Abby Mangefrida
History 339
April 2, 2017
Ordinary Men
Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men follows the tasks of Police Battalion 101, a division of the Nazi paramilitary Order Police, which operated as a mass execution squad from 1941 to 1942. The battalion consisted of primarily working class middle aged men of German descent. The majority of the men were neither Nazi party members nor people with military or police experience. Their selection for the Order Police was largely due to their age, deemed too old to fight in the German army. Browning’s book includes both narratives of the actions that this battalion performed and statements from the interrogations of 125 men to explore their transformation from “ordinary men” to killers. The …show more content…
Willingness to follow authority is discussed as a reason for some of the policemen’s motive behind shooting. There are multiple aspects of this theory discussed in the book. In one part, Browning mentions that some followed orders by authority based on a desire to advance their careers. Others, who were not wanting to make a career in the police force could justify their actions to themselves by claiming they were just following orders, so the blame could be put on the leader instead of themselves (170). But, since prior to the first assignment in Jozenfow members of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were given the option by their leader to opt out, the theory of shooting justified due to merely following orders does not apply. Instead, the psychological aspect of fear of being ostracized by their peers is displayed by the men. For example one man discloses in his testimony “If the question is posed to me why I shot with the other in the first place I must answer that no one wants to be thought a coward” …show more content…
While many educational and informative sources of the Holocaust focus on the extreme antisemetic views and actions of people like Hitler, Himmler and other major Nazi leaders, Browning’s book displays a different perspective, and shows many perpetrators as regular humans, not unlike people we know, or even ourselves. This causes the reader to reflect and contemplate how someone without radical political views, like the “ordinary men” of Police Battalion 101, could carry out the actions they did. If the Nazis were able to create a system of genocide through the use of killing squads composed of ordinary men, then what is to stop this type of event from happening again? Understanding how past events in history developed is one vital step to help work towards preventing history from repeating
History 339
April 2, 2017
Ordinary Men
Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men follows the tasks of Police Battalion 101, a division of the Nazi paramilitary Order Police, which operated as a mass execution squad from 1941 to 1942. The battalion consisted of primarily working class middle aged men of German descent. The majority of the men were neither Nazi party members nor people with military or police experience. Their selection for the Order Police was largely due to their age, deemed too old to fight in the German army. Browning’s book includes both narratives of the actions that this battalion performed and statements from the interrogations of 125 men to explore their transformation from “ordinary men” to killers. The …show more content…
Willingness to follow authority is discussed as a reason for some of the policemen’s motive behind shooting. There are multiple aspects of this theory discussed in the book. In one part, Browning mentions that some followed orders by authority based on a desire to advance their careers. Others, who were not wanting to make a career in the police force could justify their actions to themselves by claiming they were just following orders, so the blame could be put on the leader instead of themselves (170). But, since prior to the first assignment in Jozenfow members of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were given the option by their leader to opt out, the theory of shooting justified due to merely following orders does not apply. Instead, the psychological aspect of fear of being ostracized by their peers is displayed by the men. For example one man discloses in his testimony “If the question is posed to me why I shot with the other in the first place I must answer that no one wants to be thought a coward” …show more content…
While many educational and informative sources of the Holocaust focus on the extreme antisemetic views and actions of people like Hitler, Himmler and other major Nazi leaders, Browning’s book displays a different perspective, and shows many perpetrators as regular humans, not unlike people we know, or even ourselves. This causes the reader to reflect and contemplate how someone without radical political views, like the “ordinary men” of Police Battalion 101, could carry out the actions they did. If the Nazis were able to create a system of genocide through the use of killing squads composed of ordinary men, then what is to stop this type of event from happening again? Understanding how past events in history developed is one vital step to help work towards preventing history from repeating