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Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland?
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In college while pursuing my degree in sociology one of my professors assigned the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 it was one of the most powerful books I have ever read. It does not justify their actions but gives perspective on what it takes to make a human go down that path. It explores the societal pressures, views and violence from within. It was not an easy read by any means but it was very thought provoking.
I recently read "Ordinary Men" about how normal polish police went from being civilian normal police to aiding the Germans in the Holocaust and it's scary how many parallels there are. It requires normal civilians and police to all step up and speak against it to stop
Edit: comrade pointed out these were German civilians. They are correct.
"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. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever."
A big thing that struck me: when the police who initially said "no" in front of the rest of the group were later asked how they were able to say no they talked about how they were older and financially independent. The young guys all said yes because they were focused on their careers and hoping for a promotion. I wonder how much of the same mindset controls our police in this country. If the chief of police is smiling at militia run check points, is the 24 year old cop ready, mentally but financially, to question him?
You might want to read ordinary men. It goes into a lot of detail on the explanations that soldiers came up with to justify their actions to themselves. One big theme was duty, basically "If I don't do this gruesome thing, the next guy in my unit will have to do it and that's not ok". Probably the one anecdote that stuck out to me the most was a soldier who would only kill children because he felt like he was freeing them from living lives as orphans since everyone else was killing their parents.
edit: This book focuses on a the history of a specific battalion working the final solution on the Eastern Front. If I recall correctly the men were reservists from an area of Germany that wasn't particularly pro-Nazi and were very "ordinary".
This entire post misses the mark. We're not calling them to arms, we're mocking them and pointing out their against tyranny stance has no litmus test they will actually apply. Their use of guns is partisan. This is the predicted step we all knew was coming: right wing support for police will be support for the gestapo as long as gestapo target their political enemies.
I recently read "ordinary men". Polish authorities interviewed polish police that aided the Germans in the Holocaust for ten years. Between those interviews and police documents we can see how ordinary law enforcement are coerced into aiding genocide. It's horrifying how familiar reading all that stuff is into today's light. I'm not saying genocide will occur but law enforcement mentality towards everything occuring is wrong. The mentality they are breeding is primed for dark things
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
Let's assume he is "sick", what is some medicine? Education maybe? I highly suggest you read this book and reflect deeply. 1/3 of the people enjoyed the murder (maybe you), 1/3 hated it but did it anyway, 1/3 refused.
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
A worthwhile read to that point
Of course, ordinary people carried out the holocaust.
There is an entire book dedicated to the why and how ordinary people did such awful things. If you want to educate yourself:
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
it's not just "fear". it's apathy, it's "just following orders", it's years of scapegoating and dehumanizing "the others", it's blind patriotism and nationalism, it's "doing evil for the good of the nation", it's "doing evil so my brothers and sons don't have to", etc etc
You should read this book called Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland if you've never read it.
Politicians weren't the ones pulling the triggers and burying bodies. The atrocities against the Jews and other minorities were not committed by a handful of powerful people. Thousands upon thousands of people had a part in it. Too many people think that there is nothing they can do.
A very interesting book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
Horrific...
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Interestingly, I just read a book called Ordinary Men and it tells a story of how a police reserve battalion became one of the Nazis most efficient killing machines. It shows how many Nazis back int he Nazi Germany era didnt want to commit horrific crimes but eventually became desensitised to it and ultimately very efficient at it. Sad those these asswipes in the article actually like it. Nut jobs!
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
Good time to recommend a very good book on this very subject read in college, <em>Ordinary Men</em> by Christopher Browning. It's from 1992 but I only graduated a few years ago so it's still very much up-to-date. It's about a regiment of Hitler's kill squads on the Eastern Front and talks all about the sociology and psychology of genocide. Highly recommended.
I would NOT recommend reading this now, but the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland goes into this. From the description:
> Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. 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. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.
Every person who says stuff like that should be required to read Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion, which heartbreakingly describes how a bunch of middle-aged German men (not the young, brainwashed Hitler youth, but regular policemen who had mixed feelings about Hitler's regime) gradually devolved into committing the worst crimes the Nazis had to offer. Every day men who had families and were normal people.
And also, people who would have 'tried to stop' the Nazis within Germany would have been killed.
It's completely incorrect. One of the best books on the subject is Ordinary Men - Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. The unit was an Order Police battalion, composed of middle aged reservists who were too old for frontline duty, but weren't invalids yet. Most were, as the title describes, regular middle aged men from Hamburg - police officers, factory workers, etc. The book follows the unit as it is deployed to Poland in 1942, at the beginning of the major Nazi extermination campaign against Poland's Jewish population (at this point, largely by shooting). Though the unit was under the command of the SS, the men therein were not fanatical nazis for the most part. Yet in their one year tour of duty, the 500 men of the battalion would be responsible for the deaths of at least 70,000, probably more, Jews. Some men refuse to do the shooting, and are not punished (their first mass killing, outside the town of Józefów, even features the unit's commander offering the men who did not want to shoot a chance to avoid it)
The portrayal from Stalingrad is a clear example of the Clean Wehrmacht myth, the idea that the German armed forces under the Nazis command were somehow separate from Nazi atrocities. This is not true in myriad ways, from the highest (slave labor being used in war industry) to the lowest, individual levels. Jews and POWs were summarily executed when military units initially advanced. Rape and looting were essentially not crimes in the East when committed by German soldiers. Official Army orders for Barbarossa contained the infamous "Commissar Order", which ordered soldiers to execute any Commissar or "thoroughly bolshevized" POW upon capture. We don't need to get into atrocity porn here, but if you're interested, do some searches for "clean Wehrmacht", there's a lot written about it
The interesting thing about the holocaust, especially in Poland, is that all the senseless killing was the culmination of centuries of racial prejudice. Non-Jewish Poles were greenlit to take life and property in the same way white Georgians were during Andrew Jackson's tenure in America. The point is, Hitler didn't wave a magical wand to make people start murdering. Nor did he send in droves of SS agents to conduct slaughter. Much of the killing occurred organically.
And after all, they're only sequels to Ordinary Men.
I haven't read it yet, but this book is on my reading list: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G1F0F84/
It was recommended as a good resource for understanding the answer to your question.
They are brainwashed, pure and simple. Pretty easy to do, too:
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
You are correct that the Nazis were meticulous record keepers. So much of our baseline knowledge of the Holocaust originated in the sheer weight of records that survived the War. Here is an example of one such document from a Euthanasia Center in Austria. Einsatzgruppen Commanders also filed reports that detailed initial efforts in Eastern Europe. This document is relevant to what you're interested in. With that said, there are noticeable points where we just don't have documentation or we only have minimal documentation. One example is that we don't have a "go" order for the Holocaust. By that I mean we don't have Hitler signing an order to kill the Jews.
So, I'm going to say something that might be a "no duh" but it bears mentioning. We don't have an exact kill count for the Holocaust. The 11 million total (6 million Jews) is an estimation. We don't know how many people were shot, we don't know how many people were gassed and we don't know how many people just vanished. As an example one of the Aktion Reinhard camps, Sobibor, has an estimated casualty rate of at least 160K and I've seen reasonable arguments that it's as high as 250K. These guestimates are based on the frenetic nature of the killings and the effectiveness of the Nazi efforts to destroy paperwork.
Now that I've framed it I want to note that the events at Rakov happened during a specific period of the Holocaust (The Einsatzgruppen Period). This period from between June 1941 to ~ January 1942 was focused on one mission- killing every Jew they found. The Nazis and their local collaborationists weren't taking down names in these smaller exterminations in towns and villages like Rakov. They came in and killed everyone and moved on. The totality of those counts forms the Map I linked earlier. At most the paperwork that would be established for a community would be the centralization of Jews in a Ghetto, the establishment of a Judenrat and perhaps an order to supply men for a work detail. It just wasn't established long enough to establish a fully fledged archive. The Rakov Ghetto lasted roughly 8 months.
The killings in Rakov wouldn't even be unique enough to get more than a few lines in the unit journal and a brief summary back to their higher HQ. An example of this is laid out in this [book] (https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=33KPIRVPN6MD9&keywords=Ordinary+Men&qid=1670916818&sprefix=ordinary+men%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-1) as an example. When the process of extermination switched from shooting to gassing we got an improvement in record keeping because the emphasis switched as smaller ghettos were centralized into larger ghettos and paperwork began to be kept so as to know where people were and when they needed to be scheduled for deportations. Even then we don't always know as the emphasis was on numbers. If a train called for 800 people and only 600 were scheduled for "relocation" then 200 would be press-ganged and forced onboard. Who they were wasn't always notated. They were just 601-800. Those who survived selection at the Extermination Camps sometimes had their details notated. Others didn't. Those who didn't survive selection vanish from the records.
TL/DR: I apologize for the accidental essay here and am happy to elaborate on anything if necessary but to try and summarize all of this the simple answer is that the amount of records we have on an individual person, town or Aktion is dependent on so many outside factors. In the case of Rakov the Ghetto didn't exist long enough to provide a paper trail and the emphasis of the Nazis wasn't focused on creating anything beyond the basics. When the processes of the Holocaust changed then you saw the paperwork created line up with what had been created in the Concentration Camps and relative to what was created for the Extermination Camps.
A link to the actual bill which I think you will find is being wildly misrepresented. The controversy arose from a comment by Rep. Fowler Arthur regarding the prospect of learning about the Holocaust by examining perspectives of both the victims and the perpetrators. Something that is incredibly valuable to do. Here is a book that anyone interested in how things like the Holocaust could happen should read.
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
<em>Ordinary Men</em> and the Milgram Experiment says that most of us would not stand up when asked to do horrible things. Obedience and authority are powerful psychological things, especially so when combined with brainwashing as happened in Nazi Germany. We all think we would do the right thing but the regular people who carried out atrocoties when asked to do by their evil superiors were normal people too. We have no idea how we would react under extreme stress and pressure from authority figures we trust but most of us would be horrified by what we would do in those situations. It's not that everyone in Nazi Germany was evil(again, not counting the higher-ups who absolutely were), it's basic human psychology.
Your comment is not correct. Most Germans were aware of the holocaust as it was happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_of_the_Holocaust_in_Nazi_Germany_and_German-occupied_Europe
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
>Or sk why there's no trace of poisonous gas in these so called gas chamber remains
>or why jewish newspapers stated 6 million dead before 1940
Newspapers also stated that 1-5 million died but it's irrelevant since the 6 million was based on post-war findings.
>why you only hear testimonies from jews and not German citizens
You can find non-Jewish testimonies such as these. If you're looking for testimonies of perpetrators, I'd suggest reading Ordinary Men.
>why there were actually 2.2 million MORE jews after the war ended?
Post-war data shows approximately 6 million missing Jews after the war.
If you are curious about learning more then I would strongly suggest reading through the Holocaust Controversies blog which has lots of information debunking deniers.
Последно много ме впечатлиха автобиографичните книги на Вера Мутафчиева - Бивалици I, II и по-малко III. Най-много ме покърти описанието на бомбардировките от 10 януари 1944 - на тази тема има още една книга, която ме чака "Бомбите".
Изчетох и всичко в читанката от Даниил Хармс - няма такъв абсурд, такъв хумор, разсипахме се от смях вкъщи. Пример: "Синята тетрадка 10"
В момента чакам да дойде и Ordinary men на Кристофър Браунинг.
I still take issue with those. I don't think the Nazi HR was circulating pamphlets that said "if you're uncomfortable with genocide please reach out to your manager".
A lot of people said no. They're incredible. And them saying no gave others courage to say no. The book "ordinary men" goes into this in depth.
But if I showed up to a place they were gassing and burning people, I doubt I would believe it was chill to tell people I wasn't cool with it.
The accountant of Auschwitz that was in trial a couple years ago twice put in for a transfer. They weren't granted.
Read "Ordinary Men." It's about how far people, in this case police officers, can take "just doing their job."
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
If you don't think you could have been one of those Nazi killers. Read Ordinary Men. FN CRAZY!
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
I think working for "news" organisations that are more propaganda than news chips away at your morals and world view bit by bit. Every day you're just a little more comfortable with the bullshit you (and everyone else at that media company) are putting out.
I read Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland last year, and it was extremely eye opening and confronting. It's all about the reserve police battalion 101, basically normal small town police who weren't swept up in the German propaganda, and were initially unwilling to commit those horrible acts (like mass murder) but it slowly became normalised and they became more willing and used to it all over time. Some even enjoyed it, and they became more brutal and horrific over time.
> Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.
> Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. 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. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.
> 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.
It felt extremely relevant to modern issues with the police brutality in America last year, and I think there's probably a similar mentality in Newscorp and other propaganda outlets. They start by pushing the line on what's ok, introducing more opinion than real news, muddying the waters on issues like climate change, not holding the government to account because it's 'their team' and over time it becomes so normalised and shifts their morals, that they push the line further and further and get more detached from facts and reality.
It's never a case of one day just snapping or deciding "I'm going to lie and print this bullshit that is harmful to society and democracy" it's all the little steps towards that, gradually over time. It's not such a big thing when you're pushing the envelope just a little or inserting a bit more misleading opinion and omitting a few facts that would undermine your argument. But then you go a little further the next day, and the next, and the next, and suddenly you're parroting the same shit as Alan Jones or whoever else that you would have disagreed with or mocked as 'not real news/journalism' a few years ago. And trying to justify it by saying 'I'm not as bad as Fox News/Sky News, so it's ok' and it's especially easy to justify it or feel like what you're doing is ok when nearly the entire media ecosystem is on the same side as you, like in Australia. If all your colleagues, and everyone over at the other major newspapers are doing it too, surely it's ok right? And you definitely don't want to be called out as a lefty/greenie or get cut off from your sources in government for holding them to account or not pushing the company line.
Jeg er heller ikke psykolog eller lignende men jeg har læst en masse krigshistorie.
En af emnerne her er hvordan man får soldater til at slå deres modstandere ihjel. Det er jo ikke normalt uanset hvordan man ser på det.
SLA Marshal og David Grossman har skrevet en del mere eller mindre lødigt om emnet, så deres værker + kritikken af dem er nok værd at kigge på hvis man interesserer sig for emnet.
Meget af det handler om hvor stor en % del af soldater som rent faktisk skyder på fjenden i kamp (d'herrer tager nok fejl, men snakken rundt omkring det er relevant)
Der er ex en stor tråd her om det:
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/208wwa/sla_marshall_dave_grossman_and_the_case_of_the/
EDIT:
Jeg kom lige i tanke om en anden bog som er relevant. Den handler om en politienhed i anden verdenskrig som blev sat til at skyde folk på østfronten (mest jøder som en del af holocaust).
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
Det er en virkelig uhyggelig bog fordi de her folk hverken er fanatiske SS folk eller på anden måde specielle, det er en almindelig enhed fuld af almindelige tyskere som alligevel ender med at myrde folk i 100 hvis ikke 1000 vis.
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> they don't fight for their country, but for the person beside them.
Yeah, well, that is the basic premise of this book.
> You have to be mentally ill to be antisemitic to a degree of violent behavior. No entirely sane person would be.
You're completely wrong.
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84/
> It's not exactly a plan that makes me think a sane person came up with it. At least in America, it's incredibly unlikely a not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect claim would fly though.
No mental illness is required.
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84/
I think we've maybe talked past each other. I meant that participating in the invasion and military action part was forced, and that those who participated in the military part weren't complicit in the civilian murder.
If you're interested in stuff like the paper you linked, although you've probably already read it, I recommend the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Which follows a police battalion who were made up of ordinary people, so none military men most who were middle aged, pulled from various industries in Germany to execute the final solution in Poland and how many of them went along with it.
Popular alternatives to Ordinary Men: Reserve Polic...
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