Rating: 
Summary: A Good Piece
Review: I thought this piece contains some material that should be seen by everyone, but then there was a lot of stuff that could have been left out. It was amazing to see how normal men turn into cold-hearted killing machines. Unfortunately, the book containted too many number and statistics which really took away from it. The book didn't do that well focusing on the main topic either, because it went off on many different tangents. I would recommend this book to be read though, because it is hard to believe that you or I could have a terrible amount of potential to murder people like the men in 101 did, and this book helps to shed light on the dark side of humanity.
Rating: 
Summary: A Necessary Antidote To Goldhagen
Review: I would say to anyone who casually read Goldhagen's book that this is it's far better researched and rational nemesis. It comes to more sound conclusions using more objective evidence. You would do far better to read this.
Rating: 
Summary: An Essential Book for Understanding the Holocaust
Review: If I were given the impossible task of sellecting three essential books to help one understand the holocaust, "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalian 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" would be on the list. If there is any doubt in ones mind that the holocaust did or could occur, or more importantly, be repeated, this book will dispell that doubt. No other book, among the scores I've read on this subject, explains the forces within a fascist state which can turn a civilization in upon itself. The reader will see and understand clearly that the average man can be compelled by the political forces around him to revert to savagery for savagery's sake. If the purpose of civilization is to elevate the human condition...here in these pages you will discover the antithesis of civilization. And you will begin to understand how it could have happened....and how it could happen again.
Rating:
Summary: Unsettling and frightening...
Review: If you still are amazed that the holocaust ever happened, reading this book will help to provide some answers. Some of the details are a bit boring, but the basic purpose for the book is well defined. Frightening to realize that just about "anyone" can be coerced to do "anything."
Rating:
Summary: A must read to view the mindset of the Einsatzgruppen.
Review: In this book Christopher Browning takes the reader along with Reserve Police Battalion 101, as it weaves a path of death and destruction through the Jewish shtetls of rural Poland. Follow these ordinary men as they make a quantum leap from "banality", to mass murder.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Necessary Book
Review: It has been very easier for many of the historians and sociologists in the past 50 years to label those that caused the Holocaust as just evil. Certainly they have tried to find motivations behind the atrocities, but for the most part these character studies or even social discourses have just focused on the Nazi leaders or their cronies. "Ordinary Men" is a bit out of the norm. It is a micro-history of the Final Solution. The author, Christopher Browning, found a Nazi police battalion, stationed in Poland, that was in charge of many of the roundups and executions of Polish Jews. Browning is very careful from the beginning to remind the reader that he intends to understand the "ordinary" men that made-up this battalion, however to understand them does not mean he intends to apologize in any way for their actions. This type of history has been criticized in the past, but for this book the author completes his goal. This book is necessary, because to understand how a group of men could become cold-blooded murderers. This topic of "ethnic cleansing" is still very alive and well and real today. Hopefully if one can understand how men can be indoctrininated and dehumanized enough that it is acceptible to commit these atrocities and exucutions, then hopefully the practice can be recognized early enough to prevent another despot from committing another Holocaust. This book is brief enough to be read very quickly. However I recommend taking your time. The author is very meticulous in his use of primary resources. The main reason he chose this particular battalion was simply that there was so many various sources--from letters and reports to court documents. He finally makes use of several psychologist's views and experiments that seem to prove how this type of indoctrinating can take place. He is able to make his point and give his supporting facts concisely and influentially. The author understands that it is impossible to understand completely the behavior of any human being--in fact he writes that any author who attempts to do so is "indulging in a certain arrogance." In not apologizing for the actions of these men, but still attempting to understand the many of them, he expresses that human responsibility is "ultimately an individual matter." Even under the pressures of career advancement and peer pressure. But he does note in his final line: "if the men of Battalion 101 could become killers under such cicumstances, what group of men cannot?" Indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Not all Germans were alike
Review: No punishment was ever given to anyone who chose not to participate in the mass killings. The question this book attempts to solve is, "Why did Germans who were opposed to killing end up killing?" The book is powerful when describing events and questioning actions, but boring when it is not.
Rating:
Summary: I can not recomend this book enough
Review: One of the things that I remember about this particular dark period of history is what my father used to say about it. He felt, and stated, that the thing that was most upsetting was not what happened. But, that the people who did it, "were just like us."
This book shows us the monsters of the Holocaust were truly just like us. This is a book about being a team player. It is about consensus and doing just a little more for the unit. In other words, it is entirely applicable today.
The moral lesson of this book is clear. Today we are pressured to do things that we know are a little wrong in order to get along. Doing something that is a little wrong is only a matter of degree.
I work in an industry where one of the interview questions is, "are you willing to do things, required of you in this job, that may, or do, violate your own sense of ethics or morality." I work here; so you know how I answered.
This is a very disturbing book if you read it and in any way relate to the many police officers that it is about. These reserve police are a true cross section of society and reflect a culture and value system very similar to our own.
Rating:
Summary: What would YOU have done if you were there?
Review: Professor Browning's book recounts the events and the participation of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 in the extermination of the Polish Jewry. The Battalion was composed mostly of middle-aged, working-class and average Germans. The book describes how this group of "ordinary men" was transformed into mass-murderers. In the book there are detailed descriptions of the Battalion's actions, and the author provides an explanation behind these men's descent into committing genocide. As an afterthought, the reader would inevitably ask, what would I have done if I were a member in the Battalion?
Rating:
Summary: May the Force be with US
Review: Some psychological research by Milgram and Zimbardo and others shows it is disturbingly easy to get ordinary people to torture and brutalize somebody and/or to kill them. This happens so often and so easily in the laboratory that it can be deeply troubling to see it. I think what these personal histories (like "Ordinary Men") go on to show is that people can also "get used to it" that is, torture and murder while they seem in many ways still to be rather ordinary. (American GIs and law enforcement officers, two groups I've lived with, can all too easily get into the thousand-mile-stare, just-another-day-at-the-war, kill-them-all-let-God-sort-them-out frame of mind). Even more disturbing is the tendency for some "ordinary" people to go even further. They come to like the killing. Fighter pilots get the "hunter disease." Serial killers really do get a taste for it. So, they do not stay truly ordinary. For the most part, they are never "the same" again. But they don't grow horns either. As a man, I'm not at ease that almost all of what we are discussing is a "guy thing." Women share some of this, but (certainly statistically) not much. I've come to believe in the myths. Man has both the light side and the dark side of the force within. Which come to the fore depends on a great deal. Both the very best and worst of us, the angels and the killers, were, I believe, somehow, somewhere, once just "ordinary men."
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