Ordinary Men is a book by Christopher Browning, it is an analysis of police battalion 101. Police battalion 101 was a mass execution squad in poland during the holocaust. This book observes the motivations and perpetrators of the holocaust. In addition, to the history of the holocaust. I will be analyzing each chapter to focus on the motivations and perpetrators of the holocaust.
Chapter 1: Browning begins his book by briefly describing Major Wilhelm Trapp’s orders on July 13, 1942. This was the day that the Police Battalion 101 committed the first massacre in Jozefow, a town in Poland. In this chapter he brings up the following question: “How did a battalion of middle-aged reserve policemen find themselves responsible with the task of shooting massive amounts of Jewish residents in Poland? (Browning, 3).
Chapter 2-6: In these chapters, Browning focuses on the creation of the Order Police after World War I, and their tasks during the beginning of World War II. During this time thousands of German men volunteered in order to avoid the draft and front-line service, in addition to a career in the police after the war which were motivations for the perpetrators. This resulted in the Order Police growing by thousands. The Order Police were then sent to occupy Russia and Poland, where their primary assignment was to “keep order”. In order to do this they were aided by two decrees: the commissar order and the Barbarossa decree. The commissar order allowed on-the-spot execution of any Communist functionary suspected of being anti-German. The Barbarossa decree allowed German soldiers to shoot any Russian civilian without being subject to military discipline. This was because Jews and Bolsheviks were considered the enemy, and they were to be handled ruthlessly (Browning, 11). These orders acted as additional motivations for the order police, who were the main perpetrators of the holocaust in addition to Hitler.
In 1942 the SS and Police were told that the Jews of the General Government were to be eliminated as part of Hitler’s Final Solution by a leading member of the Nazi party Himmler. (Browning, 49). This order was a motivation that led to extermination camps, which were seen as the most efficient means of doing this. The Order Police who were stationed under the personal command of Globnik (the police leader), were one of many groups tasked for this challenge (Browning, 51-2). Battalion 101 was a test unit to transport Jews to the extermination camps, and they were ordered to use tactics such as on-the-spot execution by firing squad (Browning, 54). This was another motivation, the police responded to orders given to them by their leaders because they were also threatened if they didn’t obey orders.
Chapters 7-16: In these chapters, Browning describes the physical actions of police battalion 101 and their role the “Final Solution” in Poland. The initiation of the order police to mass murder was the July action, where men were sent to a Lublin labor camp, while women, children, and elderly men were executed immediately. Major Trapp a commander of the police battalion informed his men of this order, and because he did not approve of such an action he told them that any who wished to be excused from the action could do so. Many men decided to be excused, and even after the executions began many of the men who had agreed to take part realized they could not continue and were allowed to leave. These men were not punished.
Over the next year Battalion 101 took part in many mass executions and deportations to death camps. Many of the Battalions men found ways to avoid taking part in these actions one way or another, but those who did take part eventually became desensitized to their actions and some began to enjoy what they were doing. After the Lublin district had been cleared, the Battalion was ordered to find and murder any Jews who escaped or hid during the earlier round-ups. Their final act was to take part in the multi-unit harvest festival massacre in November 1943, where all of the Polish Jews spared in previous massacres/deportations were executed in a surprise roundup to prevent any possibility of uprising.
Chapter 17-18: Browning discusses members of the order police testimonies, and analyzes Police Battalion 101s motivations.
The toughest question to arise after WWII and the Holocaust was: What was the motivation of the perpetrators of the holocaust? Christopher R. Brownings 1992 book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland provides a myriad of answers. Battalion 101 committed mass murder because they were in brutal, polarizing war, they were conditioned to think that Jews were less than human, and they did not want to become isolated from the group of men they saw as comrades-in-arms. Ordinary Men striked debates between Browning and another scholar Daniel Goldhagen, which were in the book. The strength of Browning’s work was that he did not rely solely on one explanation for his thesis. Browning’s thesis is that most of the men were not anti-Semitic Nazis but “ordinary men” who killed out of obedience to authority and peer pressure.
Brownings cites the history of Battalion 101 that was documented post-war by investigators. He quotes the interrogations of the former members of the battalion and reports from the each action that took place during WWII and the holocaust. These reports often omitted issues and events, contained bias, and were not very accurate.
Browning was interested in Order Police Battalion 101 because they were a group that could be used to prove or disprove the many theories about what motivated German mass-executioners. One theory was that the men in the ordinary police came from the same place, which was the least nazified cities in Germany. (Browning, 48). The fact that these men all has a common origin meant that the Battalions members were not primarily formed and shaped by Nazi ideology and anti-Semitic propaganda (Browning, 48). They technically knew better, or at least different. This disproved the theory that the order police were motivated solely by anti semitic propaganda, but this ideology was still a part of their motivation.
Another interesting thing was that in Battalion 101, men were given a choice as to whether they would take part in the mass killings or not, this supports Browning’s thesis. Before their first massacre, Major Trapp gave a speech where he said that the members of the Battalion could be reassigned if they so wished (Browning, 55). Around a dozen men took this offer, but as time went on many more men of the Battalion found some way to get out of killing (Browning, 73-4).
The tasks of battalion 101 were certainly not easy, and they had great effects on the men, even those who became desensitized. Many spoke of feeling physically sickened by what they did, decades later in their interrogations (Browning, 74). Others described what went on in a extremely graphic manner and with horror, so they felt some remorse. Although these men caused such disturbing images, they could not ignore them, but they still continued to take part.
Browning also disproves the theory that there was something intrinsically brutal about the men of Battalion 101. He implies that brutalization was not the cause but the effect of their behavior (Browning, 161). The men were not all inhuman and they were not selected beforehand because they had brutal characteristics. Overall, Browning believes there were a few different motivations of Battalion 101 into mass-murderers, but the main motivation was the circumstances the men were under, rather than pre-existing antisemitic views. The circumstance these men were under was awful, because at this time Germany was surrounded by enemies. This led to the men of battalion 101 considered many people as enemies. In addition, the effect of World War II made it easy for Jews to be lumped into this category (Browning, 186). The propaganda pushed on every German citizen by the German state from 1933-1942 influenced and motivated Battalion 101. Many of these men were not anti semitic before, but the general racism of Germany slowly convinced the men to simply not care what happened to the Jews (Browning, 184).
I personally believe that, Battalion 101 was made up of many individuals with drastically different backgrounds and goals. The crimes they committed can’t just be forgotten or forgiven, but understanding their motivations is important to prevent events like the holocaust from repeating. Browning’s thesis is that most of the men were not anti-Semitic Nazis but “ordinary men” who killed out of obedience to authority and peer pressure. This is important because this happened because of the situation in Germany during the time with the war, fascism, and totalitarianism led to men being in horrible circumstances. Browning’s book allow us to look for the sources of evil in our habits and ourselves, which is how we learn from our mistakes. In conclusion indoctrination and an extremely dehumanizing war were the main motivations of the perpetrators.
Citations:
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York :HarperPerennial, 1998. Print.
Judith Levin, Daniel Uziel, “Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Photos”, (Jun 22, 2006), /http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/studies/ordinary/levein_uziel_full.html.
Spectacle.org, “Ordinary Men, Band of Brothers, Natural Born Killers”, (Nov. 25, 1996), http://www.spectacle.org/295/ordinary.html.