Analysis Of Ordinary Men By Christopher R. Browning

Ordinary Men Summary When most people think and learn about the holocaust they are only taught from the Jewish peoples point of view. They learn about the mass murder committed by Hitler and the Nazis. A group that is usually overlooked is the German people that were forced to take part of Hitler’s “ethnic cleansing.” The book Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning goes into detail about the men that were forced into killing innocent people and coerced Jewish people into concentration camps. In this insightful book Browning reveals the background, emotions, and thoughts of a group of men called the Reserve Police Battalion 101.

Christopher R. Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland is seen as one of the most influential book in Holocaust studies. The book traces the Reserve Police Battalion (hereafter RPB-101), a single German unit, throughout their military duty. These soldiers were instructed to kill innocent Jewish men, woman and children in Poland. Most of the men in the RPB-101 were originally deemed not suitable of conscription. When massacres in history occur, it is in the nature of human beings to think of the culprits as being different from normal people; savages or villains that kill for pleasure or have no remorse.

makes the point that to fulfill this task would necessitate a vast mobilization of soldiers to carry out and fulfill these acts, and that this mobilization of troops for the purpose of carrying out genocide occurred at the same time when a great numbers of German soldiers and material were ready to fight in the battle for Stalingrad. Through the next few chapters, the knowledge that Browning instilled in me is the origins of the Order Police which includes the Reserve Police Battalion 101and the role they played in the Holocaust Genocide. The formation of the ordering police was an attempt from Germany to create a military alike army of police who possesses the same training and equipment soldiers get in the military. After several attempts to destabilize the Treaty of Versailles, the election of the Nazi party into power, and the incorporation of police paramilitary units into the regular army, the Order Police gradually came into being.

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, we are given a firsthand experience of the Nazi’s inhumane treatment of the Jews during World War II. This window into the treatment of the Jews is important to me as I pursue a career as an Army officer. As an officer it will be my duty to protect this country from our enemies and ensure that no people group is ever massacred or abused like the Jews were during World War II. The Nazi’s thought of the Jews as subhuman and wanted to cleanse Germany of them.

Christopher Browning documents everyday experiences and tribulations of Germany men, who were involved in the tragic events of the Holocaust. Browning tries illustrate the reasoning of all the massacres caused by the Reserve Police Battalion 101, so that people could get a clear understanding of what really was going on with these men, physically and mentally. Looking past all the opposing claims of German men, Browning explains how these men were just regular “middle aged family men” who were taking basic orders from higher authorities (1). Throughout the book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning explains his reasoning of calling these murders ordinary men, the reasoning behind all the massacres, and how these men later on became killers.

The Holocaust is a sorrowful event known as the systematic extermination of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime during World War Two. Crimes from the Holocaust were the outcome of the Nazi government's use of both hard power and soft power strategies. The concentration camps, where prisoners were subjected to physical abuse, torture, and death, were evident examples of hard power, which is characterized by the use of force and compulsion. On the other hand, soft power was used through psychological manipulation and propaganda to win the Germans' support and cooperation. In this research paper, the use of both physical force and soft power during the Holocaust will be addressed, along with how they impacted how the genocide ultimately played out.

One explanation proposed is that terrible things happen during war, the Americans at My Lai, the Japanese at Manila both slaughtered innocents. Browning describes a ‘battlefield frenzy’ where men are ‘numbed to the taking of human life, embittered over their own casualties’ but he notes that the type of brutality that these feelings might produce ‘did not represent official government policy.’ Another type of atrocity is the type that is calculated, it is ‘atrocity by policy’ and it is this that applies to Reserve Police Battalion 101. Most had not seen military service, ‘most had not fired a shot in anger or ever been fired on, much less lost comrades fighting at their side.’ Certainly ‘battlefield frenzy’ cannot be applied to that first morning at Józefów; Tom Lawson agrees that the war plays a part in explaining why these men committed these murders ‘but not [on] that first day.’ However, as the men’s jobs of killing Jews became ‘routine’ and hence ‘easier’ they did become more ‘brutalized’; ‘in this sense, brutalization was not the cause but the effect on these men’s behaviour.’

Brady Ravin Mrs. Ramsey English January 31st, 2023 The Horrors of the Holocaust Six million, the estimated number of Jewish people that died during the holocaust. Each one of them led their own life, each one of them was a person just like anyone else, and each one of them witnessed countless horrific sights. All of these deaths and horrors were avoidable. The book Night written by Elie Wiesel is a first person account of what the experience in a concentration camp was like. He and a man by the name of Rudolf Acohen will be the focus of this essay, but they are not the only ones who suffered; millions upon millions of people suffered through the horrors of the holocaust.

Christopher R. Browning is a well-known author of the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland which is a collection of his research about the Order Police in Germany and how they were brainwashed into taking part in the mass murders of the Jewish population under Hitler’s ruling. The Holocaust could not have happened before the 20th century due to the downfall of the German government during that time, the industrial revolution increasing supplies and means of transportation, and the decision that all German’s had to make: obedience and country vs morality. The Holocaust was an atrocious event that means different things to different people. Further research will show any average person that there was

The destinies of several nazi individuals all throughout the last of World War II are spread wherever the guide regarding what transpired. Many took a sign from their devoted pioneer, Adolf Hitler, and submitted suicide to evade catch and discipline. These war hoodlums could never need to confront their violations. Others fled the nation and went up against expected characters in an attempt to escape experts. While a large portion of the individuals who fled were caught, there is entirely a main 10 most needed rundown of Holocaust war lawbreakers today.

Thus, Browning’s imagery emphasizes that no one will be able to prove she was murdered or convict him for the murder. The catastrophes both works describe are caused by

The ostracism lingers in the air as civilians are deprived of their homes, families, and humanity. Coerced by torture, individuals of Jewish descent are forced to march helplessly in clusters. The bystanding citizens watch as “the suffering faces of depleted men and women reached across to them, pleading not so much for help-they were beyond that-but for an explanation”(392). The explanation of why Jews were struck with misery remains absent. There is no reason behind Germany’s venom and the entire country goes up in flames without a second thought.

THE HOLOCAUST by Cadun Everett J. Williams. English III. Block 4 10 March 2023. ii Outline Thesis: The Holocaust led to the cruel unforgivable deaths of multiple Jews during the time of WWII from 1939 to 1945. Introduction Escape attempts Treatment

To convince many S. S. soldiers that the atrocities commited were of righteous moral, Karl’s platoon leader shouts, “They are not people. The Jew is not a human being! The Jews are the cause of all our misfortunes! And when you shoot one of them it is not the same thing as shooting one of us—it doesn’t matter if it is a man, woman, or child, they are different from us” (Wiesenthal 49). This scene demonstrates the lengths to which people in an already vulnerable state of mind were exploited.

In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip... Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs.