Description
Ordinary Men is a book about a group of German policemen who participated in the Holocaust. The book is based on interviews with the killers, and it shows that the killers were not unique in their behavior, but were instead average men who were influenced by historical forces into inhuman shapes.
This detailed and harrowing study of a single group of mostly middle-aged policemen from provincial Germany has achieved classic status among histories of the Holocaust. Far from being demonic and hate-filled sadists, most of the group had no history of anti-semitism or of far right politics. Browning explores the motivation of these men and the horribly familiar mechanisms of man-management and group solidarity that reduced a team of "ordinary men" into a bestial instrument of madness. It is a book that offers no comfort to those who seek to explain the Holocaust in terms of German exceptionalism, but it is a significant contribution to the history of World War II.
Shocking as it is, this book--a crucial source of original research used for the bestseller
Hitler's Willing Executioners--gives evidence to suggest the opposite conclusion: that the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but that they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes. Browning, a thorough historian who lets no one off the moral hook nor fails to weigh any contributing factor--cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and reluctance to force the others to bear more than their share of what each viewed as an excruciating duty--interviewed hundreds of the killers, who simply could not explain how they had sunken into savagery under Hitler. A good book to read along with Ron Rosenbaum's comparably excellent study
Explaining Hitler.
--Tim Appelo
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