Synopsis of Ordinary Men Book by Christopher Browning - Assignment Example

So cliche is the phrase “it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it” that it goes unnoticed, yet this was the attitude of reserve police battalion 101. “Ordinary men” just doing their jobs… “With a conservative estimate of 6,500 Jews shot during earlier actions like those at J6zef6w and Lomazy and 1,000 shot during the "Jew hunts," and a minimum estimate of 30,500 Jews shot at Majdanek and Poniatowa, the battalion had participated in the direct shooting deaths of at least 38,000 Jews1.

” Over and over again the book provides detail after detail of the depth to which the men sunk, “just doing their jobs” in the parlance of modern life. “Ordinary Men” seeks to answer the question of why these men would allow themselves to be ordered to commit such atrocities, and willingly comply. The experiments of Milgram were discussed. The effects of brainwashing were discussed. Various theories were examined and discussed in a hopeless desire to find some rationale to explain the actions of reserve police battalion 101.

There was none to be had. Profoundly depressing and cautionary in a very subtle way (“would I have obeyed and murdered these people” is the implied question for the reader), this is a book that the reader either embraces or rejects. The implications of this book concerning how one view humanity and human nature are profound. People want to be optimistic, and want to view humanity as being good, yet after reading this book one is left with the unsettling and depressing revelation that there are no depths to which “ordinary men” will not go if ordered by proper authorities.

We look at history to inform us of the past, to offer insight into our future, and to provide answers to recurring problems that plague mankind. The history presented by Browning is disturbing, the implications that such history will repeat itself are nauseating and the subject is simply distasteful. We do not reject the insight, we reject the evil and its presentation, that at the end of the day, such profound evil should be so banal. In the end, Major Trapp, Lieutenant Buchmann, First Sergeant Krammer, and a policeman were extradited to Poland to stand trial in 1947 for the reprisal shooting of 78 Poles at Talcyn.

Major Trapp and the policeman were sentenced to death and executed in December 1948. Buchmann received a sentence of eight years and Krammer a sentence of three years. In the 1960s an investigation was performed in Germany, with the result that fourteen men were indicted and placed on trial in October of 1967, some 25 years after the killings in Poland. A verdict was rendered in April of 1968: Hoffmann, Wohlauf, and Drucker were sentenced to eight years, Bentheim to six, and Bekemeier to five.

Grafmann and the five reserve policemen were declared guilty, but at the judges' discretion… they were given no sentence. … A lengthy appeals process finally concluded in 1972. The convictions of Bentheim and Bekemeier were upheld, but they also received no sentence. Hoffmann's sentence was reduced to four years, Drucker's to three and a half years. The case pending against other members of the battalion was dropped by the prosecution in light of its inability to get sentences against any but three defendants in the first trial. The records of Reserve Police Battalion 101 are still stored in Hamburg, Germany. The members of the Battalion are in all likelihood dead now, some 65 years after the end of hostilities