The book is <em>Ordinary Men</em>, and it's absolutely horrifying. It's an extremely frank and well-supported look at just how easily and willingly so many people committed horrible acts of violence. Any time someone gives the, "We were just following orders!" or, "You'd die if you didn't obey!" excuse, they need to read this book.
Anyone interested in this subject should read the book Ordinary Men.
The nazis, from the rank and file who were just cogs in a machine to the sadists and murderers were all people like you or me. Trying to dehumanize them like some weird defect of history is dangerous and disingenuous.
Amazing book. Especially in the political climate today. People call everything a Nazi, when the real problem is people relinquishing their personal responsibility to say "no" to bad ideas regardless of who says them and the consequences.
Wow! That was a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing. It really speaks to the same tribal behaviors we are seeing in current society.
I would also recommend the book “Ordinary Men” for a similar look at how an entire society became mass murderers.
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Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_sEqHDbZNFPNYX
I know this isn't the time or place but if you guys are interested there's a great book about this Litteral exact thing.
It's called ordinary men and I suggest anyone interested in history have a read. It's super interesting
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_FhFUAb7SYTDE8
Okay, so if you think Nazis were people who were "inherently bad to begin with", how do you propose preventing people like them from rising again? Nobody thinks they're the bad guy.
I don't want to give you bad/uninteresting suggestions, because I've mainly read books about Auschwitz/Oświęcim and the holocaust, but maybe you could have a look at this one: https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528908241&sr=1-4&keywords=Ordinary+Men
I think the description on amazon sums up perfectly what to expect before reading this book.
My apologees. Someone else linked it and the full title is more than just Ordinary Men. Just in case, Amazon link below.
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ZWUfBbZ189AZW
Strongly urge you to check out the book Ordinary Men about regular Germans during the war. Maybe not all Germans were fully committed Nazis but almost all either participated in or contributed to their crimes
So you don't believe in owning firearms and you don't trust the police?
Who do you think has a monopoly on violence in places guns are banned?
Here's a good book for you. It's breaks down the actual conversions when a normal police unit went from "no" to being ok with shooting Jews in the woods
>like i said you wouldn't be saying this about the nazis. nobody except nazis have said "hey guys can we not dehumanise nazis"
Interesting point. I think it comes down to social conditioning and how we like to put things into sections of "good" and "bad." Almost as if there is free pass to kill someone, if they're labeled a nazi.
You can't really kill someone unless you've dehumanized them. The troops in Vietnam used to call North Vietnamese "gooks."
I'm looking forward to reading a book called Ordinary Men. "...Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions."
Get a life. Go outside and get some sun and get off your computer. I am guessing you have a sad life and project that unhappiness on everyone else. History has shown people like you are a danger to society.
Here is a good book to read you could read in the sun...
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023/ref=sr\_1\_2?crid=EUL437BY3BKZ&dchild=1&keywords=ordinary+men&qid=1628345623&sprefix=ordinary+men%2Caps%2C215&sr=8-2
Of course man, so do I. I've though about this a lot.. if a job asks me to get it am I gonna say " fuck you I'm out!" I don't fucking know, I hope so. And the reason why I hope I do is because I've kinda promised myself if they try to take my guns I'll resist. But if I get the vaccine to keep a job, am I going to give up my guns to avoid a felony? It's a gradual thing.. you know how scary it's going to be when they say if you don't turn in your guns you're going to be a felon? It's much easier to resist in the small things.. so we should resist the small things... Seriously read ordinary men
And the fact that you're in the military and you're using that train of logic is devastatingly terrifying.. hitler's troops literally wound up commiting atrocities by the same logic.. very seriously, you should read the book ordinary men . You should think that every single decision is important, no matter how small it seems. Because small decisions pave the road to hell.
Assange did the simple thing and told the truth, nothing the left hates more than that.
LOL. Trump killed everyone with covid? Does it fucking hurt to be that fucking stupid? Seriously? Did Trump send sick old people back into eldercare facilities? How many people has the Swedish government killed?
How many people did 0bamma kill with ISIS and swine flu? How many more will biden kill in Syria? What are your feeling about trump and Russia and Kavanaugh as a HS kids - never mind, we already know what you've been told to think.
I can tell you're a deep thinker, so quit being a partisan dolt. It is completely obvious how fucking programmed you are.
> Fuck him, and fuck his supporters. Trump's and Assange's.
You have been conditioned just like the Germans were conditioned to act as Nazis. Read Ordinary Man, you need to educate yourself, fast.
I would also like to recommend the book Ordinary Men to anyone interested in how the average person became a murderer for the Nazis.
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_kDcsFbNS5NWYB
The book Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning might provide you with some answers, blew my mind.
Breif Description: While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.
As you should, you think you would have been part of the solution and not the problem if you were a member of Nazi Germany? No, you’d contribute to the problem.
Edit: This is a great book that explains this in depth.
> What sucks is that these poor bastards are just doing their jobs, and they likely feel awful about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8trl69kzo
door to door search andf seizure by gov troops.
but believe what you want
https://youtu.be/kf8trl69kzo?t=41
pictured here: military aiming live gun at entryway where civilians might stand. rememvber rule 4? dont aim at anything you arent prepared to destroy
Now if you succeed in getting to the end, you'll hear these gov troops say "you dont want to think about what you might have to, shoot americans".
But hey, you can continue to believe "military would never turn on its own people".
I would encourage you to read the book "Ordinary men".
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023
Only a fool sees communism and nazism and believes "the military could never turn on its people if ordered"
Yes. https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023
If just one left-leaning person helped to make sure their brothers in arms are vigilantly aware that orders could come to be deployed against their own people, it'd make a huge difference all on it's own.
Yes, Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men illustrates this rather well.
I understand where you're coming from. I'm saying something positive about a bad person. But try and understand that I'm not saying that justifies or makes them a good person in any way. It's completely devoid of emotion. For example:
I read half of a HUGE book a while ago called The Third Reich. It went into minute detail on how Hitler maintained control within the Nazi party from it's birth to about half-way through. I had to stop reading because the level of detail was intense and I was reading it aged about 12-13 so a LONG time ago!
But one thing struck me: Hitler was a vile, evil, sadistic, psychopath - BUT - he was a cunning bastard who managed to keep his ministers paranoid and infighting so much that they became dependent on his intervention if they wanted something. He had them precisely in the palm of his bloody hand. Now - that was a dry-as-dino-bone history book. Pretty damn dark and morbid. But it did put across without judgement the clear point - Hitler was a clever, manipulative person (always remember he was a human being* - not a monster. I hate it but to dehumanise people like him is to deny the darkness we can all manifest - which is dangerous! We must always be mindful he was a man - like many others).
Anyway - I'm also reading a book called "The Dictators Handbook" and it gives broader strokes of all the major leaders through history and not just the 'bad' ones but also gives insight showing how everyone from Clinton to Castro to Stalin to the Britains Opium Wars all have the same core idea and driving force - clinging to power.
My Point: Putin had to be clever to get to where he is! Russia is a harsh place with multiple deadly power structures (Mafia, Oligarchs, Military, FSB, Old Guard ex-KGB, Communists, Nationalists, Orthodox Church). He managed to unite all of these and create an inner circle small enough to control one of the biggest countrie sin the world. Disregarding the fact he's probably a nbutbar and he's most definitely a self-serving violent psychopath. He is clever to have achieved what he has.
I really recommend reading both books! HUGE eye-openers. They're the kind of book that make you look at the world differently afterwards.
Quick Tangential Example: America and other democracies like to claim "democracy is the best" and Clinton famously said "Democraces con't go to war with each other".
Yet - we all know the US was responsible for deposing a democratically elected prime minister in Iran for a Western friendly Shah which indirectly caused the Islamic revolution.
But did you know France interfered to ensure it's former African colony of Chad(!) installed a French-friendly leader? Rather than a pro-Libya or too pro-Arab? The Congo's Patrice Lumbuba was democratically elected by the people but wasn't popular with Belgium - he was killed! Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic ('65), Salvador Allende of Chile ('75) all killed after being democratically elected. Which just goes to show that being a democracy doesn't make you the 'good guy'.
The book actually points out some interesting parallels between autocracies like Russia and democracies like America.
TLDR: Russia and Putin as an autocrat has to only worry about a small coalition of people keeping him in power - the oligarchs. He's wealthy enough personally to ensure they stay happy. A democracy however, has a much larger coalition (party, constituency, etc) to keep happy so they're more likely to work in the interests of their country.
The fact all Western democracies from Japan to Central Europe all get on so well is an historical aberration. It's happened because for about 50yrs they had a common enemy/threat - Communism! Any democracy that crops up that doesn't have the same ideals as the West tends to get quietly disposed of: Hamas was democratically elected and got decalred void because they're terrorists. Egypts first President was 'too Muslim' (Mohammed Morsi) and was eventually deposed and replaced by a more Western-friendly president (el-Sisi).
Anyway - this is all very off at a tangent based on a book partially related to my comment that I'm not even sure you'd be interested in but I go tcarried away when I should be working!
*When people try to dehumanise histories monsters I always suggest they read Ordinary Men which is a book about a squadron of German police officers sent to Poland to police the newly conquered territory. It's horrifying insight into how quickly and easily people can degenerate into evil.
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_1PPVHYGCVE2GVJAK6HXX
Read the book called "ordinary men" and you will understand it. Here the link: https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023
Yeah... That's exactly the point.. it's minor.. read ordinary men
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023
Just chaining this onto your comment for posterity.
In college one of my classes had Ordinary Men as required reading. It was far scarier than most books I’ve read about the Holocaust, and I have read a lot of Holocaust books. I don’t want to give away the whole book, but in the end, it and The Banality of Evil were eye opening when it comes to what regular people are capable of in an environment that encourages inhumanity.
The book Ordinary Men describes how people can do horrendous things: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_deNlFb74Q5S7J
Just about anyone can become a psychopath i think. Check out this book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_YdwhFb1JR3528
Might I suggest adding https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023 to your reading list?
Ordinary Men is a good read on the subject too.
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023/
Here's some history for you.
People like you enable horrors. I'd recommend reading about how badly your attitude can go.