Christopher Browning uses the alias Lieutenant Kurt Drucker for the commander of the Second Platoon of Police Reserve Battalion 101’s Second Company. At 33 years old, Drucker is one of the youngest commanders in the battalion, although he didn’t join the Nazi party until 1939, which is a bit later than most of the other men who were part of the party. This calls into question whether he joined the party out of ideological conviction or simply a desire to belong to the same party as the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Like Sergeant Steinmetz, Drucker leads shooting squads all day long during the massacre at Józefów, which means he is in extremely close proximity to the actual executions from the beginning. Furthermore, as part of the battalion’s Second Company, Drucker plays an important role in leading men during deportations, ghetto clearings, the judenjagd, and other mass executions. Drucker’s personal feelings about the violence aren’t explicitly described, but there are at least two occasions when Drucker offhandedly orders the executions of Jews whom he and his men personally know, which possibly indicates that he has fewer qualms about violence and murder than other leaders, like Major Trapp and Lieutenant Buchmann. After being interrogated and indicted for war crimes in the 1960s, Drucker is sentenced to eight years in prison, but this is later reduced to three and a half years after a lengthy appeals process. Drucker is one of the relatively few Nazis who were tried and found guilty for his role in the Holocaust, but his moral guilt is beyond doubt because Trapp gave him and the other men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 the option to excuse themselves from committing any violence and he chose to take part in it anyway.
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Lieutenant Kurt Drucker Character Timeline in Ordinary Men
The timeline below shows where the character Lieutenant Kurt Drucker appears in Ordinary Men. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Reserve Police Battalion 101
...civilians: Hartwig Gnade, Paul Brand, Heinz Buchmann, Oscar Peters, Walter Hoppner, Hans Scheer, and Kurt Drucker. Five of them are Nazis, but none belong to the SS. Out of the 32...
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Chapter 7: Initiation to Mass Murder: The Józefów Massacre
...ask him to excuse them and he does. The frequent rotation of shooters in Lieutenant Drucker’s platoon creates so much confusion that some men simply slip off or stay by the...
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Chapter 12: The Deportations Resume
...Jews who miss the deportation train. During the clearing of Międzyrzec, Gnade’s Second Company and Drucker’s Second Platoon join up with some Hiwis to drive the Jews into the main square...
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...make all the Jews fit into the limited number of train cars, so Gnade orders Drucker to shoot the 150 Jews that won’t fit. First Sergeant Ostmann brings the shooters some...
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Chapter 16: Aftermath
...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...
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...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...
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Chapter 17: Germans, Poles, and Jews
...was active in the Nazi Party since his childhood, simply denied agreeing with Nazi ideologies. Drucker, however, admitted that he felt an aversion to the Jews, but not a downright hatred...
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