BOOK REVIEWS

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning and Feudal humanity by Marc Bloch

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning and Feudal humanity by Marc Bloch

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

During World War II, the usual battalion of German soldiers "cleared" Poland as part of a final decision. As an average, ordinary person, someone who was not hot to the Nazis in a position to such horrors? (Rosenbaum, 1998, 15)

Christopher Browning came to the conclusion in his book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, is a disturbing more than one level his last sentence is chilling." If people could Reserve Police Battalion 101 under such circumstances, become murderers, a group of people can not? "(p. 189). But Browning's intention is to provide the reasons average people could descend to such depths of disgusting be identified.

Tracing how the Police Reserve Battalion 101 of the first order for Jozefow, Poland, Harvest mass murder Browning in stark detail the transformation of the average man revealed in the cold-blooded murderer. Most police officers were middle-aged family man from the desktop in Hamburg, Germany. To understand these people, Browning largely on their judicial questioning the 1960s. But he warns against the various views and memories to describe this kind of sources. Nevertheless, Browning reconstructs the actions of the police battalion with high and objective view (www.suite101.com).

This book - an important source of original research for Willing Executioners bestseller Hitler - suggests the opposite conclusion: that the sad-sack German conscripts, the Holocaust was perpetrated not much expression of some uniquely Germanic evil, but were they on average men comparable to the Introduction humanity, turned historical forces in inhumane forms. Browning, a thorough historian, no one from the moral as the hook can not be in a position all of the factors to weigh - cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and reluctance to make others bear more than their share of what each as painful obligation viewed - Interview hundreds of murderers that could explain not just how they are in wilderness under Hitler decreased (www.bukisa.com).

Browning wrote a very important book. He looked at the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, from mostly middle-aged men mostly artisans and workers of non-career police reservists. Type of men that are either too old for the normal functioning of the front and who did not want to pursue a career in the police outside of their role in the reserve unit (Guttenplan, 2001).

Browning uses the incredible documentation of the German post-war interogations men of the unit involved in wartime attrocities. He had access to more than 400 certificates of more than 500 people from this unit during the war. As such, it can analyze and act and think in more detail than most other German units (Browning 1992).

He describes the insidious use of these units as the first security guards on trains to the Jews to death camps, their possible use in rounding up Jews in Polish ghettoes and their use as evidence shooter in ...