Christopher Browning, in his essay called Police Battalion 101, thought that human beings, for the most part, are followers not leaders. People tend to go with the majority, listen to people with higher power, watch bad things happen without doing anything about it, and stereotype other people. Browning’s thoughts have been supported by many other stories we have read such as, The Third Wave, The Brown Eyed-Blue Eyed Experiment, The David Cash Case, and The Lunch Date.
Police Battalion 101 was ordered to go to Jozefow in 1942. They were ordinary policemen from Hamburg, Germany who became part of a mobile killing squad. They were all given the choice not to participate but very few of them chose to back out. Major Wilhem Trapp was a leader,
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In Police Battalion 101, witnesses who saw Trapp at different times during the day said that he was angry about the orders that were given to him. He said “orders were orders and had to be carried out.” When a leader with higher power than him told him to do something, he felt like it needed to be carried out. It was also said that many people denied having been given the choice not to participate. They blocked out the choice because the orders came from their commander and they didn’t want to disagree. This is also shown in an experiment done by an elementary school teacher, called “The Brown Eyed-Blue Eyed Experiment. In this experiment, students were told by a teacher that students with blue eyes were better/smarter. When the teacher gave them a test the students with blue eyes performed much better. The next day, the teacher told the brown eyed students they were better/smarter. When they took the test they performed better than the students with blue eyes.
People stand by and watch bad things happen but they choose not to get involved. In Police Battalion 101, there were many people in the towns that saw all these terrible things happening but didn’t try to step in and stop them. If a large group were to do something about it, it is possible many lives would have been saved. Similarly, In the David Cash Case, David did not stand up for the little girl who was being raped and murdered. If he were