My Lai and Milgram’s findings prompted military films teaching soldiers to refuse illegitimate orders.

Evidence

A military psychologist, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Gross­ man, wrote On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995), an insightful book about soldiers’ resistance to killing and how it is overcome, which draws substantively on Milgram’s work. After I read the book, I contacted Grossman to ask him if Milgram’s ideas have had any dis­ cernible impact on the military. His answer astounded me. He told me that when he was undergoing officer training in the early 1970s, he was shown training films instructing soldiers on how to disobey illegitimate orders. He believes that the use of these films was attributable to the My Lai massacre and Milgram’s findings (personal communication, May 18, 1999). — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Bridges Milgram’s laboratory obedience paradigm to real military learning, linking the small-group/authority conformity material to perpetrator behavior at My Lai.
• QUESTION: Was there independent documentation of these training films beyond Grossman’s recollection? Worth chasing whether the DoD has records.