After the demise of the Nazi Regime and decades of research and inquiry, sociologists and historians established a multitude of theories in an attempt to rationalize and indeed understand the events that transpired under the Third Reich. Their conclusions covered every aspect of life prior to and during Hitler’s reign, ranging from the hierarchical structure of the regime to the ideological radicalization of troops on the Eastern Front, but few were as poignant as Browning’s Ordinary Men. Browning’s preface spoke volumes about his intentions, as he stated that had he been in the policemen’s’ shoes “I could have been either a killer or an evader… [but] explaining is not excusing.” As the author followed the evolution of mass murder and deportation …show more content…
As Martin Detmold recounts “Jews were shot in such a way that [enabled] newcomers to lie down on corpses piled… high” and that he frequently saw “after a burst had been fired the Jews were only wounded those still living were more or less buried alive.” An undeniable change occurred in these men, as they went from feeling ill and feigning to miss to avoid murdering Jews to becoming “inured to the mass killings”. The author spends his time divided between logistically observing the movements of and series of killings and deportations that the Reserve Battalion takes part in while incorporating testimonies of well over a hundred reservists to show us the horrors they witnessed and took part in. By writing in this two-fold manner, Browning limited the tendency to disassociate one’s self with the men who became “professional killers”. No longer were they blood-thirsty, sadist Aryans but rather men who willfully chose to take part in actions they understood to be wrong, for a multitude of reasons. For every reservist who “unzipped his fly and urinated on [Jewish leaders begging for army protection]” there were men who …show more content…
A whole chapter is, rightfully so, dedicated to the origins of the Reserve Police force in Nazi Germany and later to the makeup of the battalion, but little is said about how these men reacted once the institution that upheld their actions and indeed called for them fell. As the author points out, “Reserve Police Battalion 101 was not sent… to murder Jews because it was composed of men specially selected… [but rather] because it was the only kind of unit available.” Later, a comparison was drawn between Zimbardo’s prison experiment’s guard makeup and that of Battalion 101, with a majority doing the perceived “required” job but not enthusiastically. Even so, many in the battalion “were known to be willing to kill” and volunteered, eager to get their “hands dirty” and turning murder into a competition of sorts, as illustrated by the reproaches between SS officers and the Hiwis whilst both stood in knee deep pools of blood and groundwater from dead and dying Jews. Browning led the audience to believe that the men who took part in a series of mass shootings, systematic killings, deportation to camps, and other acts of brutality were the men they would find running shops and businesses, but unfortunately he fails to explore their lives post World War II. Regardless of what he
...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
This story brings back some harsh truths about warfare, and explains why so many naïve young men joined up, only to suffer deaths well before their time.
The atrocities of war can take an “ordinary man” and turn him into a ruthless killer under the right circumstances. This is exactly what Browning argues happened to the “ordinary Germans” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass murders and deportations during the Final Solution in Poland. Browning argues that a superiority complex was instilled in the German soldiers because of the mass publications of Nazi propaganda and the ideological education provided to German soldiers, both of which were rooted in hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. Browning provides proof of Nazi propaganda and first-hand witness accounts of commanders disobeying orders and excusing reservists from duties to convince the reader that many of the men contributing to the mass
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.
From two different perspectives, Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, and Christopher Browning, a historian of the German perpetrators, have different prospectives of the Germans who were involved in the Holocaust. Wiesel’s Night focuses on the story of an actual survivor and his journey, where as Browning’s Ordinary Men focuses on the German Order Police from judicial interrogations. Both books depict how each party is mentally and physically ruined from the Holocaust and the encounters they endure.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
The main purpose of the book was to emphasize how far fear of Hitler’s power, motivation to create a powerful Germany, and loyalty to the cause took Germany during the Third Reich. During the Third Reich, Germany was able to successfully conquer all of Eastern Europe and many parts of Western Europe, mainly by incentive. Because of the peoples’ desires and aspirations to succeed, civilians and soldiers alike were equally willing to sacrifice luxuries and accept harsh realities for the fate of their country. Without that driving force, the Germans would have given up on Hitler and Nazism, believing their plan of a powerful Germany...
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
The Forgotten Soldier is not a book concerning the tactics and strategy of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Nor does it analyze Nazi ideology and philosophy. Instead, it describes the life of a typical teenage German soldier on the Eastern Front. And through this examined life, the reader receives a first hand account of the atrocious nature of war. Sajer's book portrays the reality of combat in relation to the human physical, psychological, and physiological condition.
... inferior. Auschwitz is the most notorious concentration camp there was. Two things this camp had that others didn’t was the Gas Chambers and Dr. Mengele. His experiments took on a whole new meaning of cruel and the gas chambers were just another way to kill people. This paper gives me a better understanding of Night because sometimes it’s easier to understand what someone has gone through if you know the extent of the situation. Through my research of Auschwitz I found the extent of cruelty surpassed even my imagination. One thing Elie Wiesel said has stuck with me throughout all of my research on Auschwitz “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” (book's introduction xv) It made me realize that we need to remember the Holocaust and the Genocide that took place during this time because letting it happen again is just as bad as forgetting.
A consequence of the Night of Long Knives may be that it was an introduction of terror and dictatorship into mainstream German life. The massacre seemed to further consolidate Hitler’s control of Germany. Hitler’s speech to the Reich Governors before ...
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
I was surprised that the soldiers of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Browning’s book were willing to shoot the amount of unarmed men, women, and children that they did without more men refusing to do so. Even though the Battalion Commander offered a way out by offering no personal consequences for not participating in the shooting, I would have thought the moral conscience of more men would have made them step out of the formation in order not to participate. Browning’s argument that these were ordinary men and that any ordinary man could have participated in murdering thousands of people in such personal way, showed me that the comradeship and unit cohesion of the men in Police Battalion 101 was stronger than the values of the individual