Not for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach!

books:


	• 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 53 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent

Very well-done and insightful study on ordinary Germans in the Holocaust and Browning's overall thesis extends to "ordinary men" in many circumstances.

from ordinary men to masacre machines

In one of the most shocking books that I have ever read, Christopher Browning follows the evolution of a german reserve police batallion during the second world war, battalion which is involved in making several districts in poland "judenfrei" - free of jewish people. The book follows the psychological evolution of the members of the battalion from "ordinary men" to ... masacre machines.

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Frightfully banal

This book, which follows step by step the itinerary of a battalion of German security police in the East during WWII, is a scary confirmation of Hannah Arendt's theory on the "banality of evil" that emerged after Eichmann's trial in 1961. It shows how perfectly average people, representing a cross-section of a developped country's society, when placed in certain circumstances, are able to perform the most gruesome and crual acts of barbary in an efficient and non-committal way against innocent populations. It is a depressing book, all the more so as almost none of these perpetrators suffered any consequence after the war. They went on to live their banal and mediocre lives as ordinary people, until the 1960's when some of them were tried and suffered very light sentences.

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Not for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach!

This book (as described by previous reviewers and the product description) details what the men in the Nazi Reserve Police Battalion 101 went through, specifically during the SS Invasion of Poland.

Browning describes in detail the process of dehumanizing the Jews, and writes at length on the style of execution that the Germans refined and perfected in Poland, prior to the widespread use of gas chambers: the person to be killed forced to lie down flat on their face, and then shot at a particular spot in their neck. The accounts of these executions is not just gratuitous violence -- graphic gore for the sake of shock or horror -- but rather, demonstrates that over time, the police officers involved in the executions worked to make the process of mass killing more humane (an idea that was at the root of the gas chambers, as ironic as that seems). It also serves to drive home the point that after so many hundreds of people were shot, the officers were able to completely dehumanize the people they were killing.

What is unique about this book is that it is not just another historical account; the author takes into consideration what the Nazis themselves had to go through, psychologically and emotionally, in order to carry out their orders. Many other historians have analyzed historical events during WWII while still demonizing the Nazi forces ~ but Browning shows us that the troops really were Ordinary Men, and these men suffered tremendous emotional tolls as a result.

And herein lies the Truth that makes this book so chilling: any one of us could have found ourselves in the very same position, carrying out the very same orders, as the German troops in WWII.

Browning describes the various social conditions and governmental policies that effected how the Nazis were able to so completely dehumanize their enemy and rationalize their own involvement -- in part, because the men were assuaged of their sense of responsibility for their actions, and also in part due to the tremendous number of times that the actions had to be carried out. Repetition bred a sense of normalcy.

In the Afterword, Browning addresses another author who has critiqued Browning's work -- Daniel Jonah Goldhagen -- whose work I feel compelled to mention since it directly relates to this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is studying modern history, sociology / psychology, or WWII, but keep in mind that it is extremely graphic and very, very hard to read -- not because of the language used, but because of the events that Browning so meticulously describes.

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How important stories get to be told the wrong way

Another brick from the the Professors' classroom. I got to page 148, which was quite a feat, believe you me. But important it is. I don't deny that, and true too.

Here's a token of the Professor's clear narrative style: "The portrayal of German-Polish and German-Jewish relations in these testimonies is extraordinarily exculpatory; in contrast, the portrayal of Polish-Jewish relations is extraordinarily damning. If we begin by examining the first two relationships as described by the former police men, we can better see the asymmetry and distortion involved in their account of the third." Of the third! The third what? Do you know what he's taking about anymore?

Please, give me a break, mister. I believe the Lord gives gifts and talents to every one of His creatures. You can pick to be a bullfighter, a fireman, or a professor. But pick right.

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

The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

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