Rating: 
Summary: Fine Historical Narritive, but Ultimately Fails to Convince
Review: "Ordinary Men" has two distinct parts. The first is a fine historical synthesis of primary documents. Browning follows German Reserve Battalion 101 from their beginnings in Hamburg through their introduction into genocide, to their becoming hardened and seasoned killers. Most of the book is devoted to telling the story of these middle-aged German men, through their own words and documents. This narrative is as disturbing as it is gripping. We follow the men as they commit murder, despite intial misgiving. The final chapter is the most important, as well as the best-known and most often cited, in which Browning tries to explain how and why a group of ordinary citizens became killers. Brownings' explantion, however, is very unconvincing. Browning argues that ultimately it was group pressure and obedience to authority that made the men kill unarmed civilians. Browning uses two famous pychological studies to illustrate his point. First, he notes the Zimbardo study, in which average American men were placed into a mock prison setting, with some becoming prisoners, and some becoming the guards. Things became so brutal that Zimbardo was forced to end the experiment. But the two situations are not analogous. Yes, harsh conditions create harsh behavior, and warfare always produces atrocities. But the brutal treatment of prisoners, and the systematic slaughter of unarmed people are not comparable. One is harsh. The other is murder on a mass-scale. The second experiment is of course the Milgram studies conducted after World War Two. Here again, the experiment and the reality of Reserve Battalion 101 are not analogous. In the Milgram studies, the subjects who "electrocuted" their victims due to obedience to authority did not see or hear what happened, while the German men were literally saturated in the blood of their victims. Part of the reason Browning turns to these explantions is because he mistakenly dismisses anti-Semitism as a cause of the murders. These men had lived in Nazi Germany for 10 years, with its rising tide of anti-Semitism. The fact that they had been socialized earlier in life does not mean they could not become racist, nor does it prove they were not anti-Semitic beforehand. Furthermore, as Browning admits, when these men were interviewed in the early 1960's, West Germany had a law stating that anyone who admits to undertaking violence because of racism was liable to imprisonment. Thus none of the men claimed anti-Semitism as a motive, and we would not expect them to either. We cannot discount racial hatred as a motive, and perhaps it was the primary one. In sum, Browning has made an important contribution to Holocaust literature. He has re-created for us the story of a group of ordinary men's descent into genocidal murder. He has also looked at the Holocaust from a new angle. But his explanation is simply not adequate. No one should think that ordinary Germans were somehow insulated from the racial hatred espoused in Nazi Germany. Nor should we necessarily agree with his closing statement "if the men of reserve battalion could become killers, what group of men could not?" The problem with this statement is that many ordinary citizens would most likely resist the systematic slaughter of innocent people. Does anyone who has read this book really think that they could murder innocent men, women, and children at point-blank range just because they were told to do so? I for one, could not.
Rating: 
Summary: Variables within a Death Squad.
Review: ... Browning offers a good (and possibly the best-so far) historical interpretation of why ordinary men killed one-on-one during the Holocaust. Yet it is incomplete. The motivations of the men who killed without hesitation or reservation needs to be studied, investigated and interpreted. Until then, "Ordinary Men" is a good start. In addition to Browning's "Ordinary Men", one should consider the following: "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, "Masters of Death" by Richard Rhobes, "The Nazi Doctors" by Robert Jay Lifton and finally, "The Quest for the Nazi Personality" edited by Irving B. Weiner for the "Personality and Clinical Psychology Series".
Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant study.
Review: A modern classic. This book, first published in 1992, is an extremely important study about the Holocaust. Browning describes how a unit of ordinary, middle-aged, conscripted reserve policemen without the special ideological indoctrination of the type received by the members of the SS, became active participants in the murder of several thousands of Polish jews. The book starts by an analysis of the first occurences of Final Solution policies in occupied Russia in 1941, and then describes the actions of the Reserve Battalion 101 in Poland in the fall of 1942 and in 1943. The last two chapters contain extremely insightful and penetrating observations about the processes that could have transformed five hundred ordinary men into a group of mass murderers. In the Afterword to this British edition the author examines the critique the original American edition was subjected to by Daniel Goldhagen in his best-selling book "Hitler's Willing Executioners." Goldhagen's biased methodology, lack of consistency, his double standards, and his skewed use of, and sometimes disregard for, the sources, is here brilliantly and devastantingly exposed. This book is a remarkable work of serious scholarship that do help us to understand (in)human behaviour not only in Nazi Germany but also in our own time. Indispensable!
Rating:
Summary: Easy Reading
Review: A thin quick little book to read. Has great insight into a small unit and there activities in Poland. Has a few good maps. No material related to World War 2. This is only about this particular unit and there exploits in occupied Poland. Great cover.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: A well research study, which seeks to raise disturbing questions regarding the actions of men. Should be compulsory reading.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Analysis
Review: Although our world has seen many events occur which defy explanation and simply boggle the mind, thus far none has matched the Holocaust in the intensity and sheer damage that it caused the world and more significantly the Jewish population of Europe. Yet, to this day who should be blamed for the Holocaust has still been an open question, yes it was Hitler's plan and original idea, but was he the only one behind it? All along it was the idea that the Jews had been the downfall of the German empire and something has to be done about them. A large factor in these ideas was the use of Einzatsgruppen and Police detachments behind the Army Front in clearing out and containing the Jewish populations in Ghettos or simply to eliminate them. Who these men were and what they represented is what Christopher R. Browning discusses in his book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland." We are shown what kind of men comprised this unit, Party members, members of the SS, which social class did they come from, working or privileged upper higher classes, and so on. The first killings are examined and how individuals reacted to them. None of the members of Police Battalion 101 had any idea that their first shooting of unarmed Jews was to take place, thus when asked by the commander of the Battalion those who wish to step out can, and they will be assigned other jobs, at first one man stepped out and was immediately berated by his commanding officer. After Trapp (the commander of the battalion) "had taken Schmike (the man who stepped out) under his protection, some ten or twelve other men stepped forward as well. They turned in their rifles and were told to await a further assignment from the major (pg. 57)." Later on even more men would step out or at least be asked to be excused after they had shot five or six people while others simply milled about at different junctures of the area trying to avoid being asked to be part of the shooting squads. No one was punished, which goes to show that the Germans did have a choice in taking part in the Holocaust or being left out. Another large part of the job that Police Battalion 101 did was to have Jews board trains which would take them to concentration or death camps, they would have tens of thousands sent to their death. Eventually as the battalion partook in a larger number of operations to round up and execute Jews they would grow more and more accustomed to it and at times would even joke about it. The last job that the Police Battalion had was to form hunting units to hunt down Jews who had run away and hid in the forests or elsewhere in the country side, these actions would have hundreds of casualties on the Jewish side while rarely would the Germans encounter opposition from Partisan type units. A helping hand was given to the Germans in their executions by groups like Ukrainians and Latvians, they would get thoroughly drunk and start to shoot carelessly and widely usually wounding the Jews and then shooting more and more victims on top of those wounded without administering any 'mercy shots.' Although the Poles were not used in these kinds of units many did help the Germans by showing them where Jews were hiding out, the Germans would write how they often 'betrayed' the Jews to them, whereas I doubt the Poles thought the same way about the Jews. While 'betraying' might be used when talking of a friend or family member, the Poles saw Jews as neither. After we are taken through all the actions of Police Battalion 101 we are presented with the question of what could have made them do something like this? Although some would say it was the battlefield position they found themselves in, this is incorrect. Those who participated saw mostly no battlefield experience, they were mostly older men who would not see service in the German Wehrmacht and were used for rear area security. The book is an excellent introduction and analysis to help us understand why those in the Police Battalion took actions against the Jews, and at the same time see that those who did not want to or could not, for whatever reason, were not punished but adopted for other work.
Rating:
Summary: AN EXTRAORDINARY LOOK AT "ORDINARY MEN"
Review: Although this book was an assigned reading for a college class, its honest portrayal of how regular men can be transformed into compassionless automatons captivated us. While one is usually quick to condemn Hitler's Germany and assume the moral high ground, this book made us stop and wonder what our actions would have been under the same circumstances. The way Browning described the drunken games the battalion would play to alleviate the horror of what they were doing is shocking and yet poignant. The decisions that the men were asked to make are foreign to our society. Nevertheless, every reader can understand the pressures that they faced. It is a story of courage and cowardice, of guilt and amorality; one which the reader is not likely to forget. Browning deftly brings to the surface issues that the reader would not have otherwise considered. It is a rewarding read for the casual reader and the history buff alike.
Rating:
Summary: A Review of Ordinary Men
Review: Based upon court records, Christopher R. Browning's historical account, Ordinary Men, provides a chilling description of how the middle-aged, working-class German men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 become hardened killers while carrying out orders for Hitler's Final Solution in Poland. Throughout the monograph, the reader learns of the desensitization to killing of the majority of the policemen. After some months of killing, for example, the policemen are able to talk with ease about killing women and children. Nevertheless, despite peer pressure, some men resisted killing the Jews and other victims of Nazi cruelty. Browning forces the reader to question any and all preconceived ideas regarding German attitudes toward Jews at this time.
Instead of portraying the policemen as one-dimensional killers, Browning depicts them as ordinary men. He provides the reader with biographical information about the men's families and careers. Browning relates how one policeman remembers watching a Jewish movie theater owner from his hometown executed. Furthermore, the reader discovers that not only twenty percent of the battalion refuses to participate in the killings either before or during the massacres, but also others suffer physical ailments as a result of their revulsion to the killings. For readers who are unaware of the Nazi organization of the military, Browning provides an in-depth look at the history of the Order Police, of which Battalion 101 is a part.
While Browning discusses the political, social, and economic circumstances surrounding the decisions of the policemen, he fails to note if religious convictions played a part in whether the men chose to kill. In addition, the book is written in an extremely matter-of-fact manner, yet Browning does not divulge the names of some policemen in order to protect them.
Despite Browning's failure to cover all aspects of the policemen's decisions, Ordinary Men remains a disturbing yet provocative look at a group of men and their decisions. The reader should be warned, however, that Browning's novel may be difficult for some to read because of the descriptive details of the massacres and the overwhelmingly depressing mood. By the time the 500 men of Police Battalion 101 disbanded in late 1943, "the ultimate body count was at least 83,000 Jews" (142).
Rating:
Summary: Interesting thesis regarding character of the Final Solution
Review: Browning asserts an interesting thesis regarding the Einsatzgruppen; these were the death squads who adminstered conquered lands and carried out the final solution in places where they could or did not ship the jews to camps. He establishes the backround of a particular Police Battalion.
These individuals were not hardened Nazi's nor fanatical SS; nor were they even that keen on gunning down Jews. The argument that Browning makes is that anti-semitism was created in these individuals by killing jews. In order to cope with murdering, they became anti-semetic. When their commander announced their first action, he was in tears and offered an exception to whomever did not want to do this. Soldiers cried, looked the other way when some jews tried to escape, establishing a character that challenges our assumptions.
As time went on, the soldiers became used to this, and would have to joke around with each other while shooting jews. There were some instances of drunken debauchery that will break your heart as well: instances of cruelty that boggles the mind.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Monsters
Review: Browning has written a very important book. He looks at the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg made up of mostly middle-aged men mostly of artisans and working class non-career police reservists. The kind of men that were either too old for normal front-line service and those who had no desire to persue a career in the police outside their role in this reserve unit. Browning uses incredible documentation from postwar German interogations of men of this unit involved in wartime attrocities. He had access to more than 400 testimonies of the over 500 men that made up this unit during the war. As such he is able to analyse the actions and thinking in greater detail than most other German units. He describes the insidious use of even these units as first guards on trains to transport Jews to extermination camps, their eventual use in rounding up Jews in the Polish Ghettos, and their use as actual shootes in the extermination of whole villages. That this unit of 500 men --- made up of police reservists, not trained in combat, and seeminly tangential to entire holocaust programme --- could be directly responsible for the shooting deaths of 38,000 people and the transportion of 100,000s of thousands of others to their deaths, makes depressing reading indeed. Unfortunately, although Browning documents the horror of this representative small unit, he does not really answer his question of how a father with loving kids in Germany, with no combat experience could one day, be ordered to a village in Poland and in the small hours of the morning kill women and children just because they are Jewish. Browning may be begging the question when he says "ordinary men" --- one thing that may have made them far from ordinary was the corroding and infective influence of racialist Nazi claptrap that came to be accepted truth in German society in the years leading up to the war. Browning's book does not go into this question, and it is not covered by the interogators, nor certainly not volunteered by those who were interogated. It is however the central question of how an ordinary husband could walk up to children, women and old men and shoot them on the spot with little remorse or, at best, a casuistic reasoning. It is the central question that needs answering: how much can racialist ideology, condoned and encouraged by society, lead to turning ordinary men into extraordinary monsters. That is the horror of this book and one that one should be encouraged to find out the answer to. * Note this is not a light read. It will turn your stomach at times and wrench your heart.
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