Discovery of the Nazi death camps at the end of World War II sent shockwaves throughout the entire world and brought to question how civilized humans could participate in the atrocity of what is now known as the Holocaust. Although from the beginning, it was clear Nazi’s believed Jews and other races were inferior to the Aryan race, the idea of genocide was not their original intent. How then were German soldiers able to exterminate Jews without question? Christopher Browning in his book Ordinary Men dives into the human psyche to try and recreate the possibilities in which the German soldier were able to carry out these horrifying acts. Easiest of Browning possibilities to understand why the Germans were capable of these terrible acts are the fundamentals of a race war. Initialized by seeing a fellow comrade falling to the onslaught of the enemy and engulfing them with hate, thus allowing the killing of a certain race without empathy for their actions. However, how could this mentality be contributed to the Reserve Police Battalions when they had never encountered combat? Early on in the war “[they] felt the need to provide justification. They were shot, he explained, “because they had been encountered without the Jewish star during roundup…”” (Browning 16) justification described as that is not from men feeling racial hate toward the Jews. These men were not completely morally certain of their actions and in order to justify it in their heads created shaky logic as to
In the book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning tackles the question of why German citizens engaged in nefarious behavior that led to the deaths of millions of Jewish and other minorities throughout Europe. The question of what drove Germans to commit acts of genocide has been investigated by numerous historians, but unfortunately, no overarching answer for the crimes has yet been decided upon. However, certain theories are more popular than others. Daniel Goldhagen in his book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, has expounded that the nature of the German culture before the Second World War was deeply embedded in anti-Semitic fervor, which in turn, acted as the catalyst for the events that would unfold into the Holocaust. It is at this
Goldhagen’s view of the perpetrators of the Holocaust can be seen as super-intentionalist in the way he views the German population to have largely willingly colluded with the Nazi regime because they to held the same eliminationalist anti-Semitic views. To make this point, he uses what he sees as the willingness of ordinary, largely untrained and unindoctrinated Germans in the Reserve Police Battalions to carry out mass killings of Jews (Goldhagen: 1997:206). This means he portrays the perpetrators of the Jozefow massacre as “willing executioners” and goes at great length to show them to simply be “ordinary Germans” based on their political, socio-economic and geographical background (Goldhagen: 1997: 213). Central to Goldhagen’s argument that the Policemen massacred Jews willingly, is their reluctance to excuse themselves from the operation when given the opportunity. The main “opportunity” in which to do this, is the moment before the massacre, when Major Trapp (the officer in charge of the
In Christopher Browning’s book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland tells the story of Battalion 101, a group of 500 policemen in their 30’s and 40’s who were sent into Poland to participate in a ‘special action’ without being told exactly what they are doing. Overtime they realized their mission is to Kill Jews and racially purify Europe. Most of the killing during this period of mass murder took place in Poland. Battalion 101 together with other Order Police battalions contributed to the manpower needed to carry out this enormous task. Browning comments that these men all went through their developmental period before the Nazis came into power. These were men who had known political standards and moral norms other than those of the Nazis. Most men came from Hamburg; one of the least ‘nazified’ cities in Germany and the majority came from a social class that had been anti-Nazi in its political culture. In seems this would not seem to have been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on behalf on the Nazi vision of a racial utopia free of Jews. However, their actions helps us understand not only what they did to make the Holocaust happen, but also how they were transformed psychologically from the ordinary men into active participants in the most horrific offence in human history. In doing so, it aims on the human capacity for extreme evil and leaves this subject matter with the shock of knowledge and the
in this paper i argue the opposing views of Daniel Goldhagen 's book Hitler 's Willing Executioners and Christopher Browning 's book ordinary Men. These books deal with the question of whether or not the average German soldiers and civilians were responsible for the holocaust. My research paper argues in favor of Goldhagen 's book, the average German was responsible for the participation of he holocaust. At the end of world war ll the Jewish community and the the rest of the world were crying for justice because of the devastation of there homes. The crimes committed by the Germans were cruel and someone had to pay. Several Nazi leaders were held accountable for the actions of the Germans. Were the Nazi leaders the ones responsible for
The main argument in “Ordinary Men” is a flexible argument that can be inserted into the gaps of past hypotheses while holding merit. Part of Browning’s effective appeal is his concession to other offered historian’s ideas on the subject while establishing why his ideas with an emphasis on psychology, provide a superior answer for the question at hand. Seeing that there are two majority view points in relation to this discussion with the intentionalists claiming that this was a desired outcome from the inception of war juxtaposed to the functionalists, who declare that “normal” men would subjugate the Jews as the war developed, the refutation to the intentionalist point of view is well addressed by Browning, he points out the flaws in arguments the directly root their idea of the participation of “normal” men to merely being the product of sheer Nazi indoctrination. I agree with the idea that Nazi indoctrination would qualify for an explanation to why higher ranking Nazi SS officials would be able to kill Polish Jewry without troubles considering their high involvement and connection to Nazism, but that hypothesis does not offer enough intellectual reach to explain why men of which belonged to Major Wilhelm Trapp’s battalion, who were described as “mostly middle aged reservists” (Browning) would be converted into mindless machines without the freedom
Christopher Browning describes how the Reserve Police Battalion 101, like the rest of German society, was immersed in a flood of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda. Browning describes how the Order Police provided indoctrination both in basic training and as an ongoing practice within each unit. Many of the members were not prepared for the killing of Jews. The author examines the reasons some of the police members did not shoot. The physiological effect of isolation, rejection, and ostracism is examined in the context of being assigned to a foreign land with a hostile population. The contradictions imposed by the demands of conscience on the one hand and the norms of the battalion on the other are discussed. Ordinary Men
Many wars of the 20th Century were caused by leaders aiming to create a so-called Master Race. As a result many millions of soldiers and civilians were killed in conflict. Adolf Hitler, the German Fuehrer, decided that one group of people in particular needed to be eradicated: The Jew. He set up concentration camps and tried to round up all of Europe’s Jews to create “the final solution”. The Jews were either forced to work slave labor, or face extermination if they were too week or unwilling. One survivor of this Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, wrote a work of psychology, Man’s Search For Meaning, that described the horrific conditions of camp life. Frankl explains that
Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of
Dehumanization is understood as the process of humans being deprived of what makes them human, but the Nazis took it a step further to encourage mistreatment between the prisoners . The Holocaust is a ghastly event in the history of the world, that killed around 6 million Jewish people, but the horrors don’t stop there. The way the prisoners were treated in the concentration camps left lasting effects on the survivors. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he recounts the horrific actions of the Nazi party against the Jewish people . The lasting effects of dehumanization do not take long to show, and the effects are only worsened through the numerous reminders from the Nazis that they aren’t worth anything.
The arguments of Christopher Browning and Daniel John Goldhagen contrast greatly based on the underlining meaning of the Holocaust to ordinary Germans. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings and deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was "not up to it." Despite this offer, most of the
The basis of this novel relies on the need to show that these men were not necessarily physically forced to commit these heinous acts, but that they mentally and psychologically had their hands tied. These men were just as the title of this novel states: ordinary—they were middle-aged men who were lower-middle class, and they had families and worked for a living; they were entirely and frightfully normal, but in just a short span of time they had executed 1800 Jews in a single day. Through this novel and excerpts from Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History, Browning’s theory about the police battalion executioners can be proven accurate and it gives an explanation for these men’s actions. When giving this order to Police Battalion 101 their commander, Wilhelm Trapp, relayed the orders with tears in his eyes, but when given the opportunity, many of the men did not opt out of the executing. The first man to step out began to be berated by Captain Hoffmann but was stopped by Trapp. Trapp and Hoffmann show the nature of this time—while the compassionate and reasonable Trapp shows that the men have an escape out of their
The main region Zodiac Killer has terrorized is San Francisco Bay Area. Zodiac killer has not be caught yet. There are a list of suspects. According to surviving victim Mageau, the man was white, 5'8" to 5'9", late 20s to early 30s, stocky build, round face and brown hair.
Happiness is a mental and emotional state of joy; this emotion is present when there are positive reactions. However, happiness can also be covered by an illusion, which is something that is not real. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury, happiness is an illusion which results from ignorance. This is evident through the citizen’s belief in ignorance to gain happiness which results in characters suffering. Next, Mildred’s dependency on technology proves to be an illusion and an attempt at real happiness. Finally, the lack of emotional availability supports the idea that ignorance is a result of illusions.
Social conflict is one of the most important contributors to genocide, but it is strengthened when dehumanization has preluded the social conflict. For instance, after World War I, German military could not confess that it was their fault for their loss—so the German people began to suspect that the betrayal had come from within Germany (Bergen, 2007). Hitler slowly began conforming the German people to understand their need for racial purity. He defined handicapped people as those whose lives were unworthy of living, and he eventually equated homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews, and communists to “handicapped” (Bergen, 2007). Once these different groups of people had been dehumanized, then social conflict arose and Germans began to understand their need for a purely Aryan race.
One of the hardest moments in our lives when you feel ill or more appropriately sick or even disabled. The whole idea of our lives to protect ourselves at the physical and psychological level, in other words being healthy. When my grandfather died, I was questioning myself why there was no effective drug can stop him from being worse. He was diagnosed with Lung fibrosis which is a progressive disease can’t be cured. That’s before I entered medical school. In my first years, I was passionate that I can invent something very effective in helping patients getting best care. By the time, I started to be more realistic. I discovered that the process of inventing new drugs may cost billions. And these drugs may not help patients