A Duty to Starve: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
  • Thesis
  • Stand
  • Serve
  • Starve
  • Solve
  • Significance
    • Shift
    • Support
    • Save
  • Resources
    • Personal Interviews
    • Bibliography and Process Paper
  • Thesis
  • Stand
  • Serve
  • Starve
  • Solve
  • Significance
    • Shift
    • Support
    • Save
  • Resources
    • Personal Interviews
    • Bibliography and Process Paper
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A Duty to Stand

Is killing someone ever ethical?
​“There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.”
- Albert Dietrich, Conscious Objector, 1939
Conscientious Objectors (COs) are people who, for moral or religious reasons, refuse to perform military service. ​In WWI, COs were sent to military prisons for evading the draft. In these prisons, COs worked to exhaustion, and in extreme cases, death. However, in response to a growing pacifist movement, the Selective Service realized a new system was needed to utilize COs in war.
"The Sergeant began to beat and torture me, using his fists, for one-half to two hours, slapping and punching me. He also thrust the bayonet into me several times and used it on my hands."
- Charles Clodi, Conscious Objector, 1918
Picture
Conscientious Objectors at Protest, The Independent, 1917
Picture
"The Conscientious Objector in The Front!," 1917.
“I see that the means we employ to ‘defend’ our ‘way of life’ profoundly change that way of life. I see that in our failure to recognize the political, social, and economic realities of the world, we, as a nation, fail our responsibility as a nation.”
- Elliott Ashton Welsh, Conscious Objector, 1919

Shifting Policy

"Any person subject to military law... who willfully disobeys any lawful command of his superior officer, shall suffer death or such other punishment."
​ - 64th Article of War, 1912
"Persons paroled for assignment to work of national importance under civilian direction... shall be assigned to such work by the Director of the Selective Service in such manner as [The Director] may determine."
- Selective Service Act of 1940
Picture
Personal Photograph, Minnesota Historical Society Archives, 2018.

Through the Participants' Eyes
(Hover to read quotes)

"We answer the pessimists who have lost hope and lament that the human race is destined to destroy itself... by saying that there are no hopeless situations. There are only men who have lost hope."
"We were willing to put ourselves on the line to protect other humans. It was the killing that we objected to."

Conflicting Ethics

"War, in my view, is so wrong, so immoral, that I cannot take part in it and still live with myself"
- 
Jay Garner, Conscious Objector, 1941
"[I] think of killing in war as akin to a doctor amputating the infected limb of a wounded warrior—it’s sad and painful, and it takes training and courage to do right, but is the morally right choice... and ought to be done." 
- Pete Kilner, Lieutenant Colonel, 2010
Max Kampleman
Samuel Legg

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"Why do people who were drafted go to fight wars, without escaping? Because there's a duty. It's the same kind of a thing, just a different battlefield. And from our point of view at the time, it was a battlefield consistent with what our conscience would tell us. But it was a battlefield. And battlefields are not supposed to be easy."
​- Max Kampleman, Minnesota Starvation Experiment participant, 1993

Ella Hoch Robinson
A Duty to Starve: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
First Place National History Day 2018
Junior Individual Website

Word Count: 1200
​Media Time: 3:57
Process Paper: 499
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