Ordinary Men Book Review

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

Throughout Hitler’s reign over Germany there was an agenda that existed which led to murders of a great number of innocent people. The agenda was the extermination of Jews from Germany so that Germany could become a pure country in terms of ethnicity. It was Hitler’s idea but he only gave the orders while the SS and the Order Police carried out the orders. One group of people that helped carry out this idea of judenfrei or Jew free Germany was the Reserve Police Battalion 101. The men who made up this group were regular men that had come from a variety of careers. Most the men volunteered because the immunity that they would receive from “conscription into the army” once the volunteers had become part of

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

The main sources for this book consist of archival documents and court records of the Holocaust. The specific testimony, court records, investigation records, and prosecution documents of members of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 members are used as sources. In this book, Christopher Browning shows in minute detail the sequence of events and individual reactions that turn ordinary men into killers. His arguments make sense. He makes no unwarranted assumptions. The cause and effect statements made and arguments presented are logical and well developed. Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning accounts for the actions of the German Order Police (more specifically the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland) and the role they played in the Second World War during the Jewish Holocaust. Police Battalion 101 was composed of veterans from World War One and men too old to be

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

Christopher R. Browning’s “Ordinary Men” chronicles the rise and fall of the Reserve Police Battalion 101. The battalion was one of several units that took part in the Final Solution to the Jewish Question while in Poland. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, and other units were comprised of ordinary men, from ordinary backgrounds living under the Third Reich. Browning’s premise for the book is very unique, instead of focusing on number of victims, it examines the mindset of how ordinary men, became cold-hearted killers under Nazi Germany during World War II. Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men” presents a very strong case that the men who made up the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were indeed ordinary men from ordinary background, and

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 small city of Brownsville is small in both population and mind. Even though there are individuals who commute morning and night from country to country, there is no unity. Growing up, I had never experienced a “diverse” city. In the city of Brownsville, Hispanics are the majority. As a result, individuals who saw somebody of a different race or ethnicity would make negative and offensive comments towards them. At times, these offensive comments were accidental. Other times, the offensive comments were on purpose and intended to appear humorous to friends. Apart from discriminatory remarks to outsiders, this happened amongst people of my Hispanic community.

The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men, from a variety of backgrounds, education, and age. It would appear that they were not selected by any force other than random chance. Their backgrounds and upbringing, however, did little to prepare these men for the horrors they were to witness and participate in.

Howard, John. Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. (hb). ISBN: 0-226-35471-7.

Racial hatred is prejudice and hostility targeting groups of color or ethnic backgrounds in various ways. “Night” by Elie Wiesel is a story about the author's experience during the Holocaust and how he survived through the harsh treatment of the concentration camps. Paul Rusesabagina’s “From An Ordinary Man” is about how the author saved many people from an ongoing tribe attack by putting them in his hotel. In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”and Paul Rusesabagina's “From An Ordinary Man”, both the author's use of overall purpose, theme, and use of rhetoric help tell the stories of survivors.

"There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are faced to deal with" (William Halsey). The same can be said about volatile men. This is the quote Christopher R. Browning thought of when he named this book. The men of the 101st battalion were rarely faced with decisions. Even if it had been proposed by Trapp the morning of Jozefow that "any of the older men who did not feel up to the task that lay before them could step out" (Browning, chapter 7, pg. 57), he didn't actually allow them any time to truly think about it. He brought it up moments before they were about to go out to the slaughter. They were blind-sided and the men who didn't want to risk the future of their jobs as policemen or the men

The first time I walked through the streets of Warsaw, the most populated ghetto, housing over four hundred thousand Jews was June 1, 1937. From over the ghetto’s fence, the smell of retched death seeped over. Every man with me pinched their faces in disgust. An officer walked over to greet us at our station wagon. The excitement in his eyes of meeting greeting me was admiring. He reached his hand out and nervously stated, “I can’t believe I am meeting the one and only Adolf Hitler. How do you do, Sir? Sargent? General?” I shot my hand out confidently, and shook his hand, “Good Day, officer. I have finally gotten the time to visit Warsaw, my apologies for waiting so long. You know what they say,

If one were to take anything from Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men it is that even the most ordinary, normal men have the capacity to kill. The 101st Reserve Police Battalion executed at least 6,500 Jews at the Polish cities and villages of Jozefow, Lomazy, Serokomla, Lukow, Konskowola, Parczew, Radzyn, Kock, and Miedzyrzec and participated in the deportation of at least 42,000 Jews to the gas chambers in Treblinka (Browning, chapter 14, page 121). There were most likely even more killings that were never documented and much less remembered by the members of the 101st. These men had their first taste of death at Jozefow where they massacred 1,500 Polish Jews (Browning, chapter 8, page 74). It was a brutal and harrowing event where men,

“How can this happen?” one might ask. In Germany specifically, a variety of brainwashing tools were utilized. Early on in school, children were taught the ideology of the Nazi party. Additionally, “throughout the Second World War children played war games... None of us cried and we won” (Stargardt, 39). Children became so desensitized to war and brutality that when such events actually occurred, emotion and rationale became separate. Furthermore, the concept of the “master race,” certain people are better than others, was ingrained into their subconscious. Adults experienced similar techniques, albeit in a different environment. Individuals in the police battalion were also directly involved with some of the atrocities committed. For these men, “there was to be continuing ideological training during the war, with planned daily, weekly, and monthly instruction of the men in police battalions. The daily instruction informed the men of political and military developments. The weekly instruction was intended to shape their ideological views and build their character” (Godhagen, 184). As shown above, both children and adults were similarly trained to view the outside world the way the party wanted them to. In effect, the brainwashing was so severe that it seemed to change individual’s sense of morality. One woman in Lower’s