In this week’s reading, Ordinary Men, Browning does a fantastic job describing the background of these “ordinary men.” The reader gets a sense of the role that the Order Police played in the Nazi ruling period. I think the most horrifying thing the author wants the reader to understand is that the men chosen to be apart of the Order Police were just ordinary. There were middle aged, working class, and of German descent. Perhaps they were placed into the organization because of their age or choose to be apart of the organization because it was a “guarantee of completing one’s alternative to regular military service not only more safely but closer to home.” Regardless, they were ordinary people from a town that had little Nazi influence before the party took over and were turned into monsters.
These men obeyed orders to murder tens of thousands of innocent people. This has to make one question the humanity of mankind. How can a group of men be so brainwashed that they would give into the peer pressure, Jewish hatred, and sense of duty to the Nazi party? These men did exceedingly well at their tasks, and if such ordinary men could commit such acts, then maybe any group of ordinary people would do the same act.
The question you bring up is such a good one, and one that many continue to struggle with. It is so hard to think that in reality this could happen to anyone. The title of your post is perfect when keeping this question in mind. The men were just "following orders" and they were just regular police men doing their jobs. I think this might be a reason why we try to "blame" someone for the Holocaust or try to figure out who was truly responsible, because otherwise we fear it could happen again and be initiated and followed through by anybody.
ReplyDeleteI think that's one of the most difficult things to understand and really process, that these men who committed these horrific deeds were regular men, simply opting to join this Order because they wanted to avoid military service. Being fearful of required military service is, I find, common and trying to avoid that seems like something one would go at lengths to achieve. The fact that they became so immersed and absolutely enveloped in their Nazi allegiance (to the extent that they continued to carry out orders and like you said essentially became monsters) is baffling. I can only rationalize it to the mere extent that each of these men were probably too scared not to carry out the orders, but then we read those accounts of the men who cheerfully killed women and children with no remorse and you do have to question whether they carried an ounce of humanity in their bones. I agree that maybe the reason so many of us are so needing to figure out how this could all happen is because we don't know whether it can happen again, though of course we hope it never does. The fact is, we are ordinary people and although we harbor no feelings of hatred and are completely averse to murder, what would it take to change us? Would it be as simple as a threat of killing those we love? I guess what I want to know is what does it take to make ordinary men into such awful people and what fuels them to accomplish such malicious acts?
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