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
The question of why so many men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 chose to perpetrate violence against Jews has no easy answer. Many factors contributed to it, but none without some kind of qualification. Certainly, when there are divisive racial stereotypes combined with the high negative emotions of a conventional war, normal conventions and rules are shattered. Of particular interest to Browning is the role of wartime brutalization in explaining the behavior of the battalion’s men—especially in the context of a race war (as the Nazi’s war in Europe became in the 1940s) rather than a conventional war.
A race war is a very different kind of war than a conventional war. Conventional wars typically have geographical borders, and Germany’s war in Europe did start out this way. A race war has no borders. It can include people from every nation, even one’s own. This also means that wartime brutalization changes shape. The perpetrators, in a sense, have to turn on people that they are ostensibly supposed to protect. This is why it was so important for the Nazis to merge the image of the Jew into the image of a foreign enemy, and why it was so jarring for the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 to meet Jews from Germany while they were in Poland.
Themes
There are two forms of war crimes that Browning identifies: atrocities committed in the heat of the moment in a frenzy, and those committed through government policy. Both kinds occur within wars, but men who carry out “atrocity by policy” are in a very different state of mind—they are not spur of the moment decisions, but coldly calculated by the perpetrator. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 belong to the second group: aside from the few World War I veterans, the men in this battalion had not been desensitized to violence through prior combat. As soon as they began killing at Józefów, though, they became callous and eventually violence was merely routine for them. In this case, their desensitization is an effect of the men’s behavior, not the cause.
The first kind of atrocity that Browning mentions is often easy to excuse. An example might be if a soldier who has watched close friends die in combat then brutally kills several enemy soldiers on the side of the road later that day. It happens when emotions are high and there’s a clear thirst for revenge. The second kind, however, is not an emotional event and there are two kinds of perpetrators—those who create the policies (Browning calls them “desk murderers”), and those who carry them out. Reserve Police Battalion 101 is the second type of perpetrator. At Józefów, the men didn’t have time or reason to get personally mad at the Jews before executing. They were not in an emotional frenzy, and they had the opportunity to think about what they were doing and whether they wanted to actually do it. This is a major part of why their story is so disturbing.
Themes
War is not just about combat and brutality, though. It’s also an us-versus-them struggle in which a person objectifies their enemy and thus strips them of their humanity. This makes conventional war particularly suitable for governments looking to enact policies that justify and even encourage atrocities. The us-versus-them mentality also makes it easier to create a psychological distance between a perpetrator and their victim, and this is one of the keys to understanding Reserve Police Battalion 101’s behavior. Some people create this distance by limiting their role to that of a bureaucrat, signing papers and giving orders. But this isn’t the case for most of the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101: they did not do their jobs behind a desk; they were the actual shooters.
Conformity plays a major role in why so many men in the battalion chose to go along with so many executions. To not contribute to the violence was to separate from the group, and that is no easy task in a wartime situation in which every man relies on his comrades and knows they’re looking out for him as well. Within the battalion, all the men become an “us,” and all the people they’re ordered to shoot become a “them” or an “other.” Still, their job is arguably harder because they can’t put physical distance between themselves and the results of their actions. To them, their victims are not just numbers on a printed page, but actual people whom they personally shoot. However, as seen in the battalion’s experience and transformation, even this loses meaning over so many hours or even days of seemingly nonstop killing.
Themes
The division of labor in several of the bigger mass shootings is important to note. While the men nearly always provided the cordon and helped drive the Jews, at the biggest mass executions the men had help from the Hiwis or other units, which meant that others typically did most of the shooting (as at Łomazy). Some of the men did still shoot, but overall, the division of labor seemed to also create a notable sense of detachment from the killing process.
In the men’s minds, if they are not the ones doing the actual killing then they are not responsible and should not feel guilty. However, they are still complicit. They enable others to kill innocent people and facilitate that killing by preventing the victims from escaping. This also holds true for the deportations—the men aren’t killing the Jews themselves, but even they know they are sending the Jews to their deaths by putting them on trains to Treblinka’s gas chambers. During deportations, the men show little mercy to those who try to escape, shooting at them as they run and sending men to hunt the Jews down if the shooters miss.
Themes
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One question Browning has is whether the policemen in the battalion were specially selected to help implement the Final Solution. He concludes that this is almost definitely not the case; in fact, the middle-aged, working class men from Hamburg are probably the opposite of who should have been specially selected for the task at hand. Nor are the officers the type of men one might identify as ruthless killing machines. Trapp has a reputation for being too sentimental and Buchmann is known to be against violence. Even the younger officers, Wohlauf and Hoffmann, have less than impressive records. The one surprising officer is Gnade, who is initially disgusted with violence and yet he becomes the most ruthless officer in the battalion. It seems like the most reasonable conclusion to reach is that the men in the battalion weren’t specially selected to shoot Jews in Lublin.
Contrary to what some think, the Final Solution wasn’t why the Germans went to war. In fact, the idea was first broached in the early 1940s, particularly in the parts of Russia that Germany was occupying. More formal talks about implementing it in other parts of Europe didn’t start until 1942, shortly before Reserve Police Battalion 101 was sent to Poland. Still, police battalions were never meant to carry out mass executions, they were meant to act like a regular police force and help keep order. For this reason, choosing men like Trapp makes sense—he is supposed to keep order, and his moral compass would help him do that effectively and fairly. In other words, these men were specially selected, just not for the purpose of committing mass executions.
Themes
If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were not specially selected by military leadership, they may have “self-selected” themselves by joining a potentially murderous police force. Numerous studies of Nazi killers focus on the possibility of self-selection to the Nazis or SS by naturally violent people. These studies consider possible psychological factors and situational or environmental influences that might explain why seemingly ordinary people are drawn to such violent groups. One researcher proposes the possibility of a “sleeper,” or certain personality characteristics in violence-prone people that remain latent but activate under the right conditions. The rise of the Nazis might have activated these qualities in people who then sought membership. Another researcher says the “sleeper” is so common that most people can become violent under the right conditions. Yet another researcher says the real “sleeper” is someone who resists authority to maintain moral autonomy.
This theory of self-selection is somewhat problematic for the case of this battalion, primarily because, as Browning has stated, a large percentage of the men were drafted and therefore didn’t choose to join. Still others did choose to join, but they did this to avoid violence (Order Police were supposed to be safe from conscription into the army). Browning highlights three different kinds of “sleepers” and they each do seem to be present in the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101. Wohlauf, for example, joined the Nazi Party pretty early on, and in Poland he seemed to revel in the violence. He even brought his new wife to witness some of it with him. He is probably a good example of the first type of “sleeper” Browning mentions. Most of the rest of the men seem to fall into the second definition. They aren’t particularly violent, but they’re capable of becoming so when the conditions are right. However, because they’re not prone to violence, they don’t get as much pleasure out of seeing or committing it as men like Wohlauf. Schimke falls into the final category. He resists the orders Trapp gives him and maintains moral autonomy throughout their time in Poland (at least as far as Browning has been able to determine).
Themes
Still other researchers emphasize the importance of situational factors and point to the infamous Stanford prison experiment led by Philip Zimbardo. After screening out people with authoritarian personalities, Zimbardo randomly divided participants into guards and prisoners and placed them in a fake prison. Violence was prohibited, but within six days, the guards began sadistically dehumanizing and humiliating the prisoners. The part of this study that is most relevant to the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 is the spectrum of behavior that emerged in the guards: about a third became cruel and tough, a slightly bigger group was tough but not cruel, and only two (less that 20 percent) tried to help the prisoners.
The Zimbardo experiment questions what freedom of choice, habituation to violence, pressure to conform have to do with perpetrating violence. This makes it a particularly useful study in trying to explain the transformation that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 underwent in Poland. In both the study and in the battalion, most individuals chose to do whatever they saw the majority doing, even if they were less than enthusiastic about it. This is perhaps why so many men in the battalion went through with the executions—the majority of people were doing it and it was easier to join them than go against them. Only people who are very secure in themselves can go against what the majority is doing (like Schimke).
Themes
One more factor regarding self-selection must be considered here: most men did not choose to become Order Police during wartime. They were conscripted or joined before the war because they wanted to pursue a career in the metropolitan police or even avoid being drafted into the army. Given this, it’s not likely that self-selection by latently violence-prone people can explain why most of the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 so willingly engaged in violent behavior. Additionally, careerism can’t explain everyone’s willingness to shoot—a lot of men weren’t career policemen nor did they have an interest in becoming so. On the other hand, some men did want to pursue lifelong careers in the police, and so ambition likely played an important role for them.
Because most of the men were either conscripted, joined the Order Police to pursue a lifelong police career, or signed up to avoid military duty, it is unlikely that people with latent violent tendencies were drawn to the group because they wanted to engage in violent actions. Browning’s explanation here is a good example of how difficult it is to assign one factor to explain the entire battalion’s behavior. Although Browning is trying to discuss an entire battalion, the reader must remember that the battalion is still made up entirely of individuals. What explains the motives of one likely won’t explain the motives of another. This is why using careerism to explain the motives of the whole group won’t work—undoubtedly some of the career policemen did see participation as a possible in-road to a promotion back home. However, not all the men were career policemen. Buchmann, for example, owned a family lumber business before the war.
Themes
Of course, one common justification that the men gave for their decision to shoot is that they didn’t dare disobey orders—they didn’t have a choice, they had to follow orders or they (and even their families) might be executed or sent to concentration camps. Because of this, they claimed that they can’t be held accountable for their actions. There is one major problem with this argument: over the past 45 years, nobody in any of the hundreds of trials after the war has been able to find a single example of someone who was seriously punished for not killing an unarmed civilian. Another argument is that the men didn’t know they wouldn’t face deadly consequences, especially when NCOs like Hoppner insulted nonshooters. Even this doesn’t hold true for Reserve Police Battalion 101—from the beginning, Trapp protected from punishment those who didn’t want to shoot.
Most people take for granted that all orders delivered during wartime must be obeyed. However, this isn’t necessarily true. Even today, there are laws that allow a soldier or some other officer who feels that their commander is telling them to do something criminal to refuse orders (although they might have to justify this to higher authorities who will determine if they were justified in refusing or not). In this battalion’s case, there is no justifiable reason for any of them to believe they’d be punished. Trapp gave them the freedom of choice, and even after that he protected those who chose not to follow orders to shoot. For this reason, all of the men in the battalion should be held accountable for their actions.
Themes
It is true that even the men who vocally opposed the violence (like Buchmann) still participated in other Jewish actions, such as roundups. But even then, the men were free to choose whether to shoot or not. Numerous men from the battalion report choosing not to shoot babies or others during the roundups without being punished. This raises the question of whether simple obedience to authority explains the men’s violent behavior. Citing experiments where scientists made average people believe that they were delivering increasingly painful shocks to another person, Browning addresses this question. The experimental results varied based on conditions; more people stopped the shocks if they could see or hear the actor pretending to be hurt than if they couldn’t.
Closely tied with the idea that the men must follow orders is that they must obey authority. The general belief behind this is that people are socialized to obey authority from the time they are children, and this makes it very hard to disobey authority as an adult. People are also supposed to trust that authorities know what they are doing and have a good reason for it. This would help explain why the men in the battalion were willing to do as their commanders said even though the men themselves frequently described the orders as repugnant.
Themes
Most people in these experiments did not obey orders if a non-authority figure delivered them, many stopped complying if they saw and heard that the person receiving shocks was in pain, and if the subject was part of a group and most of that group decided to refuse, then the subject would also refuse about 90 percent of the time. Furthermore, when people were given the freedom to choose the level of electrical shock, then most consistently chose the lowest level. In Stanley Milgram’s experiment of this kind, most people obeyed orders even when the person receiving the shocks was obviously in pain. Milgram largely attributes this to socialization, which teaches people from a young age to defer to authority. Interestingly, the subjects also didn’t feel personally responsible for their actions because someone else ordered them.
Milgram makes an interesting discovery: when the authority figure is not around, people are less likely to hurt the person they’re supposed to be shocking. This can explain why some of the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 chose not to shoot or even let Jews escape during the “Jew hunts.” Without authority figures nearby, they feel freer to make their own choices. This also explains why some people tried to make themselves look busy during shootings or ghetto clearings. Like the people in Milgram’s experiment, they made it look like they were doing what they should while still trying not to cause harm.
Themes
However, there are numerous differences between these experiments and the experiences of Reserve Police Battalion 101: the battalion was operating under a dictatorial regime, and their victims were not being shocked but outright killed. Still, some of Milgram’s insights seem to be confirmed in some of the men’s testimonies. Trapp had middling authority, but he would invoke authorities higher on the chain of command. This raises the question whether the men who followed the orders did so in response to Trapp’s personal authority or the higher authorities he invoked. Milgram notes that most people explain their behavior by saying they are obeying an authority rather than conforming to peers. The policemen, on the contrary, largely say they were driven by the desire for conformity and concerns over how their peers would view them, not authority.
When the men decided to obey Trapp, they were likely obeying not Trapp himself, but the chain of command. This seems to confirm Milgram’s belief that the stronger an authority is, the more likely people are to respect it. However, the men themselves seem to believe that they succumbed to peer pressure. This isn’t to say they had no respect for authority, just that their immediate concern was more with their social standing than showing deference to authority. Part of this might be explained by the fact that their authority figure gave them the choice not to obey him. Having gotten permission not to follow authority, the strongest remaining influence over the men is the expectations of their peers.
Themes
It is quite probable that a combination of desire for conformity and respect for authority plays an important role in the men choosing to shoot. One thing Browning questions that these experiments don’t really touch on is the role of indoctrination: were the men barraged by propaganda to the point where they could no longer think or act independently? Namely, were the Jews so heavily devalued in this indoctrination that the men felt justified in killing them? Himmler was a fan of propaganda because he wanted his men to be both good soldiers and warriors for Nazi ideology. To this end, Himmler supported indoctrination efforts in the police. Part of basic Order Police training included ideological training, part of which entailed reading pamphlets about German superiority and Jewish inferiority.
Himmler’s propaganda is notorious today for how effective it was in shaping the average person’s mind and beliefs about Jews and other “undesirable” people (Gypsies, gay people, people with mental illnesses, and so on). Himmler used pamphlets, posters, newspaper ads, and even the radio. People were surrounded by these messages for years. The question here is whether the propaganda was actually explicitly supportive of killing the Jews and, if it was, whether the men were so vulnerable and suggestive that they would internalize that message.
Themes
Ideological training was an ongoing part of being in the Order Police, including weekly and monthly sessions explaining Nazi ideology. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 undoubtedly complied with these trainings (Wohlauf and Hoffmann were even formally recognized for their skill in ideological training). In exploring some of the ideological educational materials they would have used, however, Browning discovers that, while the material is racist, relatively little space is given to explicitly anti-Semitic sentiment. Furthermore, the pamphlets are kind of boring and would likely have sent the readers to sleep. Even in material about Hitler’s vision of a judenfrei Europe, the scant attention paid directly to the reserve police seems to assume they’re doing nothing important to further Hitler’s ambitions. It’s unlikely that Reserve Police Battalion 101 would have found the material particularly inspiring.
The ongoing ideological training the men underwent is important because it meant they were openly encouraged to embrace Nazi ideology. However, this is where the men’s ages become important. These are not young and impressionable men; they are middle-aged men with families and careers. They are settled in their ways and have been for a long time, so it’s questionable whether the boring pamphlets and long sessions really left a noticeable impact, although they might have left a subconscious one. Browning emphasizes that the parts of the propaganda material that paid attention to the Order Police portrayed them as relatively useless. This actually reinforces Browning’s earlier conclusion that the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 were not specially selected to kill Jews, nor were Order Police supposed to play such a vital role in carrying out the Final Solution. Still, this propaganda played an important role in transforming what began as a geopolitical war into a race war characterized by the slaughter of the Jewish people.
Themes
Another series of pamphlets used in the ideological education of Order Police dealt with the importance of racial purity, German superiority, and Jewish inferiority. One pamphlet implies that only through the destruction of the Jews can Europe end the race struggle and bring peace. Still, neither of these pamphlets end with a specific call to kill the Jews—instead, they call for people give birth to more pure Germans. It is particularly important to note that the most detailed pamphlet didn’t come out until 1943 (after Reserve Police Battalion 101 committed most of their mass murders) and the other one was meant more for young men who just started their families, not middle-aged fathers. Furthermore, the policemen were older and developed their sense of morality before the rise of the Nazis, making them less susceptible to their propaganda.
Thanks to the pamphlets, the men were aware of the Nazis’ racism and possibly even their plan to kill the Jews, but interestingly the propaganda doesn’t specifically call on average people (like the Order Police) to participate in this. This, again, reinforces the assertion that the Order Police were not meant to be used as executioners in Poland. Furthermore, wasn’t around for most of the battalion’s formative years. Therefore, it could not have been a motivating factor in the men’s decision to participate in the executions of thousands of Jews throughout 1942. The men’s ages are important because they did not grow up in a world surrounded by Nazi propaganda that would shape their early beliefs about race.
Themes
While the men may have been influenced to believe in the superiority of the German race, even the pamphlets that deal with the necessity of a judenfrei Europe don’t actually urge direct participation in killing the Jews. Order Police pamphlets do urge the men to be prepared to kill resistance fighters, but not unarmed Jewish women and children. In Russia, Jews were killed as “suspects,” but there was no similar situation in Poland until the judenjagd. Another point worth noting is that groups who were sent abroad specifically to carry out mass murders were trained and prepared for it beforehand; Reserve Police Battalion 101 was not. This supports Browning’s conclusion that, while the men were surrounded by propaganda that might have led them to see Germans as racially superior and Jews as the “other,” it did not specifically prepare them to kill Jews.
The pamphlets sort of prepare soldiers for the deaths of Jews, but not for them to kill Jewish people themselves. The pamphlets talk about destruction and the necessity for it, but they don’t call for the average reader to start participating in this destruction. This plays an important role in why so many people, the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 included, weren’t as shocked and horrified by the systematic murder of Jews in the streets as they might have been otherwise. The propaganda effectively made these murders seem like a necessity. Choosing to round up Jews as “suspects” subtly conveys the idea that Jews are criminals and therefore any violence used against them is justifiable. However, this isn’t always the case for the men in Poland—they’re told to kill Jews just because they’re Jewish, not because they’ve committed any crime.
Themes
The next factor that possibly explains the men’s behavior is conformity. Between 80 to 90 percent of Reserve Police Battalion 101 chose to shoot even though they were reportedly horrified about the task when Trapp first ordered it. Stepping out would be shockingly nonconformist behavior; for most men, it was simply easier to shoot than do that. Furthermore, the men knew that their battalion would have to shoot even if they themselves chose not to, so stepping out would create an additional burden for their comrades. This might lead to ostracization, leaving people with nowhere to turn for support. Stepping out also might be seen as a moral reproach, though most nonshooters insisted to their comrades that they were “too weak” not “too good” to kill. Most men believed it was better to at least try to kill before backing out than not to try at all.
Even though one of Browning’s primary focuses in this book is the role of choice—that it was always a choice, the men could always have said no—it’s important to remember that saying no was never that simple. It’s not just saying no to killing, it’s saying no to one’s comrades and commander, and separating one’s self from them. Browning also makes a good point here about how others might perceive the minority’s decision not to shoot; namely, that they might perceive some kind of moral rebuke. This is why those who don’t shoot try to convince the majority that they are actually the ones in the wrong (they say they’re “too weak”). This is the minority’s attempt to pacify their comrades and keep the peace as much as possible.
Themes
Returning to the “mutually intensifying effects” of racism, war, and constant propaganda, Browning addresses the pervasive belief at that time that Jews were inferior to Germans. This arguably made it easier for the men to conform to the battalion’s norms, including violence and murder. Years of anti-Semitic propaganda combined with decades of German nationalism also made it all too easy to merge the image of the Jew with the image of Germany’s enemies. While the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 probably did not embrace Nazi ideology entirely, they likely did embrace the image of Germans as superior. Ultimately, World War II made it all too easy for the Nazis to wage a race war.
German nationalism did not start with the rise of the Nazis. For well over a century, a lot of Germans dreamed of a large German state, but creating it would require war because Germans wanted to control more territory and needed to take it from others. This, of course, played an extremely important role in Hitler’s decision to invade neighboring countries. It also made it very easy to convince 20th-century Germans to believe they were racially superior, especially to the Jews. One thing Browning doesn’t touch on here is that there is a long history of anti-Semitism in Europe, as well. The Nazis essentially had centuries of racist beliefs about Jewish people that made it relatively easy to transform the geopolitical war for territory that Germany had wanted for over a century into a race war, the victims of which had been looked down on for centuries.
Themes
Another writer, Primo Levi, developed a concept of a “gray zone” in the Holocaust, which interests Browning. People in the “gray zone” include Jewish victims who became collaborators, such as the Jews selected in concentration or extermination camps to help victimize other Jews. According to Browning, although the concept of a gray zone can apply to perpetrators as well, one must remember that the two situations are not the same: perpetrators never risk becoming victims, even though some victims become perpetrators. The range of choice is very different. Reserve Police Battalion 101 is a good example of gray zone perpetrators: men who are initially horrified become willing perpetrators with time, including those like Buchmann who tried to avoid any involvement in violent actions but participated when authorities demanded it. Another example is Trapp, who sent his men to kill the Jews while he himself was overcome by tears.
In Levi’s “gray zone” (where the way men act outwardly does not reflect their true thoughts, feelings, or impulses) perpetrators have much more freedom to choose what role they play in a war. If they get uncomfortably close to getting caught and punished for helping the victims, they can return to the safety of simply being a perpetrator. Victims, on the other hand, are trying to escape their victimhood. They have to play by the perpetrator’s rules or else they risk being victimized even further.
Themes
Addressing the reader, Browning rhetorically asks what one is supposed to take away from the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101. He describes experiencing a sense of unease resulting from this story about men who committed terrible deeds even though they did not have to. They can’t even be absolved by the claim that anyone in the same position would do the same—the numerous nonshooters in the battalion proves that. However, the battalion’s collective behavior has some bleak implications. The factors that contributed to their choice to commit violence—racism, war mentality, respect for authority, desire for conformity, peer pressure, and the way bureaucratization reduces one’s sense of personal responsibility in implementing policies—can and do exist everywhere. This leads to the ultimate question: if these men could become killers under these common circumstances, what group of people might not?
One of the concerns Browning expressed in the Preface to Ordinary Men is that when researchers and historians focus on understanding the perpetrators of the Jewish genocide during World War II, that understanding might breed sympathy which might breed forgiveness. In researching and writing this book, however, what Browning learns is that the men don’t necessarily deserve forgiveness. They were given the freedom to choose, and they chose to kill innocent people. They truly were ordinary men, and the factors that contributed to transforming them into killers are uncomfortably common things that most people have experienced to some degree. Browning’s question at the end is meant to challenge the reader and the general belief that only exceptionally evil people could have committed such violent atrocities during the Holocaust.
Themes
