Ordary Men: Reserve Policeaalion 10and the Fal Solution in Pand

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. ?A remarkable?and singularly chilling?glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."?Newsweek

Author: Christopher R. Browning

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Publication Date: February 28, 2017

Number of Pages: 384 pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 0062303023

ISBN-13: 9780062303028