Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

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“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."—Newsweek  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.   Title Page Dedication Contents Illustrations Preface 1. ONE MORNING IN JÓZEFÓW 2. THE ORDER POLICE 3. THE ORDER POLICE AND THE FINAL SOLUTION: RUSSIA 1941 4. THE ORDER POLICE AND THE FINAL SOLUTION: DEPORTATION 5. RESERVE POLICE BATTALION 101 6. ARRIVAL IN POLAND 7. INITIATION TO MASS MURDER: THE JÓZEFÓW MASSACRE 8. REFLECTIONS ON A MASSACRE 9. ŁOMAZY: THE DESCENT OF SECOND COMPANY 10. THE AUGUST DEPORTATIONS TO TREBLINKA 11. LATE-SEPTEMBER SHOOTINGS 12. THE DEPORTATIONS RESUME 13. THE STRANGE HEALTH OF CAPTAIN HOFFMANN 14. THE “JEW HUNT” 15. THE LAST MASSACRES: “HARVEST FESTIVAL” 16. AFTERMATH 17. GERMANS, POLES, AND JEWS 18. ORDINARY MEN Afterword Acknowledgments Twenty-five Years Later Appendix: Shootings and Deportations by Reserve Police Battalion Notes Index About the Author Also by Christopher R. Browning Credits Copyright About the Publisher