Studium

hroughout the Holocaust there were select groups within the German military that were involved in the mass murder of the Jewish population in Europe. The Einsatzgruppen were waves of ordinary police troops that descended from Germany to vacate and liquidate Jews in order to achieve judenfrei, a Europe free of Jews (183). Christopher Browning’s book Ordinary Men examines one of these ordinary police troops, Police Battalion 101, and explores how the men of Battalion 101 became systematic murders of thousands of Poland’s Jews during the Holocaust.

There are a lot of reasons that are cited as to why the Holocaust took place. Certain circumstances like economic shortfall and the rise of a charismatic dictator are considered important to the history of German involvement in their goal of establishing a racially pure Germany. However, these two circumstances do not go far enough to explain how ordinary men could be turned into brutally effective killing machines that assisted with the “final solution” to the “Jewish question.” Christopher Browning argues that in order to understand how and why ordinary men can transform into murderers, one has to consider a collection of factors. These factors, when appearing together in the right situation, could lead any “ordinary” person to act in ways that would cause great harm to others.

According to Browning, the men of Police Battalion 101 were just that—ordinary. They were five hundred middle-aged, working-class men of German descent. A majority of these men were neither Nazi party members nor members of the S.S. They were also from Hamburg, which was a town that was one of the least occupied Nazi areas of Germany and, thus, were not as exposed to the Nazi regime. These men were not self-selected to be part of the order police, nor were they specially selected because of violent characteristics. These men were plucked from their normal lives and put into squads and given the mission to kill Jews because they were the only people available for the task. Surprisingly, these ordinary men proved to be completely capable of killing tens of thousands of people. In fact, their capacity to murder was so great, they overwhelmingly surpassed the expectations of even the Nazi leaders.

In showing how ordinary men can become killers under certain circumstances, Browning describes a variety of factors attributed to Police Battalion 101’s willingness to participate in the mass murder of Jews. Browning first recognizes that, “War, and especially race war, leads to brutalization, which leads to atrocity” (160). The men of Police Battalion 101 were ordered to exterminate the Jews of Poland, which led to the brutality perpetrated by these men. Once the killing began however, the men became increasingly brutal, and after the horrors of the initial encounter became routine, the killing became easier. Browning points out that although war may lead to brutality, one should not accept this as the only factor as to why ordinary men commit mass murder.

Another atrocity in the brutal context of war is the “atrocity by policy.” Men in the government methodically executed the systematic extermination of the Jews. The orders were strategic, down to pairing off an order policeman and a Jew, with the Jew being shot with the rifle’s bayonets resting on the backbone above the shoulder blades to ensure their immediate death. This systemization led the men in Police Battalion 101 to become increasingly brutal in their tactics, because it made the killing easier. In short, war is the most conducive environment in which government can adopt “atrocity by policy” and get away with it.

Moreover, the men of Police Battalion 101 were doing their duty and obeying authority without a conscious thought of what was right or wrong, which Stanley Milgram (1969) detailed extensively in his book, Obedience to Authority. It was evident that the ordinary policemen had reached an “agentic state,” which is defined by Milgram as the condition a person is in when they are carrying out someone else’s wishes, especially when the orders that are given are contrary to one’s own beliefs. The agentic state can occur when one refuses to think critically for one’s self. The absence of conscious thought and the presence of a legitimate authority lead to obedience, while the acceptance of authority disconnects a person from morality. The men of Police Battalion 101 had obviously not exercised critical thinking when the orders to eradicate a specific group of people were handed down to them. Most of the men rationalized their behavior by thinking that they were just following orders from the Nazi authority. Once the policemen started shooting Jews, killing became so repetitive, and the men became so desensitized that they behaved systematically.

The hierarchical structure of the order police also influenced obedience because these hierarchies have a strict system of authority in which one is taught the order of command in relation to how the system works. For the ordinary policemen, people like Major Trapp, Captain Wohlauf, and Lieutenant Gnade represented legitimate authority figures, and it was the job of Police Battalion 101 to obey their direction because of the hierarchy of the Nazi regime. Max Weber (1922) studied bureaucracy and he believed it existed to complete large and complicated tasks. However, Weber saw the evil inherent in the bureaucratic structure; he recognized that this structure could foster mindless bureaucrats who would do anything they were told. The Nazi order police encountered the “mindless bureaucrat” in officials like Eichmann (see Arendt 1994) who was merely doing his job without critically thinking about the repercussions of his actions. These mindless bureaucrats were merely relaying orders to the order police who had become “agentic” and “mindless” themselves.

In the book, the story of the atrocities are underscored by the Jozefow massacre, where the policemen marched Jews into the forest, had them lie down and shot them point-blank in the back of the neck. During the descent on Lomazy, a group of Jews were rounded up and sent into the forest to dig a mass grave. After the digging had ceased, the rest of the captured Jews were led to the mass grave where their clothes were stripped and their belongings taken from them. It was then, when they were naked and possessionless that the Jews were herded into the grave while officers took shots from all sides. The shootings in late September in Serokomla were also done directly by Battalion 101. Over time, the routine went from mass shootings, which were inefficient, to the deportation of Jews to gas chambers. The gas chambers were the most efficient, because hundreds of Jews could be poisoned with deadly gas at one time and then be fed into the crematoria, where the evidence of the atrocity could be burned away. Even the deportation of the Jews to the gas chambers was an example of efficiency. For example, 120 to 140 Jews were packed in a single train car.

This systematic pattern continues as the book progresses. Each time Battalion 101 has the assignment of resettlement, the process by which they operate becomes a little more organized and refined. The division of labor among the men becomes more fine-tuned, and the specialization of tasks becomes more efficient. The men have experienced shooting so many Jews that they become experts on how to make the killing as indirect and removed as possible, while still remaining efficient. Men are at first in close proximity to their victim, with immediate interaction, but after they become specialized, the men realize that if they just shoot them into mass graves, the Jews become faceless and the men are not as intimately involved with their victims. This allows the men of Battalion 101 to be more efficient killers because the more removed a man was from the killing, the more methodical that man can become when committing murder. The less a man was directly involved with the killing of Jews, the faster the Jews could be killed, therefore killing a larger quantity of Jews overall. In the case of the Holocaust, Police Battalion 101 truly became experts in slaughtering Jews.

Another factor, as pointed out by Browning, that motivated the men in Police Battalion 101, was conformity of the group. First, Stanley Milgram (1969) points out that legitimate authority influences obedience and under group circumstances, the members obey more as a group than as individuals. This can lead to the most serious type of peer and psychological pressure and ultimate conformity within a group. Second, Irving Janis (1982) points out that when in a group, the members may exhibit “groupthink,” which occurs when a group makes a bad decision because the group does not assess the decision critically as well as other alternatives. Browning states that the pressure for conformity was so strong that the basic identification of men in uniform with their comrades and the strong urge not to separate themselves from the group prevented policemen from refusing orders. A driver assigned to take Jews into the forest made only one trip before he asked to be relieved, and the man who took over the truck disdainfully commented that “presumably his nerves were not strong enough” (63). Men in Police Battalion 101 did not want to appear too weak or cowardly and they certainly did not want to be an outsider, so they did not dare lose face in front of their comrades.

Overall, Browning exemplifies how truly ordinary the policemen in Battalion 101 were. Moreover, the book leaves the reader to place him or herself in much the same situation. The book has a resounding negative and ghastly tone, which is continued throughout its entirety. To effectively relay this tone, Browning continuously reiterates the concept of systematic, calculated murder of the Jews in Poland with example after example, town after town, and Jew after Jew. This style sets the reader up to experience a similar feeling of repetition, and by the end of the book, the reader is desensitized just as the ordinary men have become, but on a less severe scale.

I believe that Browning is suggesting in his book Ordinary Men that factors like war and group conformity fostered high levels of obedience to authority, which led to the mass murder of thousands of Jews. Browning also suggests that mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis during World War II was not a once in a lifetime event or situation, and this is why the Holocaust is so dangerous and why the lessons taught by the Holocaust are so important. If the Nazis can create a system of genocide that is so calculated and systematic through the use of killing squads made up of ordinary men, then what is to stop this kind of system from ever occurring again? This concept of the obedience of an entire group of ordinary people without any consideration of morality and without thinking critically is dangerous. If the Holocaust was so easy to execute, this means that millions of ordinary people are capable of murder, even today. Moreover, Browning shows how people are capable of influencing and condoning a group’s action, even if it is as extreme as killing another human being because it is socially accepted to follow the hierarchical structure of an organization.

One thing that I found astonishing about the book was the way in which men in Police Battalion 101 were told that they could be reassigned if they did not wish to take part in the mass shootings. I was previously under the impression that under the Nazi regime fear was one of the main factors in why so many men took part in the extermination of Jews. It was my belief, implicitly touched upon by secondary school teachers over the years, that the Nazi’s rise to power and manipulation of the German population was the way the Third Reich enlisted the help of an entire population in eradicating another. This book depicted an extremely different situation. Major Trapp was documented quite a few times as regretting his duty as an officer to deliver the orders to commit mass murder. He, along with many other order police leaders routinely excused those men who did not want to partake in the killings for whatever reason. Very few times were the leaders documented as being strict or heartless when it came to allowing their men to be reassigned.

In conclusion, I believe that this book was very informative and compelling because it engulfed the reader in the blatant and mindless actions of Police Battalion 101, and it showed a believable depiction of the atrocities of genocide throughout the Holocaust. The book revealed truths that were previously unknown to me, such as these policemen were given many opportunities to get out of killing Jews. However, many did not take the opportunity to walk away and instead committed themselves to becoming specialized experts in the “resettlement” of Jews. Finally, and most important, the book exhibited the “banality of evil” (Arendt 1994) in which normal everyday people can act in evil ways. Realistically, any ordinary person has the capability to become a calculated and systematic murderer.

Arendt, Hannah. (1964,1994). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin.

Browning, Christopher. (1992). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins.

Janis, Irving. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin College.

Milgram, Stanley. (1969). Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper and Row.

Weber, Max. (1922). Bureaucracy. In Classics of Organization Theory. Edited by Jay M. Shafritz and J. Steven Ott. (2001). New York: Harcourt, Inc.