1st Edition

An Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

By Tom Stammers, James Chappel Copyright 2017
    98 Pages
    by Macat Library

    98 Pages
    by Macat Library

    Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged reservists with, apparently, little Nazi zeal – to willingly commit acts of genocide? Was it ideology? Was there something rotten in the German soul? Or was it – as Christopher Browning argues in this highly influential book – more a matter of conformity, a response to intolerable social and psychological pressure?

    Ordinary Men is a microhistory, the detailed study of a single unit in the Nazi killing machine. Browning evaluates a wide range of evidence to seek to explain the actions of the "ordinary men" who made up reserve Police Battalion 101, taking advantage of the wide range of resources prepared in the early 1960s for a proposed war crimes trial. He concludes that his subjects were not "evil;" rather, their actions are best explained by a desire to be part of a team, not to shirk responsibility that would otherwise fall on the shoulders of comrades, and a willingness to obey authority.

    Browning's ability to explore the strengths and weaknesses of arguments – both the survivors' and other historians' – is what sets his work apart from other studies that have attempted to get to the root of the motivations for the Holocaust, and it is also what marks Ordinary Men as one of the most important works of its generation.

    Ways in to the Text 

    Who was Christopher R. Browning? 

    What does Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Say? 

    Why does Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Matter?  

    Section 1: Influences 

    Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context 

    Module 2: Academic Context 

    Module 3: The Problem 

    Module 4: The Author's Contribution 

    Section 2: Ideas  

    Module 5: Main Ideas  

    Module 6: Secondary Ideas  

    Module 7: Achievement 

    Module 8: Place in the Author's Work  

    Section 3: Impact 

    Module 9: The First Responses  

    Module 10: The Evolving Debate  

    Module 11: Impact and Influence Today 

    Module 12: Where Next?  

    Glossary of Terms  

    People Mentioned in the Text  

    Works Cited

    Biography

    Dr James Chappel completed his PhD in Modern History at Columbia University and is currently teaching at Duke University. His work focuses on the intellectual, political and Religious History of Modern Europe.

    Dr Thomas Stammers is lecturer in Modern European history at Durham University, where he specialises in the Cultural History of France in the age of revolution. He is the author of Collection, Recollection, Revolution: Scavenging the Past in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Dr Stammers’s research interests include a wide range of historiographical and theoretical controversies related to eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe.