The book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning advances the thesis that the Holocaust was perpetrated by men who were caught in a 'totalitarian mindset' that enabled them to think that not following orders was a sign of weakness. Antisemitism fed this mindset, but later interviews indicated that those who took part in the killing did not necessarily subscribe to the ideology wholeheartedly. Browning attempts to understand why relatively ordinary, normal soldiers across so many cultures have committed atrocities.
Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men
What was the situation of the Police Battalion 101 that prompted their actions?
"How did a battalion of middle-aged reserve policemen find themselves facing the task of shooting some 1,500 Jews" in a Polish village (Browning 3). This is the central question of Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men. The policemen were not fit for military duty, but they were subjected to the same political and military propaganda as the more famous perpetrators of Hitler's infamous 'Final Solution.' This solution was not introduced gradually. In fact, it was within eleven months from 1942-1943, that the major casualties of the Holocaust occurred (Browning xv). As the Jewish people began to understand that the repatriation to work camps was actually a death march, the Germans encountered more and more resistance and tried to catch the Jews by surprise as they drove them to their mass graves. "Mass killing on such a scale required planning and preparation...Jewish prisoners were put to work digging trenches," ostensibly intended as "protection against air raids," but were actually intended as burial sites (Browning 137).
While the stench of so many corpses was described as gruesome, by then most of the police had become accustomed to the carnage. Over the course of his narrative Browning describes how the men -- whom were before relatively ordinary people with unremarkable histories -- became mass killers. The men's view of morality became "morally inverted" (Browning 150). It became moral to act murderously and immoral not to do so. Although some men later protested they could do nothing and could not resist for fear of being killed, on some occasions officers did refuse to engage in killing, such as when instructed to kill the Jews who had worked for them. On these occasions, the officers passed the unpleasant duties on to others and did not suffer repercussions (Browning 154). However, the all-encompassing mentality of the Nazi totalitarian mindset was so great, explicitly questioning the Final Solution or anti-Semitic ideology as a whole was untenable in the eyes of the German officers and policemen alike. Even when their own, personal feelings contradicted such ideology, they seemed unable and unwilling to resist.
Q 2. What specifically were the actions for which they should be held to moral account?
Although the excuse given by many Germans was that they were merely following orders when they engaged in the mass murders, accounts suggest that even hardened policemen knew right from wrong. "Some of our comrades got sick from the smell and sight of the half-decomposed corpses, so they had to throw up all over the truck" (Browning 141). The men could still be physically sickened by what they witnessed; even through they tried to suggest after the fact that they were automatons who had lost their free will.
In later interviews which Browning admits likely had a self-exculpatory aspect, the men made a distinction between Nazis who were "one hundred and ten percent" and anti-Semites "out of conviction" versus those who, like themselves, did so because of ideological brainwashing (Browning 151). According to one man, "under the influence of the times, my attitude to Jews was marked by a certain aversion. But I cannot say that I especially hated Jews -- in any case it is my impression now that was my attitude at that time" (Browning 151). Some Battalion members referred to Jews in an anti-Semitic fashion even after the passage of many years, others described the Jews they killed with pity and even admiration at their composure. They blamed others as the cause of the deaths of so many -- the Nazi hierarchy, the Poles for informing on the Jews -- anyone but themselves. They viewed themselves as passively unable to help the Jews, even while they pulled the trigger and said that they did not have any particular hatred against the Jews.
The fact that their attitudes showed that the men had free will and could express disgust and resist the killing of Jews whom they knew -- as well as the fact that 10-20% of Battalion 101 refused to engage in the mass slaughter is not a moral excuse for the killing, but in fact underlines the fact that resistance was not futile (Browning 160). This makes those who did engage in the killing all the more culpable and cowardly. Eventually the brutality became easier but only because the policemen had turned off their moral circuitry, not because they did not know right from wrong (Browning 161). Locked into a soldier's mindset, they were afraid to 'rock the boat' and take the chance of resistance (Browning 160). They were not completely numbed and embittered (Browning 161). After the war, a few of the members of the Battalion received minor sentences. But although not brought to legal 'justice' their actions remain crimes against humanity on a moral level.
Q3. What principles of ethical policing did these men violate, if any?
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