Ordinary Men

by Browning, Christopher R.

• ISBN13: 9780060995065
• ISBN10: 0060995068
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-16
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

This book is 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.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	xi	(4)
Preface	xv
1. ONE MORNING IN JOZEFOW	1	(2)
2. THE ORDER POLICE	3	(6)
3. THE ORDER POLICE AND THE FINAL SOLUTION: RUSSIA 1941	9	(17)
4. THE ORDER POLICE AND THE FINAL SOLUTION: DEPORTATION	26	(12)
5. RESERVE POLICE BATTALION 101	38	(11)
6. ARRIVAL IN POLAND	49	(6)
7. INITIATION TO MASS MURDER: THE JOZEFOW MASSACRE	55	(16)
8. REFLECTIONS ON A MASSACRE	71	(7)
9. LOMAZY: THE DESCENT OF SECOND COMPANY	78	(10)
10. THE AUGUST DEPORTATIONS TO TREBLINKA	88	(9)
11. LATE-SEPTEMBER SHOOTINGS	97	(7)
12. THE DEPORTATIONS RESUME	104	(10)
13. THE STRANGE HEALTH OF CAPTAIN HOFFMANN	114	(7)
14. THE "JEW HUNT"	121	(12)
15. THE LAST MASSACRES: "HARVEST FESTIVAL"	133	(10)
16. AFTERMATH	143	(4)
17. GERMANS, POLES, AND JEWS	147	(12)
18. ORDINARY MEN	159	(32)
Afterword	191	(34)
Appendix: Shootings and Deportations by Reserve Police Battalion 101	225	(2)
Notes	227	(32)
Index	259