The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. At the same time, however, the collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications. There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority, and indeed could scarcely function otherwise. Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?” urn:oclc:850510094 Republisher_date 20120306052826 Republisher_operator [email protected];[email protected] Scandate 20120305205827 Scanner scribe10.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final

I must recognise that in the same situation, I could have been either a killer or an evader... What I do not accept, however, are the old clichés that to explain is to excuse, to understand is to forgive. Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving.” Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-12-08 21:32:36 Boxid IA174801 Boxid_2 CH119624 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor The behavior of any human being is, of course, a very complex phenomenon, and the historian who attempts to "explain" it is indulging in a certain arrogance.” Here we come full circle to the mutually intensifying effects of war and racism noted by John Dower, in conjunction with the insidious effects of constant propaganda and indoctrination. Pervasive racism and the resulting exclusion of the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators made it all the easier for the majority of the policemen to conform to the norms of their immediate community (the battalion) and their society at large (Nazi Germany). Here the years of anti-Semitic propaganda (and prior to the Nazi dictatorship, decades of shrill German nationalism) dovetailed with the polarizing effects of war. The dichotomy of racially superior Germans and racially inferior Jews, central to Nazi ideology, could easily merge with the image of a beleaguered Germany surrounded by warring enemies.” Lccn 91050471 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL1566486M Openlibrary_editionof 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. urn:lcp:ordinarymen00chri:epub:698cc73c-7e7b-4556-8b59-030a8c50f612 Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier ordinarymen00chri Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t6446rn1f Isbn 9780060190132 Perpetrators did not become fellow victims (as many of them later claimed to be) in the way some victims became accomplices of the perpetrators. The relationship between perpetrator and victim was not symmetrical. The range of choice each faced was totally different.” What the conservatives conceived of as sufficient measures overlapped with what were for the Nazis scarcely the first steps.”

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final

While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Segmented, routinized, and depersonalized, the job of the bureaucrat or specialist—whether it involved confiscating property, scheduling trains, drafting legislation, sending telegrams, or compiling lists—could be performed without confronting the reality of mass murder.” Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.”14” I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce “ordinary men” to become their “willing executioners.” Major Nagel, was summoned to discuss “a basic Jewish action” scheduled to take place on August 31 and September 1.”

This story of ordinary men is not the story of all men. The reserve policemen faced choices, and most of them committed terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as they did. For even among them, some refused to kill and others stopped killing. Human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter.” Bauman argues that most people “slip” into the roles society provides them, and he is very critical of any implication that “faulty personalities” are the cause of human cruelty. For him the exception—the real “sleeper”—is the rare individual who has the capacity to resist authority and assert moral autonomy but who is seldom aware of this hidden strength until put to the test.” Browning cites the pressure to conform to the group as a major reason that so many men from the battalion chose to shoot—individual men simply didn’t want to others to think of them as cowards. Furthermore, many of them men likely accepted the Nazi notion that Jews were enemies of Germany. Many of the men who opted out of shooting after executing at least one person cited physical revulsion, but Browning believes that there may have been underlying ethical or political opposition that they simply couldn’t articulate. A short time later, however, when Gnade leads his men in another mass execution alongside a unit of Hilfswillige (Hiwis), all of the men choose to shoot at least once. Browning argues that part of the reason for this is likely that Gnade did not explicitly offer to excuse men who didn’t want to shoot (although many men chose to stop early on). Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."— Newsweek

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning Plot Summary | LitCharts

Controlling the manner in which people interpret their world is one way to control behavior, Milgram argues. If they accept authority’s ideology, action follows logically and willingly. Hence “ideological justification is vital in obtaining willing obedience, for it permits the person to see his behavior as serving a desirable end.”29” What, then, is one to conclude? Most of all, one comes away from the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 with great unease. This story of ordinary men is not the story of all men. The reserve policemen faced choices, and most of them committed terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as they did. For even among them, some refused to kill and others stopped killing. Human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter.”