The Makers of the Monsters Ordinary Men was written by Christopher R. Browning, this paper will talk about some of the leaders of the Holocaust and how they turned ordinary men into human killing machines. In this book, Browning gives us insight into some of the men who led the worst genocide in human history and how they did it. This paper will go deeper on how Major Wilhelm Trapp, Lieutenant Hienz Buchmann, Lieutenant Hartwig Gnade, and Captain Wolfgang Hoffman’s commanding strategies turn normal men into the worst of murders. Major Wilhelm Trapp was the commander of the first company. Trapp was well liked by his men, and was called Poppa Trapp. The first time Trapp was given orders to execute Jews was at Jozefow, where he made the offer …show more content…
One instance of Gnade’s brutality towards the Jews was when he said “Where are my non-commissioned officers?”. Don't you have clubs yet?” (Gnade, 82). The non-commissioned officers then found clubs and beat the 25 Jews with them. Gnades leadership style did not somehow make his men killers, his style was to force his men to be killers while he led by example and enjoyed doing it. Gnade led the way he wanted to lead and did not let anything stop him from his ways. Captain Wolfgang Hoffman was also a passionate leader to his men, however he would get extremely sick before he could execute his plans. Hoffman was still a leader that his men feared. When Trapp allowed men to opt out of the killings, Hoffman “was furious that one of his men was the first to break the ranks”. Hoffman began to berate Schimke” (Browning, 57). Hoffman was a leader that wanted to lead, and he wanted soldiers who were going to follow his commands. So a lot of his men did just that, if he wanted them to kill Jews, that is what the men did. Later in the war however his men started to get more and more frustrated with Hoffman, and they started to think he was skipping the killings because they were too much for