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Summary Of Ordinary Men By Christopher Browning

974 Words4 Pages

James Wray
Euro History
March 28th, 2016.
Ordinary men by Christopher Browning.
In this book ordinary men, Christopher Browning is an American writer and historian. The book is an analysis of police battalion 101, a study of German Ordnungspolizei (order police in German) reverse unit 101, which used to commit massacres and round ups of Jews deportations to the Nazi concentration death camps in the so called German occupied Poland (1942). Conclusion of the book is the argument of whether the men of unit 101 killed out of basic obedience to authority and or being forced, basically peer pressure. Not blood lust or hatred. Fife hundred men participated in the murdering of roughly over eighty thousand Jewish Civilians. Browning has interest in …show more content…

The Nazi Executioners were not raised in the Nazi-era, for the most part. They were not selected by their brutal personalities or determination to kill, they were offered a chance to avoid taking part in this, but here comes the argument… Walking away from it could not possibly be that easy in those times. They did not wish to alienate themselves from their comrades in a foreign land. Major Wilhelm Trapp ordered on July 13, 1942, then first massacre in Poland, in a town called Jozefow. In the first Chapter a questions is set up in which Browning talks about in the next couple chapters: “How did a battalion of middle-aged reserve policemen find themselves facing the task of shooting some 1,500 Jews in the Polish Village of Josefow in the summer of 1942?” (Browning, 3). Chapters seven through talk about Battalion 101 physical actions as part of the Final Solution in Poland. The ignition to mass was the Massacre of Jozefow in July. Males were sent to Labor camps to work and women, elderly men and Children were set to be Killed immediately. Major Trapp did not like this, so he told his men …show more content…

What could have ever made the German people who are known as normal day to day non brutal human being do such a thing. This being said it is even more questionable due to the fact nothing like this had even occurred before. Finality was not Christopher Browning’s goal, he does not rely solely on one explanation for his Thesis. In all, 210 members of Battalion were interrogated between 1962-67 (Browning, 145). These men knew that they could have charges filed against them regardless their age, therefore their interrogations may not be one hundred percent accurate if you know what I mean… though memory is also a big factor. Battalion is an extremely interesting thing due to the fact its members were given the choice to either take part in the mass killings, or to not take place in the mass killings, this is said but nobody or at least most people would turn that down.. Browning argues that there were more factors. Men who took part in the mass killings stated that they were physically sickened by their actions in the village of Jozefow. The event of killing thousands of people was certainly not easy, it messed with the shooters minds, this

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