. And there are no wonder drugs which means zero treatment. And kids died all the time. In the hospital, time got distorted. Every day was the same. Every night was the same. Time simply flowed on. Life was boring. The only thing we had were comic books. It's 1939 and Superman comics had just come out and I remember devouring it. We would share the comic books with each other, and we’d tell stories about good versus evil. I was able to create alternative realities that made our little bit of life in the hospital more interesting."
Phillip Zimbardo, A Beautiful Lie.

"They can imprison my body, but my mind is always free. This is the power of the human imagination, the ultimate power on earth. That hospital experience, that five months, ingrained so much into my brain, the forces of good versus the forces of evil, and that life could be really short. And so whatever time you have on Earth, whatever power you have, you want to do good."
Phillip Zimbardo, A Beautiful Lie.

Zimbardo remembers, "we wanted to see just what were the behavioral and psychological consequences of becoming a prisoner or a guard. To do this, we decided to set up our own prison, to create or to simulate a prison environment and then to carefully note the effects of this total institution on the behavior of all those within its walls."
Phillip Zimbardo, Quiet Rage.

"We will seek to understand the nature of their character transformations when they are faced with powerful situational forces."
Phillip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, Pg. 5.

"I'm interested in discovering… What changes does a person undergo in the process of adapting to that new role? Is it possible in the short time of only a few weeks to take on a new identity that is different from one's usual self?"
Phillip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, Pg. 31-31.

" My appreciation of the power residing in systems started with an awareness of how institutions create mechanisms that translate ideology—say, the causes of evil—into operating procedures, such as the Inquisition's witch hunts."
Phillip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, Pg. 9.