monograph on ordinary men
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Print.
In Christopher Browning’s monograph, Ordinary Men (1992), he covered the answered the question of what transforms people into a cold-blooded killer. In synthesizing many different sorts of killings that place prior to and during the Holocaust, Browning studies the motives of the ordinary man, instead of the often-studied motives of Hitler and Himmler. By presenting the reader with a multitude of examples of killings varying in magnitude without presenting his theory of peer pressure as a cause, at the end, Browning allows the reader to arrive at their own conclusion. Throughout this monograph, he examines a perspective that is not written about often. Despite the fact that he is attempting to give an insight into the psych of the thousands of conscripted soldiers in Germany at the time, he only focuses on Battalion 101, which is made up of roughly 500 ordinary men. By applying the transformation of one police reserve to thousands of others, it is possible to see his monograph as treading in dangerous territory. In Ordinary Men, Browning uses a variety of sources in order to try to strengthen his examination of the soldiers. Starting in Chapter 17, Browning references the many interrogations that were done after the war. This includes the “interrogations of 210 men from Reserve Police Battalion 101,” which were found in “the archives of the Office of the State Prosecutor in Hamberg” (146). There are a number of elements that would discourage authors from using this as a source. These including, “the effects of twenty-five years of memory loss and distortion,” “psychological defensive mechanisms” that are commonly found, and how testimonies often contradict one another (147-148). Despite how questionable it can be to use testaments from trials conducted some twenty years after the Holocaust, Browning decided
In Christopher Browning’s monograph, Ordinary Men (1992), he covered the answered the question of what transforms people into a cold-blooded killer. In synthesizing many different sorts of killings that place prior to and during the Holocaust, Browning studies the motives of the ordinary man, instead of the often-studied motives of Hitler and Himmler. By presenting the reader with a multitude of examples of killings varying in magnitude without presenting his theory of peer pressure as a cause, at the end, Browning allows the reader to arrive at their own conclusion. Throughout this monograph, he examines a perspective that is not written about often. Despite the fact that he is attempting to give an insight into the psych of the thousands of conscripted soldiers in Germany at the time, he only focuses on Battalion 101, which is made up of roughly 500 ordinary men. By applying the transformation of one police reserve to thousands of others, it is possible to see his monograph as treading in dangerous territory. In Ordinary Men, Browning uses a variety of sources in order to try to strengthen his examination of the soldiers. Starting in Chapter 17, Browning references the many interrogations that were done after the war. This includes the “interrogations of 210 men from Reserve Police Battalion 101,” which were found in “the archives of the Office of the State Prosecutor in Hamberg” (146). There are a number of elements that would discourage authors from using this as a source. These including, “the effects of twenty-five years of memory loss and distortion,” “psychological defensive mechanisms” that are commonly found, and how testimonies often contradict one another (147-148). Despite how questionable it can be to use testaments from trials conducted some twenty years after the Holocaust, Browning decided