Ordinary Men

After last week’s class discussion and this week’s reading, I paid close attention to the men in Ordinary Men who were opposed to the mass murders of Jewish and Polish citizens. As we discussed in class, very few people opted out of the military action, even though there was no real threat for doing so. Of all of the people described in Ordinary Men who opted out of the mass murders, they were able to either successfully pass the orders on to other more willing soldiers or have their absence be overlooked altogether. Either way, at most, they suffered some ridicule from their comrades or were forced to take on a different job, like Wolfgang Hoffman. If choosing to not be a part of the civilian killings opened doors to other opportunities in the military, why didn’t other soldiers who were opposed to the actions take advantage and get out?

The main aspect of some soldiers’ refusal to carry on with the killings that confused me was that although they couldn’t kill the Jews themselves, they were content with letting their fellow soldiers continue to do the job. Lieutenant Buchmann was “indignant about how the Jews were treated and openly expressed these views at every opportunity” (103). However, he was obviously only indignant to a certain extent, as he made no effort to stop the massacre altogether; he only wanted to keep his hands clean.

The passage in the reading that disturbed me the most was on page 113: “Because there were children among the Jews we had brought and at the time I myself was a father with a family of three children, I told the lieutenant something to the effect that I was unable to shoot and asked if he couldn’t assign me to something else.” Several things bother me about this passage: First, although he won’t personally kill the Jewish children, he will assist in rounding them up and leading them to their deaths. Second, just because he is not personally killing them does not mean they aren’t going to be killed—almost saying that he would be alright with his children being killed, as long as he isn’t the one doing it. Third, Browning says that as soon as he made the request, several others did the same.

This is just another reminder of how much mob mentality played into the willingness to kill innocent citizens. If one person in each company had tried to stop, I think several more people would have followed. However, because the mob was going along with orders, people were able to accept the killings as acceptable societal norms.