Ordinary Men: Book Review
Admin V reviews the book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning
Admin V here. This was a driving weekend for me. I met my parents to celebrate mother’s day and had a meeting in Charlotte about a convention that I’m helping with so there was a lot of time to listen to my audio book.
I’m currently listening to Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning. Basically, the book is about ordinary middle-aged men from Hamburg who became mass murderers in the name of fascism. The author uses various primary sources including testimony in a 1967 trial , journals, and other official documentation to piece together the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101.
Every now and then, I read a book or see something that reminds me of how important it is to educate ourselves on topics about fascism, cults, and general history. For the record, you should get this book and read the last chapter of it. In that last chapter, Browning posits his thesis of what turned these ordinary men into killers. It wasn’t as simple as all these men were anti-Semitic assholes who were primed to kill because of racial hate. Though, he agrees that anti-semitism certainly played a part. The last chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
I can’t remember who recommended this book to me. It was almost certainly recommended to me by someone who knows my interests or found on a list with books that I have already read. In that group of 500 men, you had a cross section of German culture. There were white collar workers, tradesmen, businessmen, rich men, poor men, and middle class men. And yet, nearly all of them were persuaded to commit murder on an industrial scale. Those 500 men were responsible for the deaths of at least 50,000 Polish Jews. Some of those people were shot directly by the units and some were transported to the death camps to die there, The exact numbers are unknown, but by the time that they were done with their section of Poland, there were no Jewish people left.
Y’all. The book talked about the development of these men from being squeamish about killing to being enthusiastic about doing their job. The book talks a lot about group dynamics. Some people would let people go if there was no one around to see. Some people would bully their compatriots into the killing. Very few absolutely refused to do it. And even those men had dirty hands. It reminds me a lot of the cult books and cult documentaries that I have read.
After reading this, I wonder if any of us would have the strength of character to not follow orders that were bad. To stand up against injustice. The reality is nothing bad happened to those who said no, I’m not going to participate. They were assigned other duties that didn’t involve murder. Some of them were able to obtain transfers. Germany needed the men to serve more than they needed to punish men who said no to the killing.
All of these men returned to their civilian lives like shooting unarmed civilians was normal. Very few of them received any kind of punishment, but I have to wonder what it was like inside their brain after that. Like how can you go from being asked to shoot women and children in the back of their heads to having summer barbecues and singing your children to sleep. That is a horror novel y’all.
It is really easy for me to hate these people, but the psychology of what drove them to do it and what drove them to stop fascinates me. I want to know if we can stop it before it happens again and I don’t know if we can. We are already living in a time of murderous deportations and there are plenty of people in the group dynamics that are doing exactly the same as these men did in Poland.
Kilmer Abrego Garcia still hasn’t been returned to the United States. The executive branch of our government continues to defy the judicial branch. We let them deport a child with cancer without their medications.
The time to speak out is now. You have a choice. So does everyone around us. Make sure that you’re willing to say no to bad orders.
Admin V gives this book 5 stars.
Thank you for the great review, V. I found it interesting that some men were willing to say no. Given the similarities of what happened then and what is happening now, I am sad to say, I don’t think those who would say no would simply be given something else to do. They aren’t needed to serve in any other capacity. The implications of that alone are staggering.