Overview Of Reserve Police Battalion 101 By Christopher Browning

From the years 1942-1943, the world saw the ordinary men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 murder roughly 60% of the Jewish population in Europe. The Nazi’s specifically called a Blitzkrieg against the Jewish community in Poland, leaving only a miniscule amount of Jewish people alive, the majority of which were placed in ghettos. Prior to the Nazi’s rounding up the Jews and forcing them into ghettos, the Nazi’s established the General Government. This establishment took place after the invasion of Poland in 1939 and began with Nazi’s stuffing Jews in rail road cars and dumping the Jews in the General Government, telling them to “get lost”.

As the Nazi’s became more methodical in how they managed the Jews, they established segregated areas

Christopher Browning believes it to be highly unlikely that Nazi officials could have predicted the men of the Reserve Police Battalion would become so equipped to carryout mass genocide do to the fact that the men in the battalion hoped to pursue a career in the Hamburg Police to avoid being drafted into the Army. They were specifically attempting to avoid participating in the atrocities of war. Although the answer may forever be without doubt, Browning argues that the men of the Reserve Police Battalion didn’t want to be rejected, isolated or have the reputation of weak within the battalion. Thus, around 80% of the men successfully carried out their orders, developing brutal tactics and getting more and more comfortable with murder each and every

The study measures the willingness of ordinary individuals to adhere to an authority figure who told them to commit acts on another individual which may conflict with their personal morals. The experiment found that 65% of the individuals completely obeyed the authority figure and made it through to inflict the final shock of 450 volts on another human being for an incorrect answer. These findings shocked me and led me to believe that it would have been entirely possible for a seemingly ordinary person such as myself to commit horrible acts against another person if I was instructed to do so. I sincerely hope that through being educated on such experiments and the holocaust itself, I would now have the strength to stand up for what I morally believe in and refuse any order outside of my