The book “Ordinary Men” describes the Police Batallion, a subset of the Order Police, who directly participated in the massacre of Jewish civilians in Poland of 1942. The author of “Ordinary Men”, Christopher Browning analyzes the testimonies made by the members of the Batallion in the 1960s, and tries to understand how any sane man was capable of performing the horrible deeds committed by these ordinary men. Browning takes a psychological standpoint in analyzing the motivation behind these killings, and generates multiple theories as to how a common man, previously a law-abiding citizen, can morph into a killer in such a short time. Browning assesses these theories, and tries to see if there’s any validity in them. When one is learning about the Holocaust, there is one question the general public always has: why did they do it? Why did they kill? I’m going to try and analyze the theories and possible motivations the Nazis may have had; furthermore, I’m going to asses Browning’s own arguments and research methods.
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Volunteers were called to participate in this study. They randomly assigned twelve people to act as guards and twelve people to act as prisoners. In this simulation, the prisoners dressed in hospital gowns which were open in the back, while the guards were dressed as prison guards. The prison guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners, but anything else they did to enhance their dominance was okay. Three guards controlled twelve prisoners, and the guards rotated for patrolling. Zimbardo wanted to see how quickly the guards would adapt to their role as actual prison guards and assert their authority and dominance on the prisoners. He saw that they adapted too quickly; they developed the “authoritarian personality” (pg. 231). The prison guards tormented the prisoners so much that Zimbardo had to end the experiment after one week instead of
We have been informed on the …show more content…
Volunteers were called to participate in this study. They randomly assigned twelve people to act as guards and twelve people to act as prisoners. In this simulation, the prisoners dressed in hospital gowns which were open in the back, while the guards were dressed as prison guards. The prison guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners, but anything else they did to enhance their dominance was okay. Three guards controlled twelve prisoners, and the guards rotated for patrolling. Zimbardo wanted to see how quickly the guards would adapt to their role as actual prison guards and assert their authority and dominance on the prisoners. He saw that they adapted too quickly; they developed the “authoritarian personality” (pg. 231). The prison guards tormented the prisoners so much that Zimbardo had to end the experiment after one week instead of