Daniel J. Goldhagen; Christopher R. Browning; Leon Wieseltier (April 8, 1996). "The "Willing Executioners" / "Ordinary Men" Debate" (PDF). Selections from the Symposium. Introduction by Michael Berenbaum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp.1/48 . Retrieved June 15, 2014. Overall, amazingly insightful book. I learned a lot. However, I saw some things I did not care for.

We on the Right tend to see this as a threat always over the horizon when the Left dominates, and that is true enough as a historical matter—the vast majority of such twentieth-century ideological killing was conducted by the Left, in an attempt to reach the Utopia that justified sacrifice, or at least the sacrifice of others. And yes, most significant killing by the Right in the twentieth century (leaving aside the Nazis, who had a great deal of leftist ancestry), was measured and usually proportionate, the result of civil war and the need to eliminate direct and existential threats, as in Chile, for example. But the Right should not be complacent—the same demonic, chthonic drives that spur on the Left recur, in their own fashion, in the Right, if less often. We easily forget the Ustasha in Croatia, for example, and, again, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. The author compares and contrasts the massacres committed by the Policemen to other war crimes committed during that period By US units in the Pacific and even later in Vietnam. Browning mentions that some US units in the Pacific had boasted of taking no prisoners and that there were units that collected ears etc. However, Browning makes the point that at the time these men were under duress due to combat fatigue and they had reacted to it. These policemen, on the other hand, hadn’t heard a shot fired in anger so the policemen could certainly not use this as a mitigating factor. Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Retrieved June 21, 2011. Browning, Christopher R. (1998) [1992]. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, p.171ff. ISBN 978-0060995065The horrifying aspect of this account is how little it took for these men to become transformed psychologically from "normal" people into willing participants. These were not atrocities one has come to expect from war during the heat of battle (Malmedy, My Lai, etc.), rather an institutionalized, bureaucratic government policy. That bureaucracy may be part of the cause. It distances people from their actions. Bureaucrats never saw the hideous result of their actions, seeing only their small paper-shuffling role.

RPB101 deployed on active service as part of the Poland invasion force in September 1939 rounding up polish soldiers and guarding prisoner-of-war camps. In December 1939, some 100 regular career policeman were recalled to form additional police units with RPB101's replacements being middle-aged men. After this, the battalion undertook training and then deployed again to Litzmannstadt (Lodz) in Poland in May 1940 to undertake "resettlement" operations, which it completed in April 1941, returning again to its home area of Hamburg. It then undertook three Jewish deportation operations within the Hamburg area taking these unfortunate people by train to ghettos at Litzmannstadt, Minsk and Riga. Leo Tolstoy once said that “ to understand everything is to forgive everything.” However, this is not always the case, and this book shows it.Since this book was published, millions of Jewish Holocaust survivor testimonies have demonstrated over and over how their non-Jewish neighbors, people with whom they had friendly, warm relationships for generations, turned on them during the Holocaust. Browning doesn't make the case that peer pressure, not antisemitic ideology, turned thousands of ordinary family men into mass murders. For more insight and understanding on this phenomenon, please read: We see a range of justifications for their acts, mainly to do with duty and not letting down comrades. What we do not see is admission of race hate, as the policemens testimony could have lead to serious punishment. The commander of the unit was hanged in Poland in 1947 (ironically for the murder of 86 poles not the 90,000 jews the unit directly or indirectly murdered) Izbica Jewish Cemetery Commemoration Project. Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. Retrieved 12 April 2012. Christopher R. Browning CV" (PDF). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 24, 2020.