Freedom of Choice
At the center of Ordinary Men is the argument that human beings are responsible for their choices, no matter the circumstance. Historian Christopher Browning comes to this conclusion after examining the testimonies of a group of German soldiers who perpetrated some of the most barbaric violence in the Second World War: the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101. In telling their story, Browning shows how even the most ordinary of men can choose to become…
read analysis of Freedom of Choice
Peer Pressure, Conformity, and Acceptance
In Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, a battalion of middle-aged policemen are ordered to execute all the Jewish women and children living in the village of Józefów, Poland. The leader of the Reserve Police Battalion 101, Major Trapp, gives his men the chance to excuse themselves from participating, and quite a few men decide to abstain from the executions. Still, all told, about 80 percent of the men choose to follow orders from…
read analysis of Peer Pressure, Conformity, and Acceptance
Normalization of Violence
Between July 1942 and the end of World War II, the majority of the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 transformed from benign, well-meaning policemen to brutal killers, starting with the mass execution of Jews in the Polish town of Józefów. At Józefów, the men—and even some of their commanders—were horrified by the order to kill more than a thousand civilians. This battalion was mostly run-of-the-mill, middle-aged men with families—not young, bloodthirsty members of the…
read analysis of Normalization of Violence
Nationalism, War, and Ethnic Cleansing
When Germany sparked the Second World War by invading neighboring countries, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s aims were ostensibly just to regain lost territory and secure additional lands. Soon, though, Hitler and his SS head Heinrich Himmler recognized another possibility for these invasions: they could fuel a race war meant to eliminate European Jews. Hitler insisted that the Germans were a “master race” that was superior to every other race, and that Jewish people posed…
read analysis of Nationalism, War, and Ethnic Cleansing
