WWII German Reserfe Police Battalion in Poland
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Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland is a book that tells the story of the members of German Reserve Police Battalion 101. This battalion, consisting of approximately 500 men, massacred and deported more than 80,000 Jews in and around the Lublin district of Poland. Their participation in the massacres began in July 1942 and ended in November 1943. The book raises several issues surrounding the choice to kill defenseless people: how ordinary German men became mass murderers; how not all of the massacres were committed by members of the SS; and how men voluntary chose to continue their participation in the killing assignments despite opportunities to stop. All the men in Battalion 101 had the option to exempt themselves from the killings on numerous occasions. Ultimately, Browning writes, the Holocaust took place because ôat the most basic level individual human beings killed other human beings in large numbers over an extended period of timeö (xvii). Thousands of German men, other than the secret police, killed Jews during this period. No one in Reserve Police Battalion 101 was a member of the SS. Many reserve police battalions participated in the genocide throughout Poland. These battalions were composed of ordinary German men in their 30s and 40s. They had not been chosen for the job because they were considered suitable for the task of slaughtering thousands of people by reason of their personalities, backgrounds or all
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ot. Major Trapp was an atypical commander who abhorred the assignment and complained and wept, according to his men. He became so distressed over the mission that he never accompanied his men on the kills. TrappÆs two captains ôin their testimony more than 20 years later made no attempt to conceal their contempt for their commander as weak, unmilitary, and unduly interfering with the duties of his officersö(46).
BrowningÆs emphasis on the fact that any man in the battalion could have opted to avoid the commitment of mass murder is an important element of this work. On page 2, he writes, ôTrapp then made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out.ö Some of the men exempted themselves. Others exempted themselves during the killing operations that followed.
Browning makes another important distinction in the book. Men who did the killing in the holocaust did not act under coercion. Had they refused to take part in the killings, they would not have faced severe punishment, imprisonment, or death. Moreover, no German was killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews.
Browning takes the rea
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Approximate Word count = 1557
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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