Ordinary Men

Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

By: Christopher R. Browning

Narrated by: Kevin Gallagher

“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust.""—Newsweek

Now available in audio for the first 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.

Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Horrifying Documentation of Evil in Humanity

This is a most unpleasant book. It is important for recognizing the potential evil existing in humanity (ourselves - that means YOU and ME). I confess I only read the book because Jordan Peterson recommended it.

It documents how ordinary men, most of whom under normal conditions, would never dream of performing horrific acts of murder of helpless old men and women, children, men, women and even pregnant women! Under conditions of war and receiving orders, they nevertheless performed them!

The first few chapters just plainly describes with historical proof the mass killing of Jews by mostly middle aged policemen recruited to avoid depleting the ranks of more fit younger men to fight in WW2. There was a great aversion to doing this by most, and a few refused, but not out of morality per se, but out of disgust. Others performed them only out of fear of being called a coward or weak or betraying your country. Actually forcing these men to kill was almost never the case, which greatly surprised me. They were directed and ordered to do it, and most did. Those who refused were often shunned by the others, but rarely punished.

Later the book goes into more detail about anti-Semitism in Germany and the NAZI dehumanizing of the Jews. Rationalization by these "ordinary men" was that Jews are the enemy and this is a job someone has to do, and after all they are or would be bombing German civilians if and when they do.

Like reading the Gulag Archipelago, I would not listen to it all at once, but maybe a chapter once a week or a month, so you don't get too depressed! Oh, the reader is very good and unemotionally reads, making it all the more shocking and poignant!

ordinary men review

This gives an inside look at the men that carried out these atrocities. The mass killings of these innocent people is definitely hard to listen to. This book I had to listen to in small bits because of it.

Good after the middle, but too many details

So many details that they often drown out any good information and any interest one would have in the book.

A MUST!!

If you want to understand what everyday people are capable of, you must read this; it’s horrific and sobering but essential!!

Infuriating and Heartbreaking

Man is neither good not evil. He has the capacity to he both. While there is without doubt something in man that responds to goodness, this book shows man at his worst.