An essential contribution to our understanding of the Nazi era

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	• Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Christopher R. Browning Harper Perennial, 1993 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Unanswered questions

Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men_ deserves the acclaim it has generated during the years since its publication. It is a lucid, probing, and careful account of how a group of Order Police from Hamburg were transformed, in the course of only days, into committed perpetrators of genocide. Contrary to a common assumption, even within the field of Holocaust studies, Browning's book does _not_ provide an overall explanation of what motivated Holocaust perpetrators. Rather, the focus on Battalion 101 and its very particular history allows Browning to exclude or minimize a number of the factors most often cited in work on perpetrator motivation and, in essence, to see what is left. For Browning, what especially is left are certain forces toward group cohesion--what he puts under the rubric of "conformity"--that emerge as most central in his explanation (although not to the exclusion of other factors, particularly the brutalization of war itself, German military culture, careerism, racism, and more).

What remains unknown is the degree to which Browning's findings for Battalion 101 are generalizable. That is, this particular case has enabled him to hightlight an explanatory dimension that we might otherwise have overlooked. But whether what Browning calls "conformity" plays an overriding role in other contexts of Holocaust killing--or in mass murder more generally--requires far more study than this volume provides. To its enduring credit, it has inspired key work in that direction, some of which complements its own findings and some of which does not.

By the way, the Amazon review is incorrect in saying that this book is based on Browning's own interviews. It is entirely based on court records and desposition, not any interviews Browning conducted personally.

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An essential contribution to our understanding of the Nazi era

The recent version of this book has an Afterword by the author which is a specific rebuttal of Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which was based on much of the same research material used by Browning. I think Goldhagen's book is now generally accepted as sensationalist, highly selective and deeply flawed but Browning's criticism of Goldhagen's misinterpretation of the both the source material and Browning's work do a pretty thorough demolition of Goldhagen's thesis, if one were still needed.

This slim book is, in Browning's normal fashion, meticulously researched and lucidly, if somewhat drily, written and was/is a benchmark piece of work in understanding what enabled 'ordinary' Germans, in the context of their times, to carry out multiple acts of mass murder.

I would particularly agree with the comments of one reviewer that despite Browning's research and analysis, no one Great Answer emerges: the gap in our understanding is closed but not altogether eliminated. As more research of high quality emerges on the Nazi era, many issues have become more complex rather than less.

In terms of related reading which attempts to address similar issues I would also recommend David Cesarani's excellent recent biography of Adolf Eichmann and Richard Rhodes' somewhat patchy (by his high standards) study on the Einsatzgruppen, 'Masters of Death'. In terms on Browning's own work on the broader topic of the Final Solution, 'The Origins of the Final solution' is highly recommended.

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Illuminating dark events

The power of "Ordinary Men" is its ability to convey the magnitude of the Holocaust by recounting the activities of a single battalion of German policemen stationed in eastern Poland in 1942-43. Browning keeps his focus on the atrocities committed by this 500-man battalion, without straying to discuss related parties or neighboring geographies. Far from creating a myopic study, this focus serves to underscore the breadth of the Nazis' extermination program during the Second World War. The key strengths of the book are Browning's careful research of German judicial archives from the 1960s, as well as his balanced interpretation of the battalion's crimes and of humanity's capacity for committing organized mass murder. The main shortcoming is that the author's analysis is saved almost entirely for the last chapter, rather than accompanying the relevant passages. This creates a dichotomy which is only a minor drawback to an otherwise extraordinary historical work.

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Interesting thesis regarding character of the Final Solution

Browning asserts an interesting thesis regarding the Einsatzgruppen; these were the death squads who adminstered conquered lands and carried out the final solution in places where they could or did not ship the jews to camps. He establishes the backround of a particular Police Battalion.

These individuals were not hardened Nazi's nor fanatical SS; nor were they even that keen on gunning down Jews. The argument that Browning makes is that anti-semitism was created in these individuals by killing jews. In order to cope with murdering, they became anti-semetic. When their commander announced their first action, he was in tears and offered an exception to whomever did not want to do this. Soldiers cried, looked the other way when some jews tried to escape, establishing a character that challenges our assumptions.

As time went on, the soldiers became used to this, and would have to joke around with each other while shooting jews. There were some instances of drunken debauchery that will break your heart as well: instances of cruelty that boggles the mind.

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Well worth your time and money

This is definitely a book that will make you question your own ability to stand up for the right thing. We all agree that the Holocaust is one of the darkest points in recent history. What's amazing (and demonstrated in this book) is that it doesn't take a group of racist sociopaths to cause such a horrible catastrophe. Everyday people like you and me, under the right circumstances, can be influenced to murder innocent people.

This book has a lot of history. Not the history that you read in your high school history book, but history about specific groups in Germany during the second World War. It follows specific people and specific orders. Browning does an excellent job summarizing a lot of research (he went through old military records, court transcripts, news articles, personal interviews, etc.).

To be fair, you might also consider buying "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Goldhagen. Both authors cover basically the same thing with two VERY different interpretations. In a nutshell, while Browning believes the German guards were (for the most part...with a few exceptions) average citizens who were following orders (and didn't hate Jews enough to do what they did), Goldhagen argues that the Holocaust was the result of a deep rooted racist attitude held by all Germans. I don't want to bias you with my opinion, and I truly believe that it would be good to read both books and form your own opinion. However, if you are trying to pick between the two, Browning's "Ordinary Men" makes a lot more sense, and is probably a more accurate description of what happened.

For you psychology majors out there, if you want real-life proof of the experiments by Philip Zimbardo (the prison study) and Stanley Milgram (administering lethal shocks because the orders of an authority figure), this book will make you a believer.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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