Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

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What the conservatives conceived of as sufficient measures overlapped with what were for the Nazis scarcely the first steps.”

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He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Here we come full circle to the mutually intensifying effects of war and racism noted by John Dower, in conjunction with the insidious effects of constant propaganda and indoctrination. Pervasive racism and the resulting exclusion of the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators made it all the easier for the majority of the policemen to conform to the norms of their immediate community (the battalion) and their society at large (Nazi Germany). Here the years of anti-Semitic propaganda (and prior to the Nazi dictatorship, decades of shrill German nationalism) dovetailed with the polarizing effects of war. The dichotomy of racially superior Germans and racially inferior Jews, central to Nazi ideology, could easily merge with the image of a beleaguered Germany surrounded by warring enemies.” Browning cites the pressure to conform to the group as a major reason that so many men from the battalion chose to shoot—individual men simply didn’t want to others to think of them as cowards. Furthermore, many of them men likely accepted the Nazi notion that Jews were enemies of Germany. Many of the men who opted out of shooting after executing at least one person cited physical revulsion, but Browning believes that there may have been underlying ethical or political opposition that they simply couldn’t articulate. A short time later, however, when Gnade leads his men in another mass execution alongside a unit of Hilfswillige (Hiwis), all of the men choose to shoot at least once. Browning argues that part of the reason for this is likely that Gnade did not explicitly offer to excuse men who didn’t want to shoot (although many men chose to stop early on).

ORDINARY MEN | Kirkus Reviews ORDINARY MEN | Kirkus Reviews

Perpetrators did not become fellow victims (as many of them later claimed to be) in the way some victims became accomplices of the perpetrators. The relationship between perpetrator and victim was not symmetrical. The range of choice each faced was totally different.”

What, then, is one to conclude? Most of all, one comes away from the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 with great unease. This story of ordinary men is not the story of all men. The reserve policemen faced choices, and most of them committed terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as they did. For even among them, some refused to kill and others stopped killing. Human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter.” A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."— Newsweek

Ordinary Men Quotes by Christopher R. Browning - Goodreads Ordinary Men Quotes by Christopher R. Browning - Goodreads

At the same time, however, the collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications. There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority, and indeed could scarcely function otherwise. Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”I must recognise that in the same situation, I could have been either a killer or an evader... What I do not accept, however, are the old clichés that to explain is to excuse, to understand is to forgive. Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving.” Major Nagel, was summoned to discuss “a basic Jewish action” scheduled to take place on August 31 and September 1.” Lccn 91050471 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL1566486M Openlibrary_edition