" Insanity is the exception in individuals. In groups,

parties, people and times it is the rule. "

-Nietzsche

The book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is an important work which helps to fill in and tries to explain an historiographical gap in the record about the genocide of the Jewish population of Europe during World War II. Most of the research on this topic has tended to focus on the concentration camps themselves with relatively little being devoted to how the Jews got sent there in the first place. The book also differs in the fact that it is told, not from the surviving victims point of view with the Germans portrayed as faceless characterized SS black uniformed guards, but instead it is from the German viewpoint. This personalization of the perpetrators is what gives the text its impact. The faceless view is easier to read of course as it involves less questioning of self.

Browning tries to explain how a unit of less then 500 men could, over an eleven month period ( mid-March 1942- mid-February 1943 ), murder a minimum of 38 000 and deport to death camps at least 45 200 Jews (p191). Where atrocities were by no means confined to the Nazis ( ie. the US Marine 'take no prisoners' policy in the island hopping campaign in the Pacific theatre ) it was only with them that it was not viewed as a breakdown of command and control but as government sanctioned standard operating procedure. For those involved "normality itself...had become exceedingly abnormal (pxix)."

This paper will focus upon the extraordinary find of a wealth of documentation, a brief summary of Reserve Police Battalion 101s activities, the personalization along with the moral dilemmas and rationalities followed by an attempt to answer how it was that ordinary men became systematic mass murderers.

The primary source of documents came from unit interrogations for Nazi war crimes by Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen ( Central Agency for the State Administrations of Justice ) held between 1962-67. There were 210 men interrogated from the unit which had less then 500 men in it during the war. Despite this obvious wealth of new information it was still hard to piece together exactly what happened even with 125 ( of the 210 ) detailed and lengthy interrogation records. This was due to conflicting testimonies, faulty memories after twenty years due to distortion and repression as well as self-serving lying, after all these men were on trial. Unfortunately collaborating victim testimony was almost impossible to find as the unit was very mobile and worked in conjunction with other units unlike the death camp guards. A prime example of the 'fine-tuning' of memories is shown by the portrayal of German-Polish-Jewish relations in the testimonies. There is little on German-Polish interaction although hints of the 'master' versus the 'lesser' races comes through. Anti-Semitism was avoided during the interrogations as under the law it would represent a " base motive (p150)" for a murder sentence as well as mention of it would indicate that the individual had bought

into the National Socialist program. There is specific and repeated mention of the lack of Jewish resistance to being executed indicating in some way culpability in their own deaths. In the area of Polish-Jewish relations the Germans were quite damning. The Poles were characterised as anti-Semitic and they went out of their way to help the Germans find Jews to kill. This 'betrayal' of the Jews by the Poles provided the Germans with a psychological crutch by passing the blame for the Jews deaths onto the Poles who helped to find them.

The Order Police, of which Reserve Police Battalion 101 was part, were used as occupation troops behind the front lines to secure lines of communication and supply, to round up POWs and their equipment essentially acting as standard military police units until 1940 and their participation in the relocation/deportation of Jews and Poles. In May 1940 101 was involved in relocating 36 972 (p39) Poles from the Incorporated Territories to the Central Government. In November 101 did guard duty for the sealed Jewish ghetto at Lodz and given standing orders to shoot " without further ado (p41) " any who tried to get out.

The make up of the unit changed in May 1941 with the clearing out of all pre-war recruits in favour of draft reservists, mostly middle-aged men not fit for front line service. While in Hamburg training, 101 was used in the round up of Jews in the city to be sent to the Central Government. Some of the men discovered that the fate of these Jews was to be shot but did not take part and in fact actively avoided the task.

In June 1942 101 was sent to the Central Government and within three weeks were given orders for unspecified ' special actions'. One of these was the Jozefow massacre. The unit was ordered to round up 'work' Jews and to shoot all others. The commanding officer of the unit, Major Wilhelm Trapp, made the extraordinary offer to the men to not take part if they were " not up to the task (p57)." Ten to twelve men took him up on the offer. Trapp then hid himself away from the executions and was obviously distressed. The orders called for on the spot executions of the old, infirm and small children, but mostly this was ignored and all were rounded up in the market. The men were given instructions on how to execute properly using their bayonets as aiming guides. They then had to take individuals into the woods and execute them. many could not or quit after a number of killings with broken nerves despite a supply of alcohol being made available. After the massacre they " ate little but drank heavily (p69)." They were depressed, angry, embittered and shaken. Major Trapp passed all the blame onto higher authorities. " By silent consensus within Reserve Police Battalion 101, the Jozefow massacre was simply not discussed (p69)."

Lomazy was the units next major action and the first in conjunction with the Hiwis ( Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian 'volunteers' from POW camps who were extensively used as shooters ). The Hiwis arrived drunk and at one point the Police had to relieve them of their shooting duties. There was no 'burden of choice' this time as there was no offer made to stay out of the shootings. This led to less evaders as men simply followed orders.

In August the deportations to Treblinka began. Where exactly the Jews were going was unknown but as far as their fate " it was clear and well known to all of us...we suspected that they would be killed in some sort of camp (p90)." At Miedzyrzec, with only 350-400 men, 960 Jews were shot and around 11 000 were put onto the death trains.

Mass shooting continued when Treblinka had to halt deportations due to over-taxing their killing machinery. At Serokomla the Police were told it was to be a resettlement but it was to be another massacre carried out in the same method as Jozefow.

After the killing of one of the units sergeants, higher headquarters ordered a retaliation massacre of 200 people from the nearby village of Taloyn. To avoid totally alienating the population they picked out, with the help of the mayor, strangers and " the poorest of the poor (p101) " but that only amounted to 78 people. To get up to the quota they executed 180 Jews from the neighbouring village of Kock thereby killing more than the quota demanded.

The deportations continued by the end of September with the Miedzyrzec ghetto being constantly ' re-stocked' and cleared and Lukow being emptied out through a combination of deportations and executions. In Lukow tricks were used to lure Jews from hiding such as the promise of new identity cards. Once collected they were summarily executed. The clearing of Konskowla involved much shooting due to a dysentery epidemic which made people too weak to be moved so they were shot on the spot.

A new tasking came at the end of September and was known by the unit as the Judenjagd ( Jew Hunt ). This was a systematic tracking down and killing of all Jews outside of the concentration camps as well as an attempt to discover all Polish partisans and Russian POW escapees. There was extensive use made of Polish informers/trackers as they knew the local terrain. The groups sent out on the Judenjagds were usually formed of volunteers.

November 1943 saw the last stage in the Final Solution carried out. The operation was known as Erntefest ( Harvest Festival ) a massive, quick operation designed to avoid any resistance. 101 provided guards for the killings at two work camps and finished off its tour fighting partisans before being withdrawn to Hamburg. Who were these men who carried out the systematic genocide of the Jews in the Central Government area of Poland? They were, as the title suggests, ordinary men and not trained killers.

The documentation contained an impressive amount of detail on the backgrounds of the officers and non-commissioned officers including education, employment, Nazi Party and SS membership. Collected together these statistics show a unit composed primarily of working class (~63%) and lower-middle class (~35%) individuals. Of the lower-middle class 3/4s were in sales and 1/4 in office work. Only a small number (~2%) were middle class professionals such as druggists or teachers. The average age was 39 and ~25% were Party members. The majority had just a secondary school level ( age 14-15 ) education (p47). Due to their age they had spent their formative years in the pre-Nazi era and therefore had different political and moral norms than the younger Nazis. They mostly came from one of the " least Nazified cities in Germany, and the majority came from a social class that had been anti-Nazi in its political culture (p48)." Seemingly then, this was a particularly bad choice of men for the task they were to undertake. They were far from Nazi zealots. Despite this fact few of the men appeared to have much in the way of moral qualms over the killings.

The first time they were offered an out by their CO only ten to twelve of them took it ( that made up ~10-20% of those involved ). The rest ( ~80-90% ) kept up the slaughter at Jozefow until 1 500 Jews had been murdered. The primary excuse given by those who could not continue through the whole process was physical, not moral/ethical/political revulsion. Arguments to save Jews seemed to be based around their particular usefulness as craftsmen and not on any moral grounds. In spite of the relative moral ease these men appeared to have with the killings, the unit experienced broad demoralization brought on by bitterness and resentment over having to carry out such orders. The later viewing of their deeds by one of the officers wives was met with feelings of " indignation and outrage (p93), once again for fairly selfish reasons.

Even though it became harder and harder to avoid shooting duty a small handful of men including one of the officers managed it. The officer in fact repeatedly requested a transfer back to Hamburg which he was eventually given but not before being forced by SS orders to take part in the executions at Lukow. These evaders had an easier time of it during the Judenjagd as they would only volunteer for anti-partisan operations and avoided the hunting down of Jews.

Of those who did not try to evade the orders being given, some became eager killers who always volunteered and on the whole the unit, eager killers and evaders alike became gradually numbed to their experiences.

The psychological plight of the men was not ignored by higher HQ. Specific instructions were drafted and handed down on how to take care for the men's spiritual needs after participating in massacres through the use of social events and propaganda. More often then not the real 'cure' seemed to be large amounts of alcohol. This caused a meteoric rise in the number of cases of alcoholism throughout the battalion.

After the first action at Jozefow the men attempted to rationalize and justify their actions to themselves. Examples include one man who only killed children as their mothers were being killed and no child could grow up without its mother. There were those who tried to 'master' the situation as the Jews were all going to be killed if they participated or not. There was also the feeling that to step out of the ranks would be 'weak' and 'cowardly'.

This psychological burden was relieved somewhat with the introduction of the Hiwis who took over the actual shooting duties most of the time leaving the men of 101 to take part only in the rounding up process. The other relief came with the deportations to Treblinka. Once again the killing could be left to others although as for the fate of the Jews they put on the trains " it was clear and well known...[they] suspected that [the Jews] would be killed in some sort of camp (p90)." In spite of this knowledge their detachment from the actual killing process allowed them to ignore it.

The difference between massacres by countries such as the US ( Marines in the Pacific versus the Japanese ) and Germany was that they did not stem out of official government policy. For the Germans it was standard operating procedure, a " methodically executed policy of government (p161)." Therefore the men of 101 were not acting out of brutalization, " frenzy, bitterness or frustration but with calculation (p161)." There are a number of theories as to how the 'ordinary men' of 101 were converted towards their task.

These individuals hardly seemed particularly suited for mass murder. On the whole they were middle-aged, working class men who were not specially selected for the task. In fact at the time they represented the " dregs of the manpower pool available (p165)." The dehumanizing of the Jews as the 'enemy' helped, as did the division of labour with the Hiwis and the camps. Bureaucratic functionality creating distancing may have worked for the higher HQ but was not a factor for the men of 101 who were doing the point-blank killings.

There is an argument that points to the existence of so-called 'potential fascist personalties' that are triggered by situational factors. " Nazism was cruel because Nazis were cruel; and the Nazis were cruel because cruel people tended to become Nazis (p166)." The problem with this explanation is that on ~25% of 101 was Nazi yet ~80-90% took an active role in the massacres. Other arguments point to the social dimension where the rarity is the one who can " resist authority and assert moral autonomy but who is seldom aware of this hidden strength until put to the test (p167)." The mere ~10-20% who evaded killing seem to attest to this.

Career ambitions seem to have effected a few cases but hardly all and the age old excuse of following orders is tenuous at best especially after being asked if they wanted to step out before the executions at Jozefow. That showed the likelihood of receiving punishment for their actions was minimal. The obedience to authority argument would have held more credence if the CO was not such a weak authority figure himself.

They were not particularly well indoctrinated either as the propaganda furnished for them was aimed toward a younger generation of SS man. Most of it appeared after they had already participated in mass killings so it could hardly be argued that it caused them to happen. A more credible argument revolves around the question of conformity. It was easier for many to shoot than to break ranks or disobey orders. To leave the killing to their comrades was risking " isolation, rejection and ostracism (p185)" in a unit which was isolated in unfriendly territory without any other social links. To avoid damaging the esteem of the others the evaders characterized themselves as too weak and not too good to kill which served to legitimize the toughness of the others therefore reaffirming the " macho values of the majority (p185)."

The conclusion drawn is that despite varying levels of pressure ( psychological, social, et cetera ) " human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter (p188)." However a caveat is added that traditions of racism, siege mentalities, deference to authority, careerism, bureaucratization leading to impersonalization and peer pressure on behaviour and morals are to be found everywhere. This all leads to the rather chilling final thought on this whole horrific process: " If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot (p189)."