Ordinary men browning. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning, Paperback 2022-11-08
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Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher R. Browning, is a historical examination of a unit of German reserve police officers during the Holocaust. The book, published in 1992, is based on the testimony of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, as well as other primary and secondary sources.
The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were not fanatical Nazis, but rather ordinary middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg. They were not ideologically committed to the extermination of the Jews, and many of them had never even fired a gun before. Yet, they participated in the mass murder of Jews in Poland during the Holocaust.
Browning argues that these men were not simply "following orders," but rather were influenced by a variety of factors that led them to participate in the genocide of the Jews. These factors included peer pressure, a desire to fit in with their comrades, a belief in the moral righteousness of their actions, and the gradual escalation of violence.
One of the most striking aspects of Ordinary Men is the way in which Browning illustrates the "deskilling" of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101. Initially, they were hesitant to kill innocent civilians, but over time, they became more and more accustomed to the violence, until it became routine. This process of desensitization is a key aspect of the book, and highlights the way in which ordinary people can become perpetrators of evil through a series of small steps.
Overall, Ordinary Men is a powerful and disturbing examination of the Holocaust and the role of ordinary people in it. It challenges the idea that only fanatical ideologues could have participated in the genocide of the Jews, and instead shows that ordinary men, given the right circumstances, can be capable of terrible acts.
Ordinary Men
As soon as they began killing at Józefów, though, they became callous and eventually violence was merely routine for them. Reports from Order Police guards on these trains paint a bleak picture of starving Jews struggling to survive in extreme temperatures for several days before reaching their destinations, which were frequently extermination camps. Over the following months they participated in the direct shootings of at least 38,000 and placed a further 45,000 on trains to the concentration camps. Still, this propaganda played an important role in transforming what began as a geopolitical war into a race war characterized by the slaughter of the Jewish people. They turned in their rifles and were told to await a further assignment from the major.
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The fifth chapter addresses the main activities of the RPB 101. Major Trapp appealed to this generalized notion of the Jews as part of the enemy in his early-morning speech. At the time, he attributes this to a bad dysentery vaccine he received in 1942, but later he says it was induced by the stress of the murders and violence that surrounded him. Thousands of Jews are rounded up at a time, sometimes with extreme violence like at Międzyrzec and sometimes with relative ease and order like the second day of clearing the Parczew ghetto. The general belief behind this is that people are socialized to obey authority from the time they are children, and this makes it very hard to disobey authority as an adult. These deportations were often accompanied by violence as Jews tried to escape or even died of heat exhaustion in the trains. Therefore, those who shoot did not have to live with the clear awareness that what they had done had been avoidable.
However, there were a small number of people who chose against killing. Zimbardo randomly divided his normal test group into guards and prisoners and placed them in a simulated prison. Orders were orders, and no one in such a political climate could be expected to disobey them, they insisted. Conformity plays a major role in why so many men in the battalion chose to go along with so many executions. If the men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of human beings could not? While the events in this book take place during a conventional war WWII , it is important to note that the violence and deaths that occurred during the Holocaust are not a part of that war—they were a systematic genocide associated with the separate race war that Hitler launched against European Jews years after his initial invasion of Poland. In other words, these men were specially selected, just not for the purpose of committing mass executions. Most of these ordinary men could not question the authority as they also feared that the Nazi leaders may also act against them if they happen to oppose the given instructions.
The battalion helps guard the road into the inner camp where the Jews are shot to death in mass graves that they themselves dug. Only people who are very secure in themselves can go against what the majority is doing like Schimke. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 undoubtedly complied with these trainings Wohlauf and Hoffmann were even formally recognized for their skill in ideological training. Killing someone can never be considered as a solution of any problem rather it can only be considered as adding salt to the injury. The Holocaust: Events Motives and Legacy. Nevertheless, the author is able to persuade the readers to empathize with the members of the 101 battalion.
This, again, reinforces the assertion that the Order Police were not meant to be used as executioners in Poland. Many of the German occupiers in Poland may have witnessed or participated in ghetto roundups on several occasions—in a lifetime, a few brief moments that could be easily repressed. If they get uncomfortably close to getting caught and punished for helping the victims, they can return to the safety of simply being a perpetrator. Most of the policemen, however, seem to have made no effort to avoid shooting. The same case would apply with anyone being put in such a situation; Hitler was very ready to order for murder of those who were reluctant to kill the Jews. Browning, however, developed an early interest in the question of whether small villages and towns were subject to the same violence as the large ghettos. In the subsequent chapters, the author delves into the activities of the Order Police around 1940.
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning
That day they had committed crimes that they NEVER thought they could bring themselves to in their darkest of dreams. . Only a few go to prison, and some are excluded from the verdict due to their failing health. No one in such a political climate should disobey them, they insisted. Himmler used pamphlets, posters, newspaper ads, and even the radio. In both the study and in the battalion, most individuals chose to do whatever they saw the majority doing, even if they were less than enthusiastic about it. Learn More The reasons why most people often avoid looking at perpetrators from this angle is because they fear that they might recognize some similarities between the perpetrators and themselves.
This story of ordinary men is not the story of all men. . While the men nearly always provided the cordon and helped drive the Jews, at the biggest mass executions the men had help from the Hiwis or other units, which meant that others typically did most of the shooting as at Łomazy. But even then, the men were free to choose whether to shoot or not. Given the number of men who remained in the police after the war, career ambitions must have played an important role. The Nazis essentially had centuries of racist beliefs about Jewish people that made it relatively easy to transform the geopolitical war for territory that Germany had wanted for over a century into a race war, the victims of which had been looked down on for centuries.
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This also explains why some people tried to make themselves look busy during shootings or ghetto clearings. New York: Basic Books, 2007. Already, Browning is painting a picture of ordinary people shoving aside their strong moral objection to harming others by distorting the truth and casting the blame on others they are just following the orders of their commanders, after all. This approach is not common among historians. Furthermore, the men knew that their battalion would have to shoot even if they themselves chose not to, so stepping out would create an additional burden for their comrades. This meticulously researched book. Nevertheless, it is through these candid details that the author is able to connect the audience with the RPB 101 members in a more humane level.
When the men arrived at the barracks in Biłgoraj, they were depressed, angered, embittered, and shaken. Some, like Hoppner and Peters, die in action during the war. To break ranks and step out, to adopt overtly nonconformist behavior, was simply beyond most of the men. Obedience to Authority: A similar force is the pull to obey authorities. An example might be if a soldier who has watched close friends die in combat then brutally kills several enemy soldiers on the side of the road later that day.
Ordinary Men Chapter 1: One Morning in Józefów Summary & Analysis
They were given the freedom to choose, and they chose to kill innocent people. If some of these technologies were available during that time, all the Jews could be eliminated within a very short time for instance through the use of nuclear bombs. When they first committed these mass murders, they were physically shaken up and depressed. Trap was a conflicted man as other time he would be heard betraying his fellow Nazi leaders on how they perceived the Jews. In carrying out the Final Solution, leaders drew on the Order Police for help with major Jewish actions, including deportations to extermination camps and ghettos in the east. Having explained what awaited his men, Trapp then made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out. Post-mortem How did most of these ordinary men in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 become killers? There made use of the opportunities that were offered to them to proof their loyalty.
