Rating: 
Summary: Men like us.
Review: This is an excellent book. First of all, it is truly deep and impressive by virtue of avoiding the common guilt-clause, don't-you-feel-sorry-for-them tone. It does not try to install any feelings into the reader, and thus becomes all the more unforgettable -- I couldn't put it down. It described matter-of-factly every detail of the murders and the investigation. This dry recitation of facts is arguably its greatest virtue.However, the thing I found to be most gravitating in this book was that it makes one leave behind the gorgeous dreams of "I would never have done this," our hypocritical belief in ourselves as angels. It makes the reader realize that it only takes the instinct of being in a pack to drag a normal human being into cruelty and murder. Human beings are weak and that is a fact. Nowhere before have I seen a book that illustrated this so well. It is the same, in this sense, as some research done on the Russian Revolution and the murder of the Romanov family. How could the son of a locksmith possibly have found it within himself to shoot at the Royal Family whom the entire country revered? If people are blinded by an idea, by the security of being in a pack, how far could they go?
Rating: 
Summary: A decent over-view of the Police Battalions terrible actions
Review: Thorough, percise, an easy read. Not greatly intellectual but useful in research.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Brutality
Review: When the Second World War ended in Europe in May of 1945, some six million Jews had been killed in what the Nazis termed the Final Solution. In its barbarity, the Final Solution is unprecedented in this the history of Western civilization. However, some 50 years after the war, the question still remains: what type of person could carry out this genocide? Christopher R. Browning delves into this aspect of the Holocaust in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Like many other such battalions, Police Battalion 101 was organized for the purpose of policing and pacifying territories captured by the advancing German during the early years of the war in the east. Their role in Hitler's quest for new Lebensraum for the German people was significant. They were, however, a non-combat unit. For this reason, the unit was mostly comprised of men in their forties and those unfit for combat duty. Browning classifies the men of Police Battalion 101 as being ordinary: he points out that most were conscripted white-collar types from Hamburg and Luxembourg, who, unlike the SS and other German units, were not overtly indoctrinated with Nazi ideology. But, as the reader eventually discovers, regardless of individual variances in belief, the involvement of the majority of Police Battalion 101 in the Final Solution is undeniable. By mid-1942, Police Battalion 101 was stationed in Lublin District in central Poland. Over the course of the next 12 months they would participate in a series of massacres, deportations, and a lengthy "Jew hunt." The profound psychological transformation that the men of the unit underwent while undertaking these operations is startling. Some men initially refused to participate in the first killings, with dissension being the norm and, later, an accepted fact even among the officers of the unit. Yet in time most would become willing participants. By November 1943, the once reluctant Police Battalion 101 would conduct, without hesitation or remorse, massacres at Majdanek and Pontiawa that, in total, took over 30,000 lives. The majority of the details about the Battalion come from trials held in Germany in the 1960s. Many accounts and testimonies by former unit members were recorded at the time, but Browning admits that their information is limited. He reminds the reader that some 20 years after the fact the participants were in a situation where those testifying could downplay their role by intentionally being ambiguous or forgetful. "Quite simply," states Browning in the preface to Ordinary Men, "some men deliberately lied, for they feared the judicial consequences of telling the truth as they remembered it. Not only repression and distortion but conscious mendacity shaped the accounts of the witnesses." Taking this into consideration, Browning's ability to fashion a clear, accurate and consistent account of the horrific conduct of Police Battalion 101 is excellent. Deciphering the ambiguities and willful contradictions made by the testifiers, the author successfully presents the story critically and objectively. The end result is a work that is essential to understanding the perplexing conduct of those supposedly "ordinary men" who participated in the Final Solution.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Brutality
Review: When the Second World War ended in Europe in May of 1945, some six million Jews had been killed in what the Nazis termed the Final Solution. In its barbarity, the Final Solution is unprecedented in this the history of Western civilization. However, some 50 years after the war, the question still remains: what type of person could carry out this genocide? Christopher R. Browning delves into this aspect of the Holocaust in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Like many other such battalions, Police Battalion 101 was organized for the purpose of policing and pacifying territories captured by the advancing German during the early years of the war in the east. Their role in Hitler's quest for new Lebensraum for the German people was significant. They were, however, a non-combat unit. For this reason, the unit was mostly comprised of men in their forties and those unfit for combat duty. Browning classifies the men of Police Battalion 101 as being ordinary: he points out that most were conscripted white-collar types from Hamburg and Luxembourg, who, unlike the SS and other German units, were not overtly indoctrinated with Nazi ideology. But, as the reader eventually discovers, regardless of individual variances in belief, the involvement of the majority of Police Battalion 101 in the Final Solution is undeniable. By mid-1942, Police Battalion 101 was stationed in Lublin District in central Poland. Over the course of the next 12 months they would participate in a series of massacres, deportations, and a lengthy "Jew hunt." The profound psychological transformation that the men of the unit underwent while undertaking these operations is startling. Some men initially refused to participate in the first killings, with dissension being the norm and, later, an accepted fact even among the officers of the unit. Yet in time most would become willing participants. By November 1943, the once reluctant Police Battalion 101 would conduct, without hesitation or remorse, massacres at Majdanek and Pontiawa that, in total, took over 30,000 lives. The majority of the details about the Battalion come from trials held in Germany in the 1960s. Many accounts and testimonies by former unit members were recorded at the time, but Browning admits that their information is limited. He reminds the reader that some 20 years after the fact the participants were in a situation where those testifying could downplay their role by intentionally being ambiguous or forgetful. "Quite simply," states Browning in the preface to Ordinary Men, "some men deliberately lied, for they feared the judicial consequences of telling the truth as they remembered it. Not only repression and distortion but conscious mendacity shaped the accounts of the witnesses." Taking this into consideration, Browning's ability to fashion a clear, accurate and consistent account of the horrific conduct of Police Battalion 101 is excellent. Deciphering the ambiguities and willful contradictions made by the testifiers, the author successfully presents the story critically and objectively. The end result is a work that is essential to understanding the perplexing conduct of those supposedly "ordinary men" who participated in the Final Solution.
Rating: 
Summary: EVALUATING BROWNING
Review: While thinking about books to assign for my course on the History of the Holocaust I came across the reviews of Browning's book. I would like to add a few critical points. Whatever one thinks of Goldhagen's interpretative faults, he did a great deal more research into police battalions than did Browning. Browning deserves credit for being amongst the first writers in English to use these sources, but Goldhagen dug much deeper. Even if you disagree with Goldhagen you have to recognize that he did a great deal of research in a staggering variety of sources. Nevertheless, one of the problems with Goldhagen is his tendency to claim originality in areas where earlier historians did original and significant work. Browning often seems to take literally the testimony of the murderers after the war. It is necessary to approach the testimony of the murderers with a more skeptical attitude. What they said when confronted by a prosecutor is very different from how they felt and acted in 1941 or 1942. Browning's attempts at explanation and analysis are confused and confusing. In his analytical conclusion he present contradictory explanations of why the murderers acted the way they did. He greatly plays down the definite role of Nazi ideology in explaining the motivations of the murderers.
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