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
In Russia in 1941, the Order Police actively participates in the Final Solution for the first time. During preparations for Hitler’s planned invasion of Russia, special units of the SS called the Einsatzgruppen are formed, mostly from members of the Security Police and its corresponding intelligence group—but three companies of an Order Police battalion are distributed through the Einsatzgruppen, as well. After the Russian invasion’s initial success, Hitler announces that Germany will never withdraw from the area, and he says that the best way to “pacify” the newly won territory is to shoot anyone who so much as gives the military a dirty look. In response to Hitler’s statement, Himmler adds thousands more SS and Order Police to the Einsatzgruppen and personally urges them to exterminate Russian Jews.
One of Hitler’s primary motivators in invading Russia was to take over land that could be annexed into Germany to create more room for the German “master race” to spread out. In order to create this new area, Hitler also wanted to clear out all the undesirables that might prevent the area from becoming ethnically pure—namely, the Jews and Communists. Hitler’s comment that it’d be better to shoot anyone who doesn’t like what Germany is doing there is disturbing because he doesn’t even seem to consider simply shipping these people elsewhere or isolating them to a smaller area. This shows Hitler’s willingness to murder civilians on an extremely large scale very early on in the war.
Themes
The actual slaughter of Russian Jews, however, has already begun. Months earlier, in the city of Białystok, a German officer named Major Weis reveals to his men that he has orders that must be passed on verbally: first, that any Communist functionaries are to be denied prisoner of war status and executed; second, that military courts will no longer prosecute German violence against Russian civilians, including violence against entire villages. Weis clarifies that the war is against Jews and Bolsheviks, and, as he understands it, Hitler wants them to destroy the Jews. On June 27, Weis leads his men into the town and what begins as a violent pogrom targeting Jews quickly escalates into the systematic murder of between 2,000 and 2,200 Jewish people.
It is notable that Weis says he must pass on these orders verbally rather than printing orders on paper and mailing them out. This shows an early desire not to leave any hard evidence of orders to use unjustifiable violence against innocent civilians, which also implies a knowledge that what Weis is ordering is both legally and morally wrong. Nazi leaders knew from the beginning that these kinds of actions would incite the rest of the world’s fury, and creating a paper trail would make it easier for the rest of the world to figure out exactly what was happening and take action to stop it. This event also reveals how military leaders began portraying all Jews as enemies of Germany early in the war, which would later help shooters justify killing even unarmed Jewish people.
Themes
The second massacre in Białystok occurs in July and seems to have been instigated by the top members of the SS: Heinrich Himmler, Kurt Daluege, and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. The action is carried out by Police Battalions 316 and 322, and the reports from Battalion 322 miraculously make their way out of the Soviet archives. The men of Police Battalion 322 were urged to be ruthless and to treat the Slavic people as inferiors. Two days after entering Białystok, the men are ordered to search for Bolsheviks and Communists, but apparently they only search the Jewish quarter and the 22 people who are killed are almost exclusively Jewish. That same day, Himmler and Daluege visit and Daluege praises the men for helping “defeat […] the world enemy.” He identifies this enemy as Bolshevism.
Bolshevism is the form of communism established in Russia during the 1910s when the Bolsheviks revolted against the Czar. It was easy for most Germans to accept the Bolsheviks as an enemy, which in turn made it easier to justify killing anyone believed to be a Bolshevik or a Bolshevik supporter. The Nazi commanders cunningly associated Jews with Bolshevism, and they thereby made Jews the enemy, then targeted Jews during actions that were ostensibly supposed to be against Bolsheviks. I
Themes
Two days after Daluege’s speech, a confidential document reveals new orders to execute all Jews between 17 and 45 who have been convicted of plundering. The order acknowledges that the men who carry out these executions might feel down afterwards, and so commanders should distract them by throwing social events. On July 12, all Jewish men fitting into that age group (about 3,000 men) are rounded up, brought to a nearby stadium, and executed over the next two days. Over the next few months, the war diary for Police Battalion 322 shows that they sweep through Eastern Europe, systematically killing dozens if not hundreds of Jews at a time. Soon, Jewish women are included in the mass murders, first in a massacre at the ghetto in Minsk on September 1. In October, 2,208 Jewish men and women from the Mogilev ghetto are executed.
It is ironic that the Nazi commanders passing down these orders show so much concern for the psychological wellbeing of the men doing the shooting, but not the thousands of people that the men are going to systematically execute. It indicates that the commanders are not quite the unfeeling psychopaths people believe them to be—they do have a great deal of humanity, but it is selective and their empathy focuses almost exclusively on Germans. (It’s also possible that this order is more strategic than empathetic—perhaps they simply want morale to be good enough to continue on with the war effort.) Little is known about how the men who actually did the shooting felt about their orders, but the sheer number of victims killed over an extended period shows that they, like the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, grew used to the violence.
Themes
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War diaries from commanders of Police Battalions in other regions of Russia tell a similar story of mass murder and violence. Friedrich Jeckeln, who commanded five battalions, kept a war diary highlighting 17 different mass murder events between August 19 and October 5—between 25 and 15,000 Jews are killed in each recorded event. A postwar judicial interrogation reveals even more mass murders committed that fall, climaxing in the Babi Yar massacre on September 29 and 30; 33,000 Jews were murdered in a ravine over those two days alone. The final shooting this investigation uncovers occurred in January 1942 in Kharkov.
It’s important to note that these mass murders did not happen all at once, but over several months. This means that the violence is not something these men perpetrated just once and could then put out of their minds, but an ongoing ordeal that dominated their lives for a sustained period. Also notable is that there doesn’t seem to be any record of the men being unwilling to commit the murders (or if there is Browning didn’t include it), but presumably they at least got used to it over time.
Themes
The documentation of these events in Southern Russia provides an overview—though one lacking detail—of the role the Order Police played in mass executions of Jews. Documents from Northern Russia, however, provide a more detailed description of a mass execution carried out by members of two companies from Police Battalion 11 along with two companies of Lithuanian auxiliary police. They received orders for two mass murders, one of the Jews living in the village of Smolevichi and the next in a town called Slutsk, near Minsk. The justification for these murders was to deter civilians from helping resistance groups. The events in Slutsk are detailed in a report from the head of the German civil administration—a man named Carl—to his boss.
Once again, the commanders of these units associate their Jewish victims with enemies of Germany, this time by saying that killing Jews will deter the resistance fighters and anyone who might help them undermine the Germans. This implies that killing Jews not only eliminates an enemy of Germany, but deters others from becoming enemies as well.
Themes
On October 27, according to Carl’s report, a lieutenant from Police Battalion 11 announces that the battalion has been ordered to eliminate all Jews in the city over the next two days. After meeting with the battalion commander, Carl believes that he has brokered a deal to spare the Jewish artisans and their families because they are vital to the area’s economy. Nonetheless, the battalion commander defies him; Jews are pulled out of factories and workshops all over town.
Carl makes an interesting choice in how he tries to convince the Police Battalion to spare some of the Jews. He highlights how Jews are useful—they benefit the economy and provide an important service to the non-Jews living there—but doesn’t try to argue against mass murder on the basis of basic humanity. This could reflect Carl’s own belief that Jews are useful tools but not quite human, or it could mean he knew the policemen lacked humanity and wouldn’t be moved by any consideration of the victims’ feelings or pain. The latter possibility seems to be proven true by how brutally the policemen slaughtered and injured the Jews in the town.
Themes
This is, according to Carl’s report, an event characterized by intense brutality. Bodies pile up in the streets, shootings can be heard all over the city, and even non-Jewish people are beaten. As for the mass killing, many people die, but some of the Jews who were shot in the forest climb out of the mass grave and crawl back to the town. Economically, the event is devastating. Many families are destroyed. Carl hopes the police battalion will never return.
The men who carry out this violent action in Slutsk seem to do so in an absolute frenzy—they indiscriminately beat whoever they can get their hands on, they show no concern for moving bodies out of the town, and they clearly put minimal effort into making sure they kill their victims because so many of them come crawling back into town that night after suffering in pain for hours. The cruelty is unimaginable, and it says a lot about how brutal the policemen in this battalion have become during their time in Russia.
Themes
Although there isn’t extensive documentation of police battalions participating in the mass murder of Russian Jews, there is enough evidence to disprove certain claims from Order Police leadership. One disproven claim is that Daluege and Himmler provided the Order Police for guard duty, but never as executioners. The documentation clearly points to the Order Police as direct participants in numerous mass executions throughout the summer and fall of 1941. Moreover, Daluege’s presence at Białystok and Minsk immediately before Order Police carried out mass murders in both cities indicates that he was instigating Order Police involvement in the murders.
Earlier, Browning points out that there was a conscious effort to avoid creating a paper trail by delivering orders orally instead of in print. After the war, the leaders of the Order Police clearly hoped that there’d be either no paper trail or too little of one for prosecutors to use to hold them accountable for their actions during the war. In some cases, there really wasn’t documentation of Nazi war crimes, but in this case, luckily, there is.
Themes
After this period, relatively little is known about Order Police involvement in mass killings, probably because Order Police became less involved. One reason for this is that Order Police duties shifted towards other forms of warfare, while the military began to recruit collaborators from occupied regions to carry out mass killings. Shifting the killing to these collaborators (who formed Order Police auxiliary units) freed the core Order Police battalions from the “psychological burden” of murder—an issue that, at that time, had begun to extend beyond rank-and-file soldiers. A top SS officer who led troops during one of the massacres at Białystok, for instance, developed an “incapacitating illness” having to do with the shootings he led.
Once again German military leadership displays far more concern for their German soldiers and policemen than for anyone else. They select non-Germans to carry out mass killings so their German units won’t be burdened with as many psychological scars. However, for many men, including the SS officer referenced here, it is too late to avoid psychological scarring. Despite the Nazis’ attempts to convince the Germans that the Jews are subhuman creatures who threaten German security, the reality that many of the men face is that they are killing unarmed civilians, many of whom are women and children who remind them of their own wives and children back home (in fact, many men who opt out of participating in the firing squads in Reserve Police Battalion 101 say they can’t go through with killing women and children because they are fathers and find it impossible to hurt children).
Themes
