Product Description: The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.
Amazon.com Review: 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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Ordinary Men is a grisly look at a German killing squad implementing the Final Solution in Poland
Christopher Browning is a distinguished historian of the horror of the Nazi holacaust against the Jews during World War II, His book on Reserve Police Battalion 101 is a microcosmic examination of how ... Read More
Rating: - How important stories get to be told the wrong way
Another brick from the the Professors' classroom. I got to page 148, which was quite a feat, believe you me. But important it is. I don't deny that, and true too.
Rating: - Frightfully banal
This book, which follows step by step the itinerary of a battalion of German security police in the East during WWII, is a scary confirmation of Hannah Arendt's theory on the "banality of evil" that emerged after ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent
Very well-done and insightful study on ordinary Germans in the Holocaust and Browning's overall thesis extends to "ordinary men" in many circumstances.
Rating: - Not for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach!
This book (as described by previous reviewers and the product description) details what the men in the Nazi Reserve Police Battalion 101 went through, specifically during the SS Invasion of Poland.
- Ordinary Men is a grisly look at a German killing squad implementing the Final Solution in Poland 
- How important stories get to be told the wrong way