Ordinary Men or Ordinary Killers? Tens of thousands of men, women and children were shot by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass execution of the Jewish race. It is easy to believe that all who were involved in the systematic killing of the Jews were die-hard Nazis. In fact, society tells us to believe that all participants in the Holocaust were Nazi fanatics who would do anything to rid Europe of the racially unfit, but that was not always the case. Christopher Browning, author of “Ordinary Men,” gives readers another possible reality: these men who killed innocent people were not murderers from the beginning, but simply, ordinary men. Throughout his book, Browning illustrates the mass murder and mental breakdowns of the police …show more content…
Browning had the opportunity to “study the interrogations of 210 men from a unit consisting of slightly less than 500” to create an intriguing, yet sometimes grotesque, publication of one of the most horrific incidents in history (Browning, p. xvii). To understand the debate over how these men can turn into killers, it is important to understand what type of men they were. Browning describes the type of men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 as “middle aged family men of working- and lower-middle-class background from the city of Hamburg” (Browning, p. 1). The average age was thirty-nine, while half of them “were between thirty seven and forty-two” (Browning, p. 48). The German army considered these men too old for their needs, so …show more content…
Germany received regions in western Poland and were annexed as incorporated territories. The residents of these territories were forced into a resettlement program where “the ‘racial purification’ of the incorporated territories desired by Hitler and Himmler was never achieved, but hundreds of thousands of people were shoved around like so many pieces on a chessboard in pursuit of their vision of a racially reorganized eastern Europe” (Browning, p. 39). Jews and other “unfits” were sent to various ghettos and death camps all over Europe. However, for Hitler, transferring the Jews would not be enough. The infamous “Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe” involved not simply, relocating them, but murdering them. The police battalion was ordered to only send working aged male Jews to the deportation trains, while “the women, children, and elderly were simply to be shot on the spot (Browning, p. 55). When Major Trapp told his men their vicious task, he allowed them the one chance to be officially reassigned. “They turned in their rifles and were told to await a further assignment from the major” (Browning, p. 57). The men who refused to shoot the Jews were often taunted because of their action, however over time, more and more decided to withdraw from the brutal task. Trapp did not agree with any of the actions that he and his men were forced to complete; he “not only offered a choice
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
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
The crime committed by Bernhard Goetz in 1984, is one that can be interpreted as an inhumane act of violence. On December 22, 1984, the thirty-seven year old Bernhard Goetz boarded a New York City subway. Sitting alone in his seat with his Smith & Wesson revolver, he was approached by four black teenage males (Linder). The four teenagers asked Bernhard Goetz for five dollars. When this happened, Bernhard Goetz felt endangered, and decided to pull out his Smith & Wesson revolver, and begin to shoot the young men. After firing four bullets in the New York City subway, he had injured three of the four young men. When Bernhard Goetz saw Darrell Cabey, the last of the four teenagers cowering on the floor, he said, “you don’t look too ba...
...upying Poland in 1939, the policy of forced emigration became untenable for the Nazi regime. It was simply unrealistic to make more than 3 million Polish Jews emigrate. This led to ambitious Nazi plans for a solution to the ’Jewish Question’.” The Nazis wanted to keep their place to themselves, and they disliked the Jews. They tried moving the Jews to another place, but the amount of time it would take was too long. Therefore, they thought of the Final Solution. They sent Jews to concentration camps, where they killed many Jews. They though that this solution would keep their place to themselves, not to share with any other race. This reminds me of the Rwandan Genocide, because both genocides wanted to remove a specific group or race. In the Holocaust, they wanted to remove all Jews, and in the Rwandan Genocide, the Hutus wanted to wipe the whole Tutsis population.
The arguments of Christopher Browning and Daniel John Goldhagen contrast greatly based on the underlining meaning of the Holocaust to ordinary Germans. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings and deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was "not up to it." Despite this offer, most of the men chose to kill anyway. Browning's traces how these murderers gradually became less "squeamish" about the killing process and delves into explanations of how and why people could behave in such a manner.
At the start of Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror, no one would have been able to foresee what eventually led to the genocide of approximately six million Jews. However, steps can be traced to see how the Holocaust occurred. One of those steps would be the implementation of the ghetto system in Poland. This system allowed for Jews to be placed in overcrowded areas while Nazi officials figured out what to do with them permanently. The ghettos started out as a temporary solution that eventually became a dehumanizing method that allowed mass relocation into overcrowded areas where starvation and privation thrived. Also, Nazi officials allowed for corrupt Jewish governments that created an atmosphere of mistrust within its walls. Together, this allowed
Ordinary Men is the disconcerting examination of how a typical unit of middle-aged reserve policemen became active participants in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Polish Jews.
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.
As the Ghettos (in Poland) were quickly filling in occupants, the Nazi Party started ‘Mobile Killing Squads’, which traveled from one neighborhood to another ripping Jews from their home and killing (using gas vans or guns) them in the street. But, this method proved inefficient with the number of Jewish People who ran, and the number of killers that were being affected by the gases. This then caused the anti-Semitic party to start sending Jews to the six extermination camps throughout Poland. Which according to Paul B. Kern was all a part of the Final Solution.
The major focus of the book focuses on reconstruction of the events this group of men participated in. According to Browning, the men of Police Battalion 101 were just that—ordinary. They were five hundred middle-aged, working-class men of German descent. A majority of these men were neither Nazi party members nor members of the S.S. They were also from Hamburg, which was a town that was one of the least occupied Nazi areas of Germany and, thus, were not as exposed to the Nazi regime. These men were not self-selected to be part of the order police, nor were they specially selected because of violent characteristics. These men were plucked from their normal lives, put into squads, and given the mission to kill Jews because they were the only people available for the task. “Even in the face of death the Jewish mothers did not separate from their children. Thus we tolerated the mothers taking their children to the ma...
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...
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
soldiers during the Jewish Holocaust, knew that the Nazi’s actions were inhumane and cruel; hence, he commanded his soldiers to not confiscate property from the Jews. Although the Nazi soldiers did not take valuables away from the Jews, they still dehumanized and exterminated the Jews, rega...
The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp that carried out Hitler's ‘final solution' in greater numbers than any other.
The main focus of the post war testimony of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, Commandant at Auschwitz from May 1940 until December, 1943, is the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. His signed affidavit had a profound impact at the Post-War trials of Major War Criminals held at Nuremburg from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946. His testimony is a primary source that details and describes his personal account of the timeline, who ordered Auschwitz to become a death camp, and the means used to execute and exterminate millions of Jews. Obtained while tortured nearly to death under British custody, the authenticity and reliability of this document is questioned due to arguable inconsistencies that exist. However, the events sworn to in his testimony have been recounted and corroborated by witnesses and thousands of survivors.