Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

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I found out about Ordinary Men from Jordan Peterson around the time 12 Rules came out. I think he mentioned it repeatedly in a few interviews and it immediately jumped to my TBR though I got to it only now, years later. Leo Tolstoy once said that “ to understand everything is to forgive everything.” However, this is not always the case, and this book shows it. Upon its return to occupied Poland, on 12 June 1942 the Reserve Police Battalion 101 had the following command structure: [1] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah (1996). Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1sted.). Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0679446958. Jerzy Jan Lerski (1996). Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966–1945. Greenwood Publishing. p.642. ISBN 0313260079.

This book suffers from a few significant flaws which I believe demands a re-write of the book - 1) to frame the book for the non-historian and 2) incorporate the studies and arguments which have been presented since the first publication vice having these as addendum. It is imperative that this book be re-written as the information is a critical lesson to humanity and modern societies - the Holocaust was not a unique event in humanity's history. To think it can never happen again in a modern society is hubris of the worst kind. Everyone needs to be aware of not only what happened during the Holocaust, but more importantly why and how it happened - the subject of this book albeit focusing on the study of the Reserve Police Battalions and not the entire nation state. Conflating an answer of how this could happen to "the evil Nazis" is demonstrating an ignorance which will not prevent a re-occurrence of this horror. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939– March 1942 (with contributions by Jürgen Matthäus). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-803-25979-4 OCLC 52838928

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The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940–43. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN 978-0841904033 Future actions were easier to handle in part because the killing grew more routine. Also, the policemen found ways to farm out the killing to others. They recruited Hiwis (foreigners) to do the dirty work. This included Russian prisoners (Trawnikis) who would have starved had they not been given the option to serve the Nazis. Also, the Policemen didn’t mind loading the Jews on railcars so that they could be shipped off to a death camp where others could execute them. This was much more preferable than rounding up families and personally killing them. The worst thing was to have to kill innocent people face-to-face. Before WWII most of them, as the title of the book implies, were just ordinary men. Most of them had families and ordinary occupations.

Even though Browning is writing as a scholar, with the intent of persuading through academic argument, his writing is clear and uncluttered. He approaches the subject with an easy-to-follow framework, providing a balanced look at how the battalion went from routine duties in occupied territories to the violent slaughter of Jewish civilians. Christopher R. Browning". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the original on February 24, 2020. Thus: Whilst they aren't lying as to why they themselves participated or refused, you won't find anything very deep from their motivations, which is left to Browning (and ultimately the reader) to find and expose. You will, however, see signs of cognitive dissonance in some of the policemen's explanations, like the one who managed to tell himself he was doing Jewish children a favour by shooting them because their parents had already died and thus "they'd die anyway." Would I call them Ordinary Men? It doesn't take an extraordinary man to do what they did. Yet, so many have done what they have, not just in Nazi territory, that I don't know what else to call them. I'd say talking about it to call it anything is better than not talking about it. The ordinary men didn't talk about it, not even when they were talking about it. Poliziotti, operai, commercianti, impiegati, artigiani, 'ordinary people', tutti ‘riservisti’, furono chiamati a partecipare, a dare il loro contributo diretto al massacro.

The Battalion members had opportunities, it seems, of not doing at least some of the things they committed. Escaping direct participation in the massacres was possible. Often, at least at the beginning, their refusal would not have to entail any dire consequences. a b Anna Nowak (2014). "Działania eksterminacyjne batalionu policyjnego 101"[Police Battalion 101 extermination actions] (in Polish). Uniwersytet Marii Curie Skłodowskiej. Archived from the original on 20 October 2014. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help) The corollary that one can draw from this micro-historic research is quite scary. Almost any person might under certain circumstances turn into a monster. Peer pressure and natural conformism could negatively influence an individual's personality. In closing, there was an interesting but surprising additional afterword in my audio book. In essence this is for want of a better description, Professor Browning's view and response to a professional spat with Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust where each interpret different aspects of RPB101's sources and seem to have done this for many years since both books were published in the 1990s. The detail, especially around research on what makes "ordinary" men kill like this was interesting but wrapped around the disagreements the two have all felt rather unseemly to me. Overall, amazingly insightful book. I learned a lot. However, I saw some things I did not care for.

It was an interesting book and I learned quite a bit about the apostles and saw them in a new light. However, there were a few things that took away from the content.A fascinating book on the role of ordinary policemen in the holocaust. Based on testimony given in the 1960s the author draws out the way in which these men approached and dealt with the systematic murder of Jews in Poland. They went through their formative period in a pre-Nazi era, came from Hamburg one of the least Nazified cities in Germany, they belonged to social class that had been anti-Nazi, just how could these non-conforming end up killing innocent women, childern and men with little compulasion? Soon after the war ended, Major Wilhelm Trapp was captured by the British authorities and placed at the Neuengamme Internment Camp. After questioning by the Polish Military Mission for the Investigations of War Crimes in October 1946, [51] he was extradited to Poland along with Drewes, Bumann and Kadler. Subsequently, Trapp was charged with war crimes by the Siedlce District Court, sentenced to death on 6 July 1948 and executed on 18 December 1948 along with Gustav Drewes. [1] However, with the onset of the Cold War, West Germany did not pursue any war criminals at all for the next twenty years. [52] [53] In 1964 several men were arrested. For the first time, the involvement of German police from Hamburg in wartime massacres was investigated by the West German prosecutors. In 1968 after a two-year trial 3 men were sentenced to 8years imprisonment, one to 6years, and one to 5years. Six other policemen–all lower ranks–were found guilty but not sentenced. [1] The rest lived their normal lives. [54] Summary of genocidal missions [ edit ] Siedlce) (2014). "The Investigation of and Legal Proceedings against members of Hamburg Police Battalions". Hamburg Police Battalions. The Law. Jewish Siedlce . Retrieved 12 July 2014. Thus: Befehl ist befehl had its limitations, and there were loopholes the size of Goering's paunch to slip through. And they could escape punishment, too, in fact all of them who refused escaped reprisals.