Brief Summary Of Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men

in this paper i argue the opposing views of Daniel Goldhagen 's book Hitler 's Willing Executioners and Christopher Browning 's book ordinary Men. These books deal with the question of whether or not the average German soldiers and civilians were responsible for the holocaust. My research paper argues in favor of Goldhagen 's book, the average German was responsible for the participation of he holocaust. At the end of world war ll the Jewish community and the the rest of the world were crying for justice because of the devastation of there homes. The crimes committed by the Germans were cruel and someone had to pay. Several Nazi leaders were held accountable for the actions of the Germans. Were the Nazi leaders the ones responsible for

The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many

Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of

Cruelty surrounds the world constantly, and is used frequently in works of literature to reveal certain things about the theme. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, acts of cruelty are used to express the theme and enhance its message. One of the largest themes revealed by these acts is “man’s inhumanity to man,” which includes mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis, the common people, and other Jews. Watching the large amounts of violence, abuse, and discrimination that occur in this memoir show us the horrors of the Holocaust and how it transformed the men and women who it experienced it, as well as those who caused it.

If one were to take anything from Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men it is that even the most ordinary, normal men have the capacity to kill. The 101st Reserve Police Battalion executed at least 6,500 Jews at the Polish cities and villages of Jozefow, Lomazy, Serokomla, Lukow, Konskowola, Parczew, Radzyn, Kock, and Miedzyrzec and participated in the deportation of at least 42,000 Jews to the gas chambers in Treblinka (Browning, chapter 14, page 121). There were most likely even more killings that were never documented and much less remembered by the members of the 101st. These men had their first taste of death at Jozefow where they massacred 1,500 Polish Jews (Browning, chapter 8, page 74). It was a brutal and harrowing event where men,

It is at this point that Browning proceeds to put forth his argument as to why he believes what he postulated in his theory. He uses this scene to catapult himself into an argument of why anti-Semitism was not the main driving force behind the killing. Years later, once the soldiers were interrogated and the soldier recounted this scene to Browning and others, there was a glaring omission, and that was of anti-Semitism as a driving force to kill the Jews. Browning highlights this important part of the discussion with the former soldiers as indicating that their sole motivation was not just hatred

The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men, from a variety of backgrounds, education, and age. It would appear that they were not selected by any force other than random chance. Their backgrounds and upbringing, however, did little to prepare these men for the horrors they were to witness and participate in.

Christopher R. Browning’s “Ordinary Men” chronicles the rise and fall of the Reserve Police Battalion 101. The battalion was one of several units that took part in the Final Solution to the Jewish Question while in Poland. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, and other units were comprised of ordinary men, from ordinary backgrounds living under the Third Reich. Browning’s premise for the book is very unique, instead of focusing on number of victims, it examines the mindset of how ordinary men, became cold-hearted killers under Nazi Germany during World War II. Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men” presents a very strong case that the men who made up the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were indeed ordinary men from ordinary background, and

Christopher Browning is a historian on the holocaust and Nazi Germany. He is the Frank Porter Graham distinguished professor of history at the university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In Christopher Browning’s book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland tells the story of Battalion 101, a group of 500 policemen in their 30’s and 40’s who were sent into Poland to participate in a ‘special action’ without being told exactly what they are doing. Overtime they realized their mission is to Kill Jews and racially purify Europe. Most of the killing during this period of mass murder took place in Poland. Battalion 101 together with other Order Police battalions contributed to the manpower needed to carry out this enormous task. Browning comments that these men all went through their developmental period before the Nazis came into power. These were men who had known political standards and moral norms other than those of the Nazis. Most men came from Hamburg; one of the least ‘nazified’ cities in Germany and the majority came from a social class that had been anti-Nazi in its political culture. In seems this would not seem to have been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on behalf on the Nazi vision of a racial utopia free of Jews. However, their actions helps us understand not only what they did to make the Holocaust happen, but also how they were transformed psychologically from the ordinary men into active participants in the most horrific offence in human history. In doing so, it aims on the human capacity for extreme evil and leaves this subject matter with the shock of knowledge and the

The members of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were influenced and conditioned in a general way and filled in particular with a sense of their own superiority and racial relationship. The aspect of Jewish inferiority, peer pressure and sense of duty therefore turned many of the police battalion into murderers. Browning suggests that given the same or similar circumstances, a similar number of ordinary men would experience the same results.

"There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are faced to deal with" (William Halsey). The same can be said about volatile men. This is the quote Christopher R. Browning thought of when he named this book. The men of the 101st battalion were rarely faced with decisions. Even if it had been proposed by Trapp the morning of Jozefow that "any of the older men who did not feel up to the task that lay before them could step out" (Browning, chapter 7, pg. 57), he didn't actually allow them any time to truly think about it. He brought it up moments before they were about to go out to the slaughter. They were blind-sided and the men who didn't want to risk the future of their jobs as policemen or the men

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning is an insightful book that provides information as to how ordinary people may be susceptible to committing heinous, evil acts. Browning explains this through analyzing judicial interrogations, which occurred in the 1960’s, of about 125 men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 (Browning, pg. xviii). The Reserve Police Battalion 101 was a unit of the German Order Police formed in Hamburg, Germany, under the control of the SS which was under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party (Browning, pg. xvi-xvii). They consisted of German police and sheriffs who were middle-aged men of working and lower middle class. The Reserve Police Battalion 101 was formed as the

The arguments of Christopher Browning and Daniel John Goldhagen contrast greatly based on the underlining meaning of the Holocaust to ordinary Germans. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings and deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was "not up to it." Despite this offer, most of the

While Browning is telling this as a scholar, his writing is clear and concise, with the mindset of an academic argument. He attacks it with a simple timeline providing an equal look as to how the battalion members went from every day, ordinary routines to slaughtering the Jews like animals like they were methodically brainwashed to believe.