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    Ordinary Men
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    Ordinary Men
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    Ordinary Men
    Ebook378 pages6 hours

    Ordinary Men

    By Christopher R. Browning

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 16, 2013
    ISBN9780062037756
    Unavailable
    Ordinary Men
    Author

    Christopher R. Browning

    Christopher R. Browning is professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He is a contributor to Yad Vashem's official twenty-four-volume history of the Holocaust and the author of two earlier books on the subject.

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    Reviews for Ordinary Men

    4.5/5

    20 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This actions described in this book physically repulsed me more times than once. But it's an important read, especially in this day and age. I wish they made this required reading at high schools and colleges throughout the world. I can't recommend it enough
    • 5/5
      A haunting book that shows the utter evil that humankind will sink to when treating its own species. Wonderfully researched by Browning, this book will send chills down your spine when reading it. Yet another example of the horrors of the Holocaust.
    • 5/5
      If you are interested in the Holocaust, this account from the perspective of those that carried out Hitler's orders is gruesome yet riveting. The first attempt to read this book usually ends in disgust. If you can get through it the stories are astounding and it gives a more complet picture of Hitler's final solution.
    • 5/5
      A very interesting read on how ordinary men can become willing killers if the circumstances are right but that eventual everyone had a choice to comply or object. Some objected, most did not or were indifferent. Highly recommended
    • 4/5
      "Ordinary Men" came on my radar after reading the Wikipedia.org entry on the Belzec concentration camp, a place I'd never heard of, which in turn was surfaced after learning about Jane Yolen's "The Devil's Arithmetic". This book looks at a 400-500 man paramilitary (not active or regular military) unit that assisted in the deaths of thousands. The early-middle and middle-aged Hamburgers are startled by their first murders but then we follow the group as some continue and grow proficient while others try to avoid further killing.Browning does a tremendous job of walking through the history of this unit, based on German government documents and other sources. It's a horrific business as he approaches each massacre or other action in a scholarly, almost antiseptic way. In this way the text is a bit mechanical, but heavily documented and supported with citations. The author walks you through the descent of this group into its significant participation in Hitler's Final Solution.If the idea of reading the historic accounting of these murderers is too much, skip to Chapter 18. Browning looks at the possible reasons that ordinary, non-descript, not terribly partisan individuals could make these choices. He calls on pyschology research done by Milgram and others, looks at Nazi indoctrination, and other variables that might cause people to choose murder. Browning doesn't see any of these variables as exculpatory, but it's interesting to see him draw the threads together and gain the vantage of what being a member of this police unit might have entailed.
    • 4/5
      A very difficuly read, but a very important book. Alex Haslam, one of the psychologists who replicated Zimbardo's Prison Experiment in conjunction with Exeter University and the BBC recommended this when he came to speak to our students. He spoke about how ordinary men can do extraordinarily horrific things when in certain situations. Everything about this book is traumatic - from the photo on the cover to the very last page, but the message is clear - we can't hide from what happened and we should never forget. The book is an intensely detailed account of the men who formed Police Battalion 101 and how they went from mundane tasks to murder in Poland. Browning has undertaken the unenviable meticulous research of hundreds of hours of judicial interviews and transcripts which make up this hugely important document of the holocaust.
    • 5/5
      I read it for my Holocaust class. The main thing I'll take away from the class and this book is that everyone had a choice during the war of race and space 
    • 4/5
      Browning reviewed hundreds of interviews conducted with former members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the 1960s. He used these to explain how "ordinary men" could commit the crimes of the holocaust and what made those men different from us. The disheartening answer is nothing made them different, they're just like us. About 20% of the members took no or little part in the killing, about 20% were glad to take part, and the remaining 60% just went along. A very interesting and informative book and one that I highly recommend.One interesting thing was Browning's inclusion of an afterward in the paperback edition which responded to the publication of Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Goldhagen. Goldhagen's book drew in large part from the same records Browning used but came to vastly different conclusions. Browning used the afterward to refute Goldhagen's conclusions, as well as to defend accusations made against his research by Goldhagen. Goldhagen concluded that ordinary Germans took part in the holocaust because they had historically hated Jews (obviously an oversimplification of his argument). As an aside, I had a military history professor who said that Goldhagen's book proved that even in academia crap can get published.
    • 5/5
      I'd bought this book years ago after it was recommended by a professor in college, but it took me a while to sit down and actually read it. The author attempts to explain how a group of five hundred "ordinary men" from Germany could become cold killers of Jews in Poland. The transformation is chilling. The book starts out with the unit's leader, Major Trapp, tearfully informing his soldiers that they were to undertake a "frightfully unpleasant task," which turns out to be the murder of Jews. And not just any Jews, mind you; the Jews that were mowed down by Police Battalion 101 were often women, children, babies, and the elderly. And then Major Trapp gave them an extraordinary choice: anyone who felt that he was incapable of performing this task should step forward and he would not be required to kill. Only a few took this offer. And though most of the men had a "distaste" for killing, eventually most of them grew immune to it - and some grew to enjoy it a great deal. I think the picture on the cover says it all. The photograph features member of the battalion in Lukow in 1942, as they were liquidating the ghetto there. The entire photo is included in the book; you can see the Jews with their hands up, and yet these policemen are smiling. Wow. In the end, Dr. Browning tries to draw some conclusions from the material presented in the book. It's difficult to explain how such a group of "ordinary men" became killers. He explores different theories; Milgram, Zimbardo, and Steiner are all mentioned. But in the end, there is no real answer, and the book itself ends with a question: "If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?" Indeed.This book isn't for the faint of heart, but it does a good job of drawing on primary and secondary source material to paint a sickening picture of what happened in Poland during the Holocaust. It is difficult subject matter, as it should be. And it will likely leave you with unsettling questions about just how far you would, or could, go in a similar situation. This is an excellent work in the field of Holocaust studies.
    • 5/5
      A modern classic. This book, first published in 1992, is an extremely important study about the Holocaust. Browning describes how a unit of ordinary, middle-aged, conscripted reserve policemen without the special ideological indoctrination of the type received by the members of the SS, became active participants in the murder of several thousands of Polish jews. The book starts by an analysis of the first occurences of Final Solution policies in occupied Russia in 1941, and then describes the actions of the Reserve Battalion 101 in Poland in the fall of 1942 and in 1943. The last two chapters contain extremely insightful and penetrating observations about the processes that could have transformed five hundred ordinary men into a group of mass murderers. In the Afterword to this British edition the author examines the critique the original American edition was subjected to by Daniel Goldhagen in his best-selling book Hitler's Willing Executioners. Goldhagen's biased methodology, lack of consistency, his double standards, and his skewed use of, and sometimes disregard for, the sources, is here brilliantly and devastantingly exposed. This book is a remarkable work of serious scholarship that do help us to understand (in)human behaviour not only in Nazi Germany but also in our own time. Indispensable!
    • 5/5
      In the public discussion, Browning's earlier book was unfortunately overshadowed by Daniel Goldhagen's polemic. This is the vastly superior book (and Browning's reply to Goldhagen, which is added to this edition of the book, is devastating). The easy solution to the world that evil speaks with a German accent is just not true. This makes it all the more important to study the subject why and how men, ordinary or not, go and kill (and torture) their fellow men.Browning shows how this reserve police battalion murdered or deported a shockingly huge number of Jews in a restricted time frame, in the wide plains of Eastern Europe. Only a few refused to participate, some sulked and evaded to kill. Most just followed orders. The shocking revelation is that they were not forced to do so. Those who objected or those who abstained from further killing were left to alone. It was not force that turned them into killers but a combination of an elaborate division of labor, peer pressure (of not letting your fellows down on the "job") and obedience to authority (the Milgram effect). Browning's findings apply equally to My Lai and Abu Ghraib.One of the most disturbing aspect of the book is that those men resumed their police duties after the war and only a few were punished for their deeds. All too often war criminals escape just punishment.An important book, both regarding why men kill and how the holocaust happened.
    • 5/5
      Reviewed May 2006 Wow - very intense book, I only read maybe 6 pages before crying then having nightmares. This book along with “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” is the focus of a paper as well as a quiz for class (I got 100%). the two authors battle back and forth in their respective afterwards. In a nutshell Browning feels that Germans killed because of peer pressure and felf pretty bad about it later. Goldburg feels that Germans killed because they wanted to, were given permission and didn’t feel bad about it later. Both authors agreed that antisemitism played a part. Goldburg feels that it played a much bigger role than Browning does. both men also agreed that ordinary men and women did kill with little encouragement. The debate is healthy, an still waging in the Holocaust field of study and amongst Germans. A good argument can be made for each book. 7-2006
    • 4/5
      Book details atrocities of German police operations in occupied Poland during World War II. Examines the psychology of ordinary middle-aged conscripts thrown into extraordinary situation. The police unit in question at first is appalled by the murders they are being asked to commit of mostly peaceful jewish civilians. With a few notable exceptions all the members of the unit are drawn into these atrocities--some becoming more willing in time and others doing what they can to avoid. Browning sorts through the court records and interviews and tries to explain the varieties of psychologies at work of those who survived the war. One of the main ideas he posits is that people are capable of much more than they may think--and under pressure from cultural and authoriatarian forces are much more easily manipulated. It's an interesting read and Browning keeps it moving along.
    • 5/5
      The ongoing debate that the source material used by Browning is still with us. The issue of how the "ordinary" german, rather than the "Nazi" could transform themselves into mass killers, with out being members of the Nazi party, and therefore already motivated to kill "jews". The fact that ordinary men could and did, lies at the heart of the ongoing debate. Just how German are the killers, just how ordinary. The debate is continued in "The Orgins of the Final Solution".