. The actions of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 (as described in Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men) cannot be "absolved" by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done what they did.
In the first place, the actions taken or refused by individual members of the battalion varied greatly. This variation indicates that even under circumstances designed to smother conformity and produce a group of cold-blooded murderers who obey every order given, there were still individuals who refused to carry out such murderous orders directly or indirectly.
Therefore, there is an assumption in the question, or "notion," which is not supported by the facts--everyone in the battalion did not behave as cold-blooded murderers, and therefore it cannot be argued that "anyone" would behave as the worst and most murderous of the members of the battalion behaved.
In fact, Major Trapp himself provided loopholes in the "situation" which allowed some policemen to defy orders from on high:
From the time Major Trapp, with choked voice and tears streaming down his cheeks, offered to excuse those "not up to it" . . . and protected the first man to take up his offer . . . , a situation of putative duress did not exist in the battalion (171).
There also existed in the unit "a set of unwritten 'ground rules'" which included these provisions:
For small shooting actions, volunteers were requested or shooters were chosen from among those who were known to be willing to kill or who simply did not make the effort to keep their distance when firing squads were being formed. For large actions, those who would not kill were not compelled. Even officers' attempts to force individual nonshooters to kill could be refused (171).
Certainly, most of the members of the battalion participated, but the fact that some of the men did defy the forces of propaganda, dehumanization of the Jews, conformity, fear of ostracism, and so on...