Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ordinary Men, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom of Choice
Peer Pressure, Conformity, and Acceptance
Normalization of Violence
Nationalism, War, and Ethnic Cleansing
Summary
Analysis
As Germany begins suffering more losses in the war, the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 find themselves engaging more and more with Polish resistance groups and enemy soldiers. Hagen is accidentally killed by police fire during a judenjagd in 1943; in the final year of the war Gnade, Hoppner, and Peters die in action, and Drucker is injured and sent back to Germany. Trapp also returns to Germany in 1944. Many men go back to their prewar jobs. Hoffmann, Wohlauf, and quite a few other men, for instance, continue their career as policemen.
Many men chose to join the police to avoid being drafted into the army—they didn’t want to go to war. It’s ironic, then, that in the end, the police battalion is called upon to take up military duties by fighting resistance fighters and soldiers. As Browning mentions, a lot of the men go back to their old careers and their old lives, but one must question how they reconcile their actions in Poland with the roles they take up back in Germany.
Themes
Ironically, it’s not the hardcore, violent SS men from Reserve Police Battalion 101 that have the most postwar consequences to face, but Trapp, Buchmann, and Kammer. The three men are extradited to Poland in 1947, and in 1948 they are tried for killing 78 Poles in Talcyn, not for their actions against the Jews. Trapp is executed, Buchmann is sentenced to eight years, and Kammer is sentenced to three years.
Although Kammer did berate men who didn’t want to shoot, he still honored their choices. Trapp hated violence (at least at first) and was very accommodating to those who had a similar aversion and didn’t want to shoot. Buchmann hated and refused to participate in violence from the start, although he did lead a mass execution when Security Police ordered him to. In other words, two of the men who were the least enthusiastic about murder and who protected those who didn’t want to kill anyone from punishment are the men who are held responsible for it. Notably, it’s not the deaths of thousands of Jews, but the execution of 78 Poles that the men are punished for. This shows that, even after the war, non-Jewish lives are considered more important than Jewish ones. This is a harsh reminder that anti-Semitism didn’t end with the war, but continued; indeed, it still continues to this day.
Themes
Further judicial investigations of the battalion are not conducted until the 1960s, when a task force with the Central Agency for the State Administrations of Justice stumbles on witness reports of the battalion’s crimes. In 1962 the judicial authorities in Hamburg (where most of the men are still living) begin investigating. Over the next five years, hundreds of former members are interrogated and fourteen men are indicted and sentenced, including Hoffmann (eight years; reduced to four), Wohlauf (eight years), Drucker (eight years; reduced to three and a half), Steinmetz (not included in the verdict due to failing health), and Bentheim (six years). While these sentences might seem inadequate, it must be remembered that this was one of the only trials of any of the Order Police—few investigations lead to indictments and even fewer to convictions. Still, it’s Browning’s hope that the interrogation files will serve history better than they did justice.
Today, we recognize the Holocaust as one of the most tragic events in modern history, and the men who perpetrated it are generally vilified and hated. It seems natural that the men responsible for the Holocaust would all receive heavy penalties, particularly during the Nuremberg Trials (when most high-ranking Nazis were tried in court for war crimes). However, the truth is that most people weren’t punished, or only received a handful of years in prison for their part in killing over 6,000,000 innocent European Jews. In some cases, justice came so late that the men had already lived full lives with families and grandchildren and successful careers. This is what happens for most of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, who, by the time they’re tried in court, are old and have had 20 years to freely enjoy before they’re even faced with the possibility of being punished.
Themes
