Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

4/5 ( ratings)

Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.

While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.

Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

Language: English

Pages: 271

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Release: April 06, 1993

ISBN: 0060995068

ISBN 13: 9780060995065

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

4/5 ( ratings)

Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.

While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.

Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

Language: English

Pages: 271

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Release: April 06, 1993

ISBN: 0060995068

ISBN 13: 9780060995065

More books from Christopher R. Browning

The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp

4.1/5 ( ratings)

The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage

4.4/5 ( ratings)

The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland

3.4/5 ( ratings)

Final Solution & German Foreign Office

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe: Volume II

4.5/5 ( ratings)

German Railroads, Jewish Souls: The Reichsbahn, Bureaucracy, and the Final Solution

4.6/5 ( ratings)

Aquellos hombres grises (edición ampliada) (Ensayo histórico)

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe

4.5/5 ( ratings)

Deutsche, Juden, Völkermord. Der Holocaust als Geschichte und Gegenwart

Ordinary Men

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Holocaust Scholarship: Personal Trajectories and Professional Interpretations

Holocaust Scholarship: Personal Trajectories and Professional Interpretations

From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival

Rate this book!

Write a review?