Mention Books In Favor Of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
| Original Title: | Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland |
| ISBN: | 0060995068 (ISBN13: 9780060995065) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust (1994) |
Christopher R. Browning
Paperback | Pages: 271 pages Rating: 4.09 | 10599 Users | 668 Reviews
Commentary As Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
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 for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever. While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.
Be Specific About Of Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
| Title | : | Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland |
| Author | : | Christopher R. Browning |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 271 pages |
| Published | : | April 6th 1993 by Harper Perennial (first published 1992) |
| Categories | : | History. Nonfiction. World War II. Holocaust. War. Psychology |
Rating Of Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Ratings: 4.09 From 10599 Users | 668 ReviewsJudgment Of Books Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Normally the type of history Id 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. Its one thing to write a book thats completely factual and write it in a way that keeps the audience interested. Its another thing to write so poorly that members of the audience who areThis 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
The title says it. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.I cant 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.
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...
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.
'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
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.
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