Christopher R. Browning
Paperback | Pages: 271 pages Rating: 4.09 | 10599 Users | 668 Reviews
Mention About Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
| Title | : | Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland |
| Author | : | Christopher R. Browning |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 271 pages |
| Published | : | April 6th 1993 by Harper Perennial (first published 1992) |
| Categories | : | History. Nonfiction. World War II. Holocaust. War. Psychology |
Narrative Toward Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever. 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. Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.Present Books To Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
| Original Title: | Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland |
| ISBN: | 0060995068 (ISBN13: 9780060995065) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust (1994) |
Rating About Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Ratings: 4.09 From 10599 Users | 668 ReviewsComment On About Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
How did the Holocaust happen? Not the antisemitic ravings of Hitler, or the careerist banality of Eichmann, but the physical labor of liquidating the Jews of Poland. Someone had to round up the Jews in ghettos, herd them onto trains to the death camps, shoot the ones who couldn't walk or evaded. Ordinary Men asks what happens to the people who perpetuate a genocide.The 'someone' in Ordinary Men were the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, about 500 middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg.Of all the books on the reading list for my Ideologies of the Holocaust class, this one is undoubtedly my favorite. It's a must read for anyone intrigued by the Holocaust, especially, in the "ordinary men" who carried out Hitler's orders and committed the infamously heinous crimes.
(... to be updated)The experience of reading this book makes me want to give its 3 stars, but thinking about the effort of the author and all the truth that this book has brought to light as well as the strong case that it made, I decide to give it a 4 (although not sure I want to read it again).The psychological situation of the few good men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 can be well summarize in this excerpt: Many, nonetheless, joined in the mass killing and masked their feelings to avoid
This is one of the essential books of Holocaust literature. When I read it, some years ago now, it changed me. It's about a Reserve Police Battalion in Poland. This was a bunch of middle-aged guys who were unfit for military service, so they were given an easier job, which was to shoot Jewish people and bury them in woods (okay, the last bit could be hard, but generally you could get the Jewish people to do all the digging before you shot them).This was the pre-industrial phase of the Holocaust,
Normally the type of history Id be very interested in reading about. When I read the title and the summary, I was very excited to start the book. It was well-researched. The opinions were well thought out. Historically, it was sound, in my very amateur opinion. However, the writing left much to be desired. Its one thing to write a book thats completely factual and write it in a way that keeps the audience interested. Its another thing to write so poorly that members of the audience who are
How do normal, law abiding people get into performing abnormal acts of extreme violence? This book takes on that question as regards the members of a German Reserve Police Battalion who participated, often directly, in the murder of over 85,000 Jews, Soviets, Poles and other 'undesirables', many of them women and children, during WWII. Unusually well documented, the activities of these several hundred men are traced from month to month both from the written record and from their own testimonies.
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