Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

4.10 · Rating details · 12,687 ratings · 854 reviews

Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people f ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 271 pages

Published April 6th 1993 by Harper Perennial (first published February 1st 1992)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Ordinary Men, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Well-Written Holocaust Books

792 books — 2,776 voters

Best Non-fiction War Books

1,830 books — 2,186 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.10 ·

Rating details

· 12,687 ratings · 854 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

May 20, 2009 Paul Bryant rated it it was amazing

Shelves: holocaust-literature

This is one of the essential books of Holocaust literature. When I read it, some years ago now, it changed me.

It's about a Reserve Police Battalion in Poland. This was a bunch of middle-aged German guys who were unfit for military service, so they were given an easier job, which was to shoot Jewish people and bury them in woods (okay, the last bit could be hard, but generally you could get the Jewish people to do all the digging before you shot them).

This was the pre-industrial phase of the Hol This is one of the essential books of Holocaust literature. When I read it, some years ago now, it changed me.

It's about a Reserve Police Battalion in Poland. This was a bunch of middle-aged German guys who were unfit for military service, so they were given an easier job, which was to shoot Jewish people and bury them in woods (okay, the last bit could be hard, but generally you could get the Jewish people to do all the digging before you shot them).

This was the pre-industrial phase of the Holocaust, before the purpose-built death camps at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec were opened for business.

Who rounded up these Jewish families from their little villages and marched them into the forests and gunned them down and then came back the next day and drove to a new village and did it all over again, week after week? As I say it wasn't the steely-eyed fanatical SS psychos barking "schnell! schnell!" with the big Alsation dogs at all, it was these middle-aged police reserve guys, your local baker, pharmacist or gardener, just your regular guys. Now some of them found it - well, frankly, a little too disturbing, shooting men women and children in cold blood week after week. So Browning points out that they could ask to be transferred to other duties and that was okay, they'd be transferred, no hard feelings. No problem.

Now Browning was influenced by the famous Stanley Milgram electric-shock experiment. But I was thinking that maybe the conclusions Milgram and later experimenters have come to aren't quite right. I'm not a psychologist so I'm probably wrong, but here goes. Milgram et al have said that the presence of an authority who normalises certain actions which in other contexts would be considered sadistic and criminal explains the actions of the randomly-selected people who applied the fake fatal electric shocks. But considering the grim evidence presented in this book, not to mention many examples from elsewhere (Srebrenitsa, Rwanda, Cambodia, the witch craze of the middle ages), maybe its this : that there are a large number of people in every society who just don't have a moral sense at all. They go along with convention, so you don't notice them, they're not psychopaths, they don't crave power, but if you ask them to shoot a family of seven on a beautiful summer day and bury the bodies in the woods they'll just say okay, but I got to get back by five, my wife will be expecting me. ...more

flag 139 likes · Like · see review

Mar 16, 2019 Ian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: micro-history, 4-star-non-fiction, wwii

RPB101 consisted of 500 men, almost all from Hamburg, who were conscripted into the German military at the beginning of WWII. A large majority were working-class, and more than half were aged between 37 and 42. Being above the age group considered suitable for the frontline, they were deployed in implementing the “Final Solution”. The soldiers deported Jews to Treblinka, and also carried out mass shootings. The author estimates that this single battalion transported 45,000 Jews to death camps an RPB101 consisted of 500 men, almost all from Hamburg, who were conscripted into the German military at the beginning of WWII. A large majority were working-class, and more than half were aged between 37 and 42. Being above the age group considered suitable for the frontline, they were deployed in implementing the “Final Solution”. The soldiers deported Jews to Treblinka, and also carried out mass shootings. The author estimates that this single battalion transported 45,000 Jews to death camps and directly murdered at least another 38,000. In the 1960s, 210 surviving members were interrogated about Holocaust crimes, and the testimony they provided forms the basis of this book. The author acknowledges that the evidence given should be treated with caution. The men clearly wanted to avoid incriminating themselves. That said, he argues the interviews were carried out by skilful attorneys, who drew out some gruesome testimony.

The age of the men meant they had been well into adulthood by the time the Nazis took power. They had not spent their formative years under the “inverted morality” of Nazism. Moreover prior to 1933 support for the Nazis had been weak in Hamburg. Most working-class people in the city had supported either the Communists or the Social Democrats. It’s reasonable to conclude that most of the Battalion’s troops were not committed Nazis. So what led these ordinary German family men to commit such horrendous crimes?

Browning suggests that the Battalion divided into three groups. Some were sadists who went out of their way to torture, beat and humiliate Jews before murdering them. Another group, the largest, simply followed orders. A third group, between 10% and 20%, asked to be excused from shooting Jews or otherwise evaded doing so. No punishment was inflicted upon this group. This surprised me as I had always considered the Nazis as intolerant of any challenge to authority.

None of the soldiers objected to serving on the Treblinka transports. They knew that the Jews would be killed but their role ended when the victims were delivered to the camp – “out of sight, out of mind”. It was less easy to evade moral responsibility when directly murdering defenceless civilians.

The author concludes that the relentless and pervasive denigration of Jews in Nazi Germany did affect the attitudes of the men of RPB101, but he also argues that deference to authority and pressure of conformity were uppermost in explaining their participation in mass murder. Those soldiers who did not participate in the shootings were derided by the others as weak or cowardly. They were also viewed as shirkers who relied on their comrades to do “dirty work”.

Browning’s conclusions were strongly criticised by Daniel Goldhagen, author of “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”, a book I haven’t read. This edition contains an afterword in which he responds to those criticisms. There is also an interesting aside about 14 Luxembourgers who were assigned to the Battalion, and whether they behaved any differently from the Germans. Browning doesn’t think they did.

This is a thoughtful piece of work in which the author rehearses a variety of potential psychological explanations for the actions of RPB101, and the extent to which the capacity for violence lies within all of us.
...more

flag 71 likes · Like · see review

May 27, 2019 Tariq Mahmood rated it it was amazing

Shelves: europe, history, german

'I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer. It was supposed to be, so to speak, soothing to my conscience to release children unable to live.'

They went through their formative period in a pre-Nazi era, came from Hamburg one of the least Nazified cities in Germany, they belonged to social class that had been anti-Nazi, just how could these non-conforming end up killing innocent women, childern and men with little compulasion?

The answer lies with ...more

flag 62 likes · Like · see review

Jan 16, 2012 Mariel rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Television and the devil

Recommended to Mariel by: Paul Bryant

Jessica Mitford claimed in her book A Fine Old Conflict that the racism in her new home Oakland, California was from people who moved there from the Southern states (I guess we kept moving there for those acts of racially led police brutality over the years). No one else would be capable of that. Bitch, please! (Of course, I don't have a photo selection of myself with black people I got on well with as she does. So I MUST be a racist, coming from the American South as I do.) I can't help but thi Jessica Mitford claimed in her book A Fine Old Conflict that the racism in her new home Oakland, California was from people who moved there from the Southern states (I guess we kept moving there for those acts of racially led police brutality over the years). No one else would be capable of that. Bitch, please! (Of course, I don't have a photo selection of myself with black people I got on well with as she does. So I MUST be a racist, coming from the American South as I do.) I can't help but think of Mitford, that poster child for hypocrisy, for calling something other than what it is for whatever self serving agenda she felt like preaching. Christopher R. Browning's book Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland is a hell of a book and interesting to me for more reasons than one of my messy goodreads reviews (did I mention that is my 600th?) could cover. Paul Bryant's review says that it changed his life. It also changed mine for those reasons of putting into context human nature aspects I can only suspect and never pin down (it's much, much too big). I want to call something for what it is, pretty much. It changes me again when I have to ask myself if I believe in the will of human nature.

You may have heard of author Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. I have, although I've never read one of his pulp(it) tomes. They took the same source information, those interviews for 1960s investigations of war crimes, the same historical texts and came to some important differences. Well, I'd say (without reading Goldhagen's book) that he was looking for an all Germans are anti-Semitic bent to fit everything into. It happened because they were looking for a reason to murder Jews. Hitler just gave them the means. It couldn't have happened to anyone else, anywhere else. Bitch, please! If you want to ignore centuries of history and the present... When someone makes a grab for power like that someone is going to get royally fucked, history says.

Browning's work looks at how "Ordinary Men", middle aged Germans who were not professional killers, who did not roam about the countryside shooting civilians by birth for mirth, became well oiled killing machines for the Nazis. Were they just following orders? Not always, at least not in any immediate way. They weren't held at gun point. I found it interesting that only a dozen opted out when given the choice not to kill. Some followed after, some after killing twenty jews. The breaking point, if there was one, was not the same. Definitely not all. One man who went out of his way to prevent himself and his men from killing the Jews they were transporting would later force twenty old men to undress and then instructed his men to grab bats to beat to death the crawling men. What is in one man, their Captain Trapp, to deliver their orders through his tears to continue to do so? Browning says because one group did so did not mean that another would kill if in their place. It doesn't mean that another wouldn't.

In the back of my mind while reading 'Ordinary Men' I had the thought that these German men felt about the Jews the way that many elsewhere in the world would feel for prison inmates. Their punishment is abstract. They could say to themselves, "Well, they deserved what they got." That's if they thought about them at all. The execution takes place far away. The possibility of innocence, of falling through the cracks for making a mistake (one of the most depressing things, to me, is how many are in prison because they could not afford the court costs. A fucking evil scam! I am overwhelmed with hatred of society when I think about things like that. Complacency and heartless? distraction takes many forms). They hate us for our freedom. Maybe we shouldn't have freedom, then. Maybe someone else is looking out for things for us. It's okay to drop a devastating bomb far away. Sleeeeeep sheeeeep. The only racists are in the American south. It's not bigotry to hate gays, if you're black. I've heard that one a lot. Pretending something isn't what it is by calling something else in huge bold letters. Evil! Nazis! Just them.

I have no doubt that they were thinking about themselves first of all. The way that they rewrote history in their own minds is important. It also cannot be discounted that the interviews were for legal proceedings and no way were they going to even mention direct culpability or anti-Semitism. As Browning points out, that would make it intent and the intent makes it homicide. How much of a looming threat did the Nazi higher ups have that a different mind set some couple of decades later would change their side stepping of the larger implications (they massacred so many people)? I have an idea in the back of my mind that it is complacency out of selfishness. They killed because they didn't want to think about it. That the men didn't ask to leave when the option was no longer presented to them says a lot to me about going to sleep. The killings were routine and it was all something to get used to. Would they have moved for themselves? I don't even know that. (Ten officers to 8,000 Jews and they didn't revolt? We're just being resettled.)

Would I call them Ordinary Men? It doesn't take an extraordinary man to do what they did. Yet, so many have done what they have, not just in Nazi territory, that I don't know what else to call them. I'd say talking about it to call it anything is better than not talking about it. The ordinary men didn't talk about it, not even when they were talking about it.

Five fucking stars. It is not an ordinary man who will look into the lowest of humankind and not pretend. There was much more I wanted to write here and now my mind is too numb with statistics (600 reviews) that I can't even say anything nice now. People sure can suck. What do I call it, again? (Fascism?)

And I realize I didn't break any new ground here but that's really why I love this so much. It's tangible proof of this darkness. I held it in my hand. Not just numbers. ...more

flag 51 likes · Like · see review

May 15, 2017 Sweetwilliam rated it really liked it

This is not an easy read. First, it reads like a scholarly thesis paper that someone wrote for a doctoral thesis. Second, the subject matter is awful and there are no heroes. Having said this, Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men is an integral read for those of us trying to make sense of the Holocaust.

I decided to read Browning’s book because I wanted more insight into the psyche of the monsters that were ordered to carry out Hitler’s final solution. According to Browning, for the most part, th This is not an easy read. First, it reads like a scholarly thesis paper that someone wrote for a doctoral thesis. Second, the subject matter is awful and there are no heroes. Having said this, Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men is an integral read for those of us trying to make sense of the Holocaust.

I decided to read Browning’s book because I wanted more insight into the psyche of the monsters that were ordered to carry out Hitler’s final solution. According to Browning, for the most part, the men of Battalion 101 were just ordinary men. I read the title of the book prior to buying it so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Browning’s analysis is clear: These men were not SS troopers and they had not been subjected to intense indoctrination or any type of brainwashing. There were very few party members. I can only remember Browning mentioning one officer that was a former member of the Hitler youth. I believe that only a few were ever in the SS prior to deployment in Poland. They were certainly not front line troops suffering from any type of combat fatigue. In fact, they hadn’t heard a shot fired in anger and there wasn’t anything frontline about them. Browning argued that they were the dregs of the Wehrmacht and they were deemed not fit for frontline duty. Most importantly, these men didn’t even seem to harbor a grudge against the Jews. With scarce exception, they hardly seemed to enjoy their task.

So why did they do it? According to Browning’s interpretation of events, they did it because they were ordered to. They knew this was wrong. The Battalion Commander, Major Trapp, was a decorated combat veteran from WWI. Trapp told the enlisted men that they could be excused if they could not take part in the firing squads and then he went to an office and bawled like a baby. I took some solace that about 14 men and one officer refused to take part in the massacre and that several men refused to continue after taking part in the initial firing squad but at the end of the day, somehow the deed was done.

Future actions were easier to handle in part because the killing grew more routine. Also, the policemen found ways to farm out the killing to others. They recruited Hiwis (foreigners) to do the dirty work. This included Russian prisoners (Trawnikis) who would have starved had they not been given the option to serve the Nazis. Also, the Policemen didn’t mind loading the Jews on railcars so that they could be shipped off to a death camp where others could execute them. This was much more preferable than rounding up families and personally killing them. The worst thing was to have to kill innocent people face-to-face.

The author compares and contrasts the massacres committed by the Policemen to other war crimes committed during that period By US units in the Pacific and even later in Vietnam. Browning mentions that some US units in the Pacific had boasted of taking no prisoners and that there were units that collected ears etc. However, Browning makes the point that at the time these men were under duress due to combat fatigue and they had reacted to it. These policemen, on the other hand, hadn’t heard a shot fired in anger so the policemen could certainly not use this as a mitigating factor.

I also personally believe that the massacres of the Polish Jews are very different than the massacres of the Chinese citizens of Nanking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Japanese perpetrated massacres weren’t sanctioned by high command or the Imperial Government. I remember reading Ira Chang’s Rape of Nanking and reading one of the commanding General’s correspondence that imperial soldiers were acting like Genghis Khan. Iwane Matsui, the commanding General of IJA in China, gave strict orders not to harm Chinese citizens or loot. Ironically, Matsui was a great admirer of China and chastised his officers for what happened in Nanking but ultimately, this did not save him from the hangman’s noose. The implementation of the Final Solution in Poland was the exact opposite. The ordinary men of the reserve police battalion were ordered by Himmler at Hitler’s wishes to kill all men, women, and children and to shoot infants and the infirm on sight. These policemen certainly would not have carried out these massacres without orders to do so. However, they still did it and this bothers me.

With a minimum of psychobabble, Browning tries to compare the actions of the Policemen with some University studies where students acting as prisoners were given fake shocks. I’m sorry, but some of this was lost on me. I believe it had little relevance to a reserve policemen being asked to blow a hole at point blank range through a defenseless child’s neck and getting spattered with their brains at times. To me it was a vain attempt to extrapolate data from a few college snowflakes and apply it to something like the Holocaust. The use of this data almost trivialized the Holocaust to some degree. I believe that these Jews would have preferred to have been shocked a few times or even shipped off to Abu Ghraib to live out the war forming naked pyramids.

Early on in the book there is a letter from a German official trying to run the local economy in the east complaining about the implementation of what later became known as the Final Solution. The official claimed that his skilled workers at several factories either had fled or were shot or were transported to a concentration camp and how none of the remaining workers (including the White Russians) could concentrate on their jobs because family members were carted off. The implementation of the final solution made the local economy collapse at a time when Germany could least afford it. It makes one take a step back for a moment and wonder what could have been accomplished if the Germans would have used their precious resources (rolling stock, manpower etc.) trying to defeat the Russians? The Jews could have been left alone and even recruited to join the war effort. I wonder if we would all be eating sauerkraut and sausage three times a day.

At the end of the day I am still not quite sure why these men went through with carrying out these orders? There were no reprisals if you didn’t take part other than peer pressure. Let us not underestimate the power of peer pressure. Would men today do the same thing if ordered? Would I have done what they did if I had been in their shoes? Would I have grabbed a machine gun and started shooting my fellow officers while yelling to the Jews in my best yiddish "run for the hills while I hold them off?" Probably not. I'm no Joan of Arc. I would more likely have done what Papa Trapp did. At best, I would of had the foresight to resign.

As Major Trapp said during the first Jewish action “If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth then have mercy on us Germans.” Trapp was later hanged after the war for carrying out revenge killings of Polish gentiles after a partisan action. Even this Trapp tried to mitigate. I believe the hangman’s noose may have been good medicine for a man that most likely had lived out a tortured existence knowing what he was ultimately responsible for.

In my review of "Our Crime was Being Jewish" I said that the men and women who perpetrated the Holocaust should be hunted down and tried for these crimes until they take their last breath on earth. Christopher Browning’s research indicates all events are not that black and white. You would have to hang several ordinary men that you are probably no better than. Thank God every day that we Americans currently live under a different set of circumstances.

Judging others is never that easy. ...more

flag 44 likes · Like · see review

Feb 04, 2021 Geevee rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, european-history, german-history, military-strategy-policy, final-solution-holocaust-genocide, second-world-war

Reserve Police Battalion 101 (RPB101) was a uniformed unit of the German Order Police [Ordnungspolizei or Orpo] with a full-strength complement of c450-500 officers and men.

The Ordnungspolizei were formed in 1936 and operated as the main police and fire service for the domestic Reich. Its role from 1939 expanded with its original function moving externally to the German Reich to support combat operations as lines of communication police functionaries in policing enemy civilians, guarding priso ...more

flag 35 likes · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2020 JD rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ww2-general

This was a very difficult book to read and is not for the faint of heart. It focuses on the really ordinary men who made up this unit and partook in the killing of thousands of Jewish women, children and the old and sickly by firing squad. It is very graphic in the description of the executions in it's brutality and one cannot fathom how the majority of these men carried out such heinous crimes. Writing this review brings a lot of emotions out of me as a father of a child and to think that these ...more

flag 33 likes · Like · see review

Dec 09, 2008 Eric_W rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-historiography

And another in our continuing series of depressing books: Christopher Browning examines the motivation of a 500 man police battalion assigned to the rear lines of Germany's Eastern Front. This small group of men was personally responsible for the massacre of over 38,000 Jews and the deportation of some 45,000 more to Treblinka. These were not racial fanatics nor committed Nazis. Their motives were quite ordinary: careerism and peer pressure. Browning's book is based on interviews with the partic And another in our continuing series of depressing books: Christopher Browning examines the motivation of a 500 man police battalion assigned to the rear lines of Germany's Eastern Front. This small group of men was personally responsible for the massacre of over 38,000 Jews and the deportation of some 45,000 more to Treblinka. These were not racial fanatics nor committed Nazis. Their motives were quite ordinary: careerism and peer pressure. Browning's book is based on interviews with the participants collected after the war.

Not everyone blindly followed orders. The battalion's commander ordered that anyone not wishing to participate in the shootings could be excused and about 12 were. For many of the others rationalization became the order of the day. One later testified he killed only children because his partner was shooting the mothers and he did not think it was right that children should grow up without mothers.
The horrifying aspect of this account is how little it took for these men to become transformed psychologically from "normal" people into willing participants. These were not atrocities one has come to expect from war during the heat of battle (Malmedy, My Lai, etc.), rather an institutionalized, bureaucratic government policy. That bureaucracy may be part of the cause. It distances people from their actions. Bureaucrats never saw the hideous result of their actions, seeing only their small paper-shuffling role.

That still does not explain the actions of the men who were doing the actual killing. Women and children were marched up to graves they had been forced to dig and were shot point-blank in the head. The shooters were even instructed on the best location on the neck to shoot in order to save ammunition. Occasionally the killer would be splattered with brain tissue and skull parts.

There was a deliberate process of dehumanization abetted by Nazi racial policies. In fact, the soldiers found it much more difficult to kill German speaking Jews, especially those who had fled Germany. They saw them not as the barbarians they had been told they were killing. Euphemisms, (protective reaction strikes) were common: killing became "actions" and shipping to concentration camps became "resettlements." Responsibility was diffused by deferring to orders from "above" and dividing the tasks into different parts.

There was a perversion of ethical outlook, too. Those few who were revolted by what they were doing and who refused to participate were called cowards. We need to cultivate a society where those who follow individual conscience are the heroes and those who follow the crowd are the cowards.

As an aside, before my Dad died, I was talking to one of the aides in his nursing home who came from Argentina. We got to talking about my years in Germany and she mentioned her grandfather had emigrated to Argentina from Germany after the war. (Little tiny red flags waving over my head.) I queried if he had been in the German army. Her response was quite unashamedly, yes, he had been in the SS. (Red Banners now waving over my head.) Then she went on to talk about how the victors rewrite history. I decided then I had to visit the men's room.

...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

Dec 03, 2018 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cultural-studies, crime, favorites, politics, psychology, war, sociology, nazi-germany

What makes seemingly normal people commit unforgiveable acts of evil? The men of RPB 101 were just middle-aged German men who participated in mass shootings as well as rounding up Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Even more horrifying is that they were not fanatical Nazis - so how did they come to gaze so deeply into the abyss? Christopher R. Browning presents us with an explanation that is informed, original and disturbing.

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Sep 05, 2008 Tim rated it it was amazing

Christopher Browning, one of the better known Holocaust scholars today, used evidence from the post-war investigations of Police Battalion 101 to create an image of the "ordinary men" who participated in the massacre of Jews in Eastern Europe. By examining testimony, documents, and diary excerpts, he pieces together a chronological history of the unit’s participation and involvement in the Nazis' Final Solution.

Even though Browning is writing as a scholar, with the intent of persuading through Christopher Browning, one of the better known Holocaust scholars today, used evidence from the post-war investigations of Police Battalion 101 to create an image of the "ordinary men" who participated in the massacre of Jews in Eastern Europe. By examining testimony, documents, and diary excerpts, he pieces together a chronological history of the unit’s participation and involvement in the Nazis' Final Solution.

Even though Browning is writing as a scholar, with the intent of persuading through academic argument, his writing is clear and uncluttered. He approaches the subject with an easy-to-follow framework, providing a balanced look at how the battalion went from routine duties in occupied territories to the violent slaughter of Jewish civilians.

Throughout Ordinary Men, Browning provides a window into the daily life of the unit and its purpose in the hierarchy and structure of the Third Reich. The often personal glimpses demonstrate the slow and methodical change in Nazi policy towards Jewish civilians, as the German leadership shifted towards the Final Solution.

It's this tapestry of documentation that pulls together a remarkable look at how the extermination of European Jews occurred: through an evolving policy rather than a pre-determined course. Combined with the personal accounts of battalion members, it is easy to see the slow progression of anti-Jewish doctrine, as well as the frequently unmentioned nuances of its executioners, the most revealing of which — the lack of disciplinary action for those who refused to take part in the massacres and "Jew hunts" -- reveals a great deal about the make-up of the actual perpetrators.

Afterword: The more recent edition of Ordinary Men has an afterword from Browning dissecting his ongoing debate with Daniel Goldhagen (author of Hitler's Willing Executioners). Personally, I’ve been surprised at how many people bought into Goldhagen's rather contradictory and ill-conceived thesis, and yet, because of that, Browning decided to add this clear-cut statement about his own conclusions in order to refute Willing Executioners' assertion that Germans are anti-Semitic by their very nature. ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

Jul 28, 2014 Andrew added it

Shelves: history, european-history

While Browning's book was apparently a serious academic volley in the world of Holocaust studies, it strikes me as very measured and commonsense. Here, in their own words, are a bunch of people who did what they were told, because that's what they were told to do-- and we can ask why they didn't question it, but speculation is all you'll come up with. Recently, a lovely afternoon in the killing fields of Cambodia and a bus stop in the middle of a pogrom in progress in Myanmar have confirmed that ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

Dec 07, 2008 Carol rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Carol by: Professor Peter Hayes

Whenever you heard people ask, "How could someone do something like that?" and the topic is genocide, this book provides the answers. Drawing on psychology, sociology, and lots of direct testimony, Browning explains how the need of individuals to conform to group expectations can result in horrendous acts of evil. ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2018 Tim rated it liked it

Shelves: holocaust, non-fiction, germany

An account of the atrocities committed by the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order police in Poland during WW2. Any book that seeks to go behind the scenes of Nazi killing units faces the problem that the men involved invariably lie about their experience. This is very much the case here, with most of the men claiming after the war that they did their best to help Jews. I think if you're going to begin with the premise of "ordinary men" you need to show these men as ordinary. ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Oct 27, 2014 Bryn Hammond rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-elsewhere

The title says it.

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

I can’t weigh this against other books on the subject; I came to it as a classic case study that accepts the ordinary person in the perpetrator of historical atrocities, whom we tend to distance, essentialise, and see as inherently ‘unlike us’ by one stratagem or other.

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2014 AC rated it it was ok

Shelves: fascism, germany

A book and approach (the 'functionalist' approach to the Holocaust) with which I am quite out of sympathy. According to this view, adopted also by Broszat and Hans Mommsen, the Holocaust was not planned, but came about almost by accident, as local administrators tried to deal with the excess of refugees, and the like. In my opinion, which is certainly only that of the semi-educated layman, this is complete and utter B.S.

I say that with all due respect to Mr. Browning, of course... ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jan 11, 2017 Erik Graff rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Erik by: Erin Stelter

Shelves: history

How do normal, law abiding people get into performing abnormal acts of extreme violence? This book takes on that question as regards the members of a German Reserve Police Battalion who participated, often directly, in the murder of over 85,000 Jews, Soviets, Poles and other 'undesirables', many of them women and children, during WWII. Unusually well documented, the activities of these several hundred men are traced from month to month both from the written record and from their own testimonies. ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

May 14, 2011 Devon rated it liked it

Normally the type of history I’d be very interested in reading about. When I read the title and the summary, I was very excited to start the book. It was well-researched. The opinions were well thought out. Historically, it was sound, in my very amateur opinion. However, the writing left much to be desired. It’s one thing to write a book that’s completely factual and write it in a way that keeps the audience interested. It’s another thing to write so poorly that members of the audience who are i ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2018 Charles Haywood rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It seems to me that we in the West are like men in a cavern, out of which lead many paths, none signposted. Some paths lead to bright futures, but other paths lead to terrible ones, among them those where, once again as we did not so very long ago, we slaughter each other over ideology. And the way back is closed, so we must choose one path forward. The service of this book is that it illustrates Solzhenitsyn’s dictum, that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. Thus, ref ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Nov 06, 2016 Ray rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A fascinating book on the role of ordinary policemen in the holocaust. Based on testimony given in the 1960s the author draws out the way in which these men approached and dealt with the systematic murder of Jews in Poland.

The police unit was formed from men unsuitable for the regular army, taken from one German city - Hamburg- and represented a cross section of society.

It shows how the men were affected differently by this heinous crime - some became efficient and enthusiastic killers, some ref ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Apr 01, 2017 Trish rated it really liked it

Shelves: required-reading, political-theory

Of all the books on the reading list for my Ideologies of the Holocaust class, this one is undoubtedly my favorite.

It's a must read for anyone intrigued by the Holocaust, especially, in the "ordinary men" who carried out Hitler's orders and committed the infamously heinous crimes. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

May 05, 2018 Joshua Rodriguez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

A Thought-Provoking Read

I think more than almost any other book I’ve read in the past year or two, Ordinary Men caused an immense amount of introspection and decision in my life. I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they are a good person. It will change their mind.

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Oct 22, 2018 Michael Burnam-Fink rated it it was amazing

Shelves: war, academic, 2018, history

How did the Holocaust happen? Not the antisemitic ravings of Hitler, or the careerist banality of Eichmann, but the physical labor of liquidating the Jews of Poland. Someone had to round up the Jews in ghettos, herd them onto trains to the death camps, shoot the ones who couldn't walk or evaded. Ordinary Men asks what happens to the people who perpetuate a genocide.

The 'someone' in Ordinary Men were the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, about 500 middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg. M How did the Holocaust happen? Not the antisemitic ravings of Hitler, or the careerist banality of Eichmann, but the physical labor of liquidating the Jews of Poland. Someone had to round up the Jews in ghettos, herd them onto trains to the death camps, shoot the ones who couldn't walk or evaded. Ordinary Men asks what happens to the people who perpetuate a genocide.

The 'someone' in Ordinary Men were the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, about 500 middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg. Most of them had ambitions in local policing, writing traffic tickets, dealing with drunks, and other very ordinary policework. About a quarter were Nazi party members. And while deployed away from home, Poland in 1942 was hardly facing Zhukov's armored shock armies on the Eastern Front. At the start of 1942, they were not by any standards, killers.

That would change. The first massacre was at Józefów in July 1942. It was a fiasco. The Jews of the town were marched into the woods, paired up with Nazis from the 101, and executed with shots to the neck. The men did poorly. Offered a chance to refuse, a handful did. Others dodged behind trucks or otherwise out of sight of NCOs. Major Trapp, the commander, apparently broke down weeping.

This would change. Blooded, the 101 became a group of hardened killers. The methods became more efficient, more impersonal, the worst tasks handed over to the death camps or local HiWi volunteers, who tried to out-Nazi the Nazis. A handful of men were truly enthusiastic, delighting in the sadism of the exercise. Another handful evaded. Most concluded it was a dirty job, but that someone had to do it, and the military virtue of 'toughness' meant it was them. None resisted. By the time the unit left Poland for Russia 18 months later, they had been party to something like 80,000 murders.

The point is not that Reserve Police Battalion 101 was made of monsters. The point is that if they could commit a genocide, so could almost anyone, given only a few minor tweaks to an authoritarian and racist worldview that is not terribly far out of the mainstream today. Decide that the tough thing to do, the necessary thing to do as a group, is to shoot a defenseless human being in a shallow grave, and ordinary men will do it, and do it gladly.

Oh, and what happened to the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101? Many died on the Eastern Front, as safe Jew hunts became something more like actual combat. Major Trapp and another officer were deported to Poland in 1946 and executed. And the survivors of the unit were tried in an unusually honest and thorough investigation in the 1960s, which saw five men out of over 120 imprisoned for sentences under 10 years. The rest of these ordinary men went on to lead ordinary lives, many of them collecting police pensions in Hamburg. ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Dec 02, 2018 David rated it it was amazing

A disturbing but essential read for any student of the human condition.

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Mar 02, 2012 Chris rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, history

I had to read this for a class otherwise I probably wouldn't have picked it up. Holocaust lit is depressing enough and this had its share of horrific tales but it didn't seem to be more than an elongated account on one battalion. It was missing more. Browning starts off with this claim that he is going to analyze and explain why 'ordinary men' become killers and I feel he really failed to do that. Towards the end, he explains several factors that helped many of the men get to that point (wanting ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2007 Nathan rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: People who need people.

Shelves: history, history-crime, science-social-theory-etc

Christopher Browning's study of one Nazi police battalion, Ordinary Men, is disturbing not for its subject but for its implications for humanity. The story follows one battalion as they murder innocent men, women and children while acting as the mobile enforcement wing of the SS in completing the "final solution". The book studies how these men were turned into killers, and what their actions did to their psyches. Browning's research is impeccable and his results terrifying.

NC ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Feb 17, 2016 Claudia Moscovici rated it it was amazing

The true banality of evil: Review of Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

Hannah Arendt referred to Adolf Eichmann as the paradigm of the banality of evil: an ordinary man led by extraordinary circumstances to exceptional evil. However, given that Eichmann spearheaded some of the key initiatives of the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, I have argued that he was quite extraordinary: extraordinarily sociopathic and evil. The circumstances of Fascist Germany allowed his true nature The true banality of evil: Review of Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

Hannah Arendt referred to Adolf Eichmann as the paradigm of the banality of evil: an ordinary man led by extraordinary circumstances to exceptional evil. However, given that Eichmann spearheaded some of the key initiatives of the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, I have argued that he was quite extraordinary: extraordinarily sociopathic and evil. The circumstances of Fascist Germany allowed his true nature to be revealed and his thirst for power through murder to be played out.
In Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993) historian Christopher R. Browning reveals the true nature of the banality of evil by recounting the transformation of members of the Order Police, the Police Battalion 101, from regular men to brutal killers. Although initially the Order Police was composed of young men sympathetic to Nazi principles, by the late 1930’s it included older men from all walks of life: policemen, workers, small businessmen. Browning notes that these Order Police units expanded during the war: “Twenty-one police battalions of approximately 500 men each were formed from the various police companies and training units in Germany, thirteen of them were attached to the armies invading Poland” (6).
While one can plausibly argue that the SS were chosen for their anti-Semitic outlook and brutality, that’s not the case of the Reserve Police Battalion 101. Yet this unit of five hundred “ordinary men” is responsible for the murder of 38,000 Jews and the deportation of an additional 45,200 in occupied Poland in 1942. Few of the perpetrators were tried for their crimes against humanity after the war.
For those who did face a trial, their main defense was similar to Eichmann’s: namely, that they were merely following the orders of their superiors. In their case, unlike in Eichmann’s, this defense sounded plausible. Few of these men were ardent Nazis. Even fewer had violent or sadistic tendencies. Most of them were middle-aged men who were found ineligible for military duty. They were sent to Poland to participate in Operation Reinhard, which included shooting en masse the Jews of entire small towns, such as Jozefow and Lomazy.
They did so voluntarily, although initially not eagerly. Most of these men hesitated to kill women and children in the beginning. Browning points out that, contrary to the later excuse they offered that they were merely following orders, those orders didn’t entail any serious negative consequences for those who refused to follow them. The commander of Unit 101 gave his soldiers the option of opting out of conducting mass murders if they did not have the “fortitude” to kill civilians. All they faced, at worst, was peer pressure from some of their more ruthless colleagues. And yet, Browning notes, remarkably, only 12 out of the 500 men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 opted not to shoot innocent people.
Seeing themselves as merely doing their duty, they rounded up and shot thousands of helpless civilians. As they got used to their “job”, they became more violent and sadistic. Some even smashed Jewish babies against the wall, or threw them up into the air and shot them. The rest became increasingly used to the mass murders, quickening the pace of slaughter and increasing the brutality as time went on. If any book can show that genocide can happen anywhere and be perpetrated by regular human beings placed in extraordinary circumstances, Browning’s well-researched and persuasive book is it.

Claudia Moscovici, Holocaust Memory
...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Oct 02, 2019 Hưng Đặng rated it really liked it

(... to be updated)
The experience of reading this book makes me want to give its 3 stars, but thinking about the effort of the author and all the truth that this book has brought to light as well as the strong case that it made, I decide to give it a 4 (although not sure I want to read it again).
The psychological situation of the few good men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 can be well summarize in this excerpt:

Many, nonetheless, joined in the mass killing and masked their feelings to avoid c

...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Feb 14, 2012 Mike rated it really liked it

Shelves: second-world-war, law-enforcement

Browning reviewed hundreds of interviews conducted with former members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the 1960s. He used these to explain how "ordinary men" could commit the crimes of the holocaust and what made those men different from us. The disheartening answer is nothing made them different, they're just like us. About 20% of the members took no or little part in the killing, about 20% were glad to take part, and the remaining 60% just went along. A very interesting and informative ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2011 John rated it really liked it

This is very good, significantly better than "Hitler's Willing Executioners." The argument makes more sense, and the evidence is presented in a much more coherent manner.
But I can't really recommend that anyone read this unless you are devoted to studying the Holocaust. It is so awful and grim. It makes one weep for humanity. Really, it is tough to read about war crimes all day. I started to have nightmares about halfway through the book. The sad thing is, it is probably important for humanity ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jun 12, 2020 Jay Green rated it it was amazing

This book could do with a much wider readership.

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

History

1,080 users

Nonfiction

531 users

World War II > Holocaust

189 users

War

133 users

Psychology

130 users

War > World War II

117 users

Historical

46 users

Cultural > Germany

41 users

Politics

37 users

History > European History

37 users

See top shelves…

About Christopher R. Browning

Christopher R. Browning

88 followers

Christopher Robert Browning recently retired as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books on Nazism and the Holocaust, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Books by Christopher R. Browning

The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942

Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp

The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution

Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers

More…

Goodreads Members Suggest: 32 ‘Vacation’ Reads

As this strange summer of staying put winds down, one thing remains truer than ever: Books offer us endless adventure and new horizons to...

Trivia About Ordinary Men: Res...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Ordinary Men: Res...

“I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce “ordinary men” to become their “willing executioners.” — 11 likes

“Major Trapp was never there. Instead he remained in Jozefow because he allegedly could not bear the sight. We men were upset about that and said we couldn't bear the sight either." Indeed, Trapp's distress was a secret to no one. At the marketplace one policeman remembered hearing Trapp say, "Oh God, why did I have to be given these orders," as he put his hand on his heart. Another policeman witnessed him at the schoolhouse. "Today, I can still see exactly before my eyes Major Trapp there in the room pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back. He said something like, 'Man, ... such jobs don't suit me. But orders are orders.' " Another man remembered vividly "how Trapp, finally alone in our room, sat on a stool and wept bitterly. The tears really flowed." Another also witnessed Trapp at his headquarters. "Major Trapp ran around excitedly and then suddenly stopped dead in front of me, stared and asked if I agreed with this. I looked him straight in the eye and said 'No, Herr Major!' He then began to run around again and wept like a child." The doctor's aide encountered Trapp weeping on the path from the marketplace to the forest and asked if he could help. "He answered me only to the effect that everything was very terrible." Concerning Jozefow, Trapp later confined to his driver, "If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans.” — 5 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Christopher R. Browning

Books by Christopher R. Browning

Related Articles

Trivia About Ordinary Men: Res...

Quotes from Ordinary Men: Res...

See a Problem?

Preview — Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Christopher R. Browning

Books by Christopher R. Browning

Related Articles

Trivia About Ordinary Men: Res...

Quotes from Ordinary Men: Res...

new topic
Discuss This Book