Questions to Guide Your Reading

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men:  Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

1. What are some of the factors that caused the “ordinary men” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 to be able to do the things they did in Jozefow, Poland?  What, in other words, were the the reasons these men cited for not excusing themselves from the killing?

On p. 152, Browning talks about the "range of attitudes" towards Jews "revealed in less direct and guarded statements" made during the interrogations of the former reserve police battalion members.  Discuss the dichotomy of reactions to the Jews.  Why do you suppose there were these two very different reactions among the men?

On p. 161, Browning distinguishes between atrocities that occur "in the brutalizing context of war" -- those done by soldiers "who were inured to violence, numbed to the taking of human life, embittered over their own casualties and frustrated by the tenacity of an insidious and seemingly inhuman enemy -- versus those he calls "atrocity by policy":  acts done "not out of frenzy, bitterness, and frustration, but with calculation."  Which of the two, according to Browning, applies to the "Ordinary Men" of Reserve Police Battalion 101?

According to Browning (p. 162), "War is the most conducive environment in which governments can adopt 'atrocity by policy' and encounter few difficulties in implementing it."  Why is this the case?  How do governments accomplish this goal?

9. Browning suggests that "modern bureaucratic life fosters a functional and physical distancing."  Discuss what he means.  Then describe the following means by which bureaucracies can accomplish this "funcational and physical distancing": segmentation and routinization, the depersonalizing aspects of bureaucratized killing, the desensitizing effects of the division of labor.

10. In the course of Browning's study, did he find that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 had been carefully chosen as personnel particularly suited for mass murder?

11. If the Jozefow killers were not specially selected by the government, were they perhaps "self-selected"?  Explain the thesis of Theodor Adorno in this regard.  What was Zygmunt Bauman's response to Adorno's thesis?

12. Explain the results of Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment.  According to Browning, what light does Zimbardo's study shine on the Adorno-Bauman debate?

13. On p. 169, Browning asks the following question:  "If special selection played little role and self-selection seemingly none, what about self-interest and careerism?"  Good question.  What is his answer?

14. As Browning notes (p. 170), among the perpetrators of such atrocities, orders (i.e., that they were under orders from their superiors) have traditionally been the most frequently cited explanation for soldiers' behavior.  What does Browning think of this explanation?  What about "putative duress"?

15. Explain the results of the famous "Milgram Experiment" (designed by Stanley Milgram).  Why did Milgram conclude that "Men are led to kill with little difficulty"?  (Does that conclusion trouble you?  Because, of course, if people can be led to kill with little difficulty, what else might they be led to do to others under peer pressure?)

16. Does Browning think ideological indoctrination materials played a major role in the behavior of the Jozefow killers?

17. What, according to Browning (p. 184), is another "vital factor" responsible for the behavior of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 that was "touched upon but not fully explored in Milgram's experiments"?  Explain the significance.

18. At the end of p. 189, Browning asks the following troubling question:  "If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"  What would be your evaluation?