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vendea's review against another edition
5.0
Listened to the audio book of this. I think I had a reprinted version with a second afterword that addressed some of the scholarly criticism the first edition received.
Overall I think it was very well written. I especially appreciated the analysis of motivations at the end, and the comparison with other leading historians and authors theories on the determining factors in the behavior of these men.
Overall I think it was very well written. I especially appreciated the analysis of motivations at the end, and the comparison with other leading historians and authors theories on the determining factors in the behavior of these men.
jplatzer's review
5.0
I had this book recommended to me by John Merriman, a professor of history at Yale. The course was part of an OpenCourse offering at Yale called France since 1871. I highly recommend the OpenCourse offerings, particularly at Yale and UC Berkeley. They're excellent and they give you free access to some of the top professors in the country.
This is a short book (approximately 200 pages) long but Christopher Browning packs a ton of information into it. The book is about Reserve Police Batallion 101 and their involvement in the Final Solution. The book also follows several other police order groups in Poland. While many of the names have been changed to protect the guilty (German privacy laws are strict), his meticulous research yields a near complete story of their involvement in the execution of the Final Solution in Poland. Using interviews conducted at the conclusion of the war, he pieces together how "ordinary" middle-aged German men from Hamburg came to be executioners in the Order Police. There is so much detail packed into this book that I would highly recommend it to any researchers. You could quote this book on nearly every page.
That said, I didn't agree with all of Mr. Browning's conclusions. First, the assumption that these men were "ordinary". I don't believe that anyone living during the National Socialist years was "normal" in the conventional sense. The populace had been so inculcated with propaganda since the early 1920s that many (particularly the young people who would one day join the Hitler Youth and the SS) were rabid nationalists and had been desensitized to any but their own worldview or Weltanschauung. Mr. Browning assumes that the older generation (many of whom had served in WWI) were cultured enough and independent enough to "know better". In a perfect world, I would agree. But Nazi Germany was a dystopia where nothing was truly "normal". That's not to suggest that these men were born killers. But in my opinion the societal and cultural shifts implemented by the Nazis "primed the populace" for the dirty task that laid ahead. As an American with a German father, it's a sad stain on a nation that is supposed to be one of the most cultured in Europe.
In the end however I think Mr. Browning's book is an informative, meticulously documented read and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this period of history.
This is a short book (approximately 200 pages) long but Christopher Browning packs a ton of information into it. The book is about Reserve Police Batallion 101 and their involvement in the Final Solution. The book also follows several other police order groups in Poland. While many of the names have been changed to protect the guilty (German privacy laws are strict), his meticulous research yields a near complete story of their involvement in the execution of the Final Solution in Poland. Using interviews conducted at the conclusion of the war, he pieces together how "ordinary" middle-aged German men from Hamburg came to be executioners in the Order Police. There is so much detail packed into this book that I would highly recommend it to any researchers. You could quote this book on nearly every page.
That said, I didn't agree with all of Mr. Browning's conclusions. First, the assumption that these men were "ordinary". I don't believe that anyone living during the National Socialist years was "normal" in the conventional sense. The populace had been so inculcated with propaganda since the early 1920s that many (particularly the young people who would one day join the Hitler Youth and the SS) were rabid nationalists and had been desensitized to any but their own worldview or Weltanschauung. Mr. Browning assumes that the older generation (many of whom had served in WWI) were cultured enough and independent enough to "know better". In a perfect world, I would agree. But Nazi Germany was a dystopia where nothing was truly "normal". That's not to suggest that these men were born killers. But in my opinion the societal and cultural shifts implemented by the Nazis "primed the populace" for the dirty task that laid ahead. As an American with a German father, it's a sad stain on a nation that is supposed to be one of the most cultured in Europe.
In the end however I think Mr. Browning's book is an informative, meticulously documented read and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this period of history.
byashleylamar's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deportation, Child death, Genocide, Murder, Police brutality, Violence, Antisemitism, Death, Hate crime, and Religious bigotry