In our continued reading of Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, it is still hard to come to terms with the willingness Battalion Unit 101 had in carrying out their gruesome missions. In our discussion in class, we tried to figure out why a group of “ordinary men”, who were not strong Nazi party supporters until their rise to power, could kill thousands with such ease. It was hard for us to come up with a “good” reason, as even the argument that they were carrying out their missions because they had to was met with criticism; they were many times given chances to back out with no repercussions, but the majority chose to execute their missions regardless. As Browning reasons, “The fundamental problem is to explain why ordinary men–shaped by a culture that had its own peculiarities but was nonetheless within the mainstream of western Christian, and Enlightenment traditions–under specific circumstances willingly carried out the most extreme genocide in human history” (page 222).
It is hard to understand the mindset and the reason these horrible atrocities were committed behind. The ultimate question this book tries to explain is why the men did the acts they did. All explanations can only explain part of the whole. Psychological and sociological analysis of these men can, at best, explain to a degree what went wrong. One can argue the strong anti-Semitism, overwhelming fear of the Nazi regime, desensitization over time, and intense peer pressure lead these genocidal killers to do what they did. The case of the Nazis is truly a dark point in history, and one that can only occur in extremely desperateness coupled with great timing and perhaps some luck. However, it is still hard to explain why ordinary men would follow orders of mass murder with such ease. In fact, genocide is still occurring in parts of the world today, even 60 years after the atrocities of the Nazis, ordinary men today are still willing to commit genocide.
I agree with James in that the main question the novel is trying to address is how such ordinary men could commit such horrendous acts. In the first half of the book, the author does a good job addressing the mindset of the ordinary citizens who were chosen to do this job, and in the second half, the aftermath and post feelings were discussed. Also James makes another very good point about how we can’t understand how such ordinary men were able to commit these acts, yet very similar acts of genocide are still committed in today’s age.
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ReplyDeleteJust to add to that point, I want to illuminate a small but crucial detail when talking about genocide elsewhere in the world with respect to the Holocaust. Even leaving the issue of scale out of the equation, genocide nowadays (which I am absolutely certain is still happening) has not happened in such a systemized fashion anywhere else. James used one of Browning’s points about the fact that this happened in one of the most progressive societies of the time, one based on “the mainstream of western Christian, and Enlightenment traditions” to great effect, somehow making this issue even less understandable, than one happening in a society based on a completely different cultural background.
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