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Marcus Aurelius
01-23-2019, 12:29 PM
Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution In Poland

Christopher R. Browning

The Amazon blurb is a good summary...

"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."

25143

Browning spends the first 17 chapters reconstructing the actions of Battalion 101, based on testimony given by the policemen during their war-crimes trails in the 60's and early 70s. Chapter 18 is devoted to psychological analysis. Here is the first paragraph...

"Why did most men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 become killers, while only a minority of perhaps 10 percent - and certainly no more than 20 percent - did not? A number of explanations have been invoked in the past to explain such behavior: wartime brutalization, racism, segmentation and routinization of the task, special selection of the perpetrators, careerism, obedience to orders, deference to authority, ideological indoctrination, and conformity. These factors are applicable in varying degree, but none without qualification." [p. 159]

He then spends the rest of the chapter dissecting those influences, citing a number of interesting psychological experiments and historical case-studies. In the end, he concludes that no single influence was strong enough to create cold-blooded killers, but the combination of various factors had enough influence on enough people to catalyze brutal, genocidal behavior. Browning warns us that we are by no means immune to such a thing happening again. The last paragraph...

"At the same time, however, the collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications. There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority, and indeed could scarcely function otherwise. Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?" [p. 189]

In other words, given the right circumstances, most of us are capable of moral atrocity. Although Browning leaves it at that, I will add my own opinion: a morally upright life begins with the acknowledgment that we have a demon living within us.

Helena
01-23-2019, 01:29 PM
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."

I know this question may come across as snarky, but at the moment I can't seem to construct it any other way. Is the moral of the story here to not be most people?

I know for myself and talking with some others, that we try to imagine ourselves in a given situation, and we like to believe the best of ourselves. "Oh, I would never do that.. I would die before I..." and so on.

It's easy to say these things not being faced with a particular situation. I have come to believe that so many little factors build up over time to unimaginable horrors.

We point out the bad guys in history as much as we know about "bad". Yeah, that's bad, Don't be bad, Don't be evil, Never Again. It's a shallow consideration when we can't or won't acknowledge that yes, we can be bad, we do evil and yes, it can happen again.

This is particularly grievous when certain factions and groups accuse others of much the same. I fall prey to it aplenty. JUST KNOWING something is bad or isn't right can easily, EASILY lead to wrong thinking moving toward WRONGDOING, even though initial intentions may be viewed as good and helpful.

Each of us, I believe has a touch of of the Social Justice Warrior. I know I do. I think the term, of course is cast in a bad light. It's a loaded term. Looking at the younger generation now who scream their heads off at the slightest provocation or imagined slight, it's easy to feel disgust at some of their actions. It's hard to look at ALL of the factors that bring groups of people and generations to act the way that they do.

And I feel genuinely sorry for people, either the SJW or those who wouldn't imagine ever being called one, but whose political and social ideals lead them to entrenched thinking and needing, wanting to have peer approval. Which leads to worse. It leads to literally calling for the heads of those who you genuinely think or have been programmed to believe will do you harm. It comes from a place that this behavior is intolerable and must be extinguished and punished in the most severe way possible to send a message that this is not okay.

And it's hard to write this, because even in the writing of it, I can think of some groups who I genuinely do believe ARE dangerous and DO wish me harm. I don't believe they have a place in our society and I'm alarmed that they are making inroads conspicuously, taking advantage of our tolerant positions and knowing that we will be called hypocrites and alarmists for pointing out the actual dangers.

So, it's a hard thing, because everyone FEELS they are right to begin with and without introspection and a constant, constant, CONSTANT beating down the demon ego, it is so easy to say things (for example, turn the middle east into glass) even if one doesn't really mean it, it can easily turn into really meaning it, and for a lot of political reasons and excuse making.

Another thing in my rambling, everyone has family and/or people dear to them that they love and seek to protect. This has always been and always will be exploited in various ways by people in power to keep people in line. How do we protect ourselves, our families, our loved ones when we want to be good? Does that question make sense? I think we have to acknowledge that a firm foundation of right thinking, a tearing down of ourselves every day in order to do right will still be exploited by evil. Do we and should we make it a priority of teaching,that yes, you will be pressured at some point to do wrong things in order to protect your family and friends? Should we all be willing to die for them if we don't comply, knowing that that still won't protect them?
Is it more honorable to go along to get along because one loves their family, or is it more honorable to resist, RESIST, knowing that you AND your loved ones will die, possibly be tortured or put through other circumstances which are harmful?

Mister D
01-23-2019, 01:39 PM
Ordinary Men is considered a classic although I have not read it. Marcus, this may be of some interest. I thought it was great.


https://www.amazon.com/SS-Dirlewanger-Brigade-History-Hunters/dp/1620876310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548268787&sr=8-1&keywords=dirlewanger+brigade


The Dirlewanger Brigade was an anti-partisan unit of the Nazi army, reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler. The first members of the brigade were mostly poachers who were released from prisons and concentration camps and who were believed to have the skills necessary for hunting down and capturing partisan fighters in their camps in the forests of the Eastern Front. Their numbers were soon increased by others who were eager for a way out of imprisonment—including men who had been convicted of burglary, assault, murder, and rape.

Under the leadership of Oskar Dirlewanger, a convicted rapist and alcoholic, they could do as they pleased: there were no repercussions for even their worst behavior. This was the group used for its special “talents” to help put down the Jewish uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, killing an estimated 35,000 men, women, and children in a single day. Even by Nazi standards, the brigade was considered unduly violent and an investigation of its activities was opened. The Nazi hierarchy was eager to distance itself from the behavior of the brigade and eventually exiled many of the members to Belarus. Based on the archives from Germany, Poland, and Russia, The SS Dirlewanger Brigadeoffers an unprecedented look at one of the darkest chapters of World War II.

Marcus Aurelius
01-23-2019, 02:37 PM
I know this question may come across as snarky, but at the moment I can't seem to construct it any other way. Is the moral of the story here to not be most people?

I know for myself and talking with some others, that we try to imagine ourselves in a given situation, and we like to believe the best of ourselves. "Oh, I would never do that.. I would die before I..." and so on.

It's easy to say these things not being faced with a particular situation. I have come to believe that so many little factors build up over time to unimaginable horrors.

We point out the bad guys in history as much as we know about "bad". Yeah, that's bad, Don't be bad, Don't be evil, Never Again. It's a shallow consideration when we can't or won't acknowledge that yes, we can be bad, we do evil and yes, it can happen again.

This is particularly grievous when certain factions and groups accuse others of much the same. I fall prey to it aplenty. JUST KNOWING something is bad or isn't right can easily, EASILY lead to wrong thinking moving toward WRONGDOING, even though initial intentions may be viewed as good and helpful.

There's a lot in your post to think about, so I have to take it in chunks. I think what you've described here is one of the three "great fallacies" that Lukianoff and Haidt proffer in The Coddling of the American Mind, which I posted about here (http://thepoliticalforums.com/threads/105087-The-Coddling-Of-The-American-Mind). The fallacy is that life is a battle between good people and bad people. That sort of fallacious thinking quickly leads to dehumanizing and eventually demonizing those whose opinions (or physical characteristics) differ from ours, and that's a slippery slope to brutality. Is that what you mean by WRONGDOING in your post?

But life isn't merely a battle between good people and bad people. Human beings are the most complicated organisms in the universe (that we know of), and most of us possess some mixture of good and bad in the best of times, and we are capable of tremendous evil or sacrifice in the worst of times.

Marcus Aurelius
01-23-2019, 02:42 PM
Ordinary Men is considered a classic although I have not read it. Marcus, this may be of some interest. I thought it was great.


https://www.amazon.com/SS-Dirlewanger-Brigade-History-Hunters/dp/1620876310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548268787&sr=8-1&keywords=dirlewanger+brigade

Thank you for the recommendation! I ordered the book, but I'll read it sometime in the future. Ordinary Men is the third WWII book I've read in as many months, and these things weigh heavily on one's soul.

Marcus Aurelius
01-23-2019, 04:05 PM
Each of us, I believe has a touch of of the Social Justice Warrior. I know I do. I think the term, of course is cast in a bad light. It's a loaded term. Looking at the younger generation now who scream their heads off at the slightest provocation or imagined slight, it's easy to feel disgust at some of their actions. It's hard to look at ALL of the factors that bring groups of people and generations to act the way that they do.

And I feel genuinely sorry for people, either the SJW or those who wouldn't imagine ever being called one, but whose political and social ideals lead them to entrenched thinking and needing, wanting to have peer approval. Which leads to worse. It leads to literally calling for the heads of those who you genuinely think or have been programmed to believe will do you harm. It comes from a place that this behavior is intolerable and must be extinguished and punished in the most severe way possible to send a message that this is not okay.

Again, the best analysis of the SJW mentality that I've come across is in The Coddling of the American Mind. The authors describe multi-layered reasons for the phenomenon: a change in parenting philosophy geared to overprotection, the influence of cyber culture, the notion that ideas can be physically harmful, and the post-modern outlook on rhetoric as a weapon with which to shout down your enemies, rather than as a tool for truth-seeking.

Also, it's just a helluva lot easier to fling feces at your opponents. If you take the time to actually consider their opinions: read their literature and really listen to what they're saying, well...that's hard work. That's high-resolution thinking, as JP calls it, and we are essentially geared to low-resolution thinking to get us through life day-by-day. It takes a serious effort of higher consciousness to really delve into complex issues, and all of us are prone to be lazy and resort to slogans. That's what happens on most of these kinds of forums: people throw slogans at each other, and that somehow qualifies as discussion. (Well, not to the smarter people of course, but to many.)

Helena
01-23-2019, 08:02 PM
There's a lot in your post to think about, so I have to take it in chunks. I think what you've described here is one of the three "great fallacies" that Lukianoff and Haidt proffer in The Coddling of the American Mind, which I posted about here (http://thepoliticalforums.com/threads/105087-The-Coddling-Of-The-American-Mind). The fallacy is that life is a battle between good people and bad people. That sort of fallacious thinking quickly leads to dehumanizing and eventually demonizing those whose opinions (or physical characteristics) differ from ours, and that's a slippery slope to brutality. Is that what you mean by WRONGDOING in your post?

But life isn't merely a battle between good people and bad people. Human beings are the most complicated organisms in the universe (that we know of), and most of us possess some mixture of good and bad in the best of times, and we are capable of tremendous evil or sacrifice in the worst of times.


Yes, that is what I meant in large part.

Again, the best analysis of the SJW mentality that I've come across is in The Coddling of the American Mind. The authors describe multi-layered reasons for the phenomenon: a change in parenting philosophy geared to overprotection, the influence of cyber culture, the notion that ideas can be physically harmful, and the post-modern outlook on rhetoric as a weapon with which to shout down your enemies, rather than as a tool for truth-seeking.

Also, it's just a helluva lot easier to fling feces at your opponents. If you take the time to actually consider their opinions: read their literature and really listen to what they're saying, well...that's hard work. That's high-resolution thinking, as JP calls it, and we are essentially geared to low-resolution thinking to get us through life day-by-day. It takes a serious effort of higher consciousness to really delve into complex issues, and all of us are prone to be lazy and resort to slogans. That's what happens on most of these kinds of forums: people throw slogans at each other, and that somehow qualifies as discussion. (Well, not to the smarter people of course, but to many.)
But, don't ideas have consequences? And there's the tricky part, separating the notion that your idea or opinion can hurt me right now, even mortally wound me ( which results in hysterics and calling for people's heads) vs seeing where this idea, notion or opinion will ultimately lead. I think it can get pretty tangly. Because if I see where your opinion has in history led, or where it might lead, aren't we right back to being nervous about certain ideas and wanting to correct them? Nip them in the bud. Punish that idea or train of thought so thoroughly so that an example is made and people will think again before voicing that idea publicly.

Am I misunderstanding that an idea can't hurt you? No, not by itself, I understand that. But where it leads. Have I completely misconstrued part of what you were saying?

Ethereal
01-23-2019, 11:30 PM
Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution In Poland

Christopher R. Browning

The Amazon blurb is a good summary...

"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."

25143

Browning spends the first 17 chapters reconstructing the actions of Battalion 101, based on testimony given by the policemen during their war-crimes trails in the 60's and early 70s. Chapter 18 is devoted to psychological analysis. Here is the first paragraph...

"Why did most men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 become killers, while only a minority of perhaps 10 percent - and certainly no more than 20 percent - did not? A number of explanations have been invoked in the past to explain such behavior: wartime brutalization, racism, segmentation and routinization of the task, special selection of the perpetrators, careerism, obedience to orders, deference to authority, ideological indoctrination, and conformity. These factors are applicable in varying degree, but none without qualification." [p. 159]

He then spends the rest of the chapter dissecting those influences, citing a number of interesting psychological experiments and historical case-studies. In the end, he concludes that no single influence was strong enough to create cold-blooded killers, but the combination of various factors had enough influence on enough people to catalyze brutal, genocidal behavior. Browning warns us that we are by no means immune to such a thing happening again. The last paragraph...

"At the same time, however, the collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications. There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority, and indeed could scarcely function otherwise. Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?" [p. 189]

In other words, given the right circumstances, most of us are capable of moral atrocity. Although Browning leaves it at that, I will add my own opinion: a morally upright life begins with the acknowledgment that we have a demon living within us.
The Nazis were masters of mass manipulation and propaganda. Many members of the Nazi machine were brought into the US to work for the US government after the war was over. But I'm sure this had no effect on how the US government operated.

Ethereal
01-23-2019, 11:33 PM
Thank you for the recommendation! I ordered the book, but I'll read it sometime in the future. Ordinary Men is the third WWII book I've read in as many months, and these things weigh heavily on one's soul.
Just curious, have you looked at Pat Buchanan's WWII book?

Marcus Aurelius
01-25-2019, 03:24 PM
Just curious, have you looked at Pat Buchanan's WWII book?

Do you mean Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War? I'll check it out, thanks!

Marcus Aurelius
01-25-2019, 04:15 PM
Yes, that is what I meant in large part.

But, don't ideas have consequences? And there's the tricky part, separating the notion that your idea or opinion can hurt me right now, even mortally wound me ( which results in hysterics and calling for people's heads) vs seeing where this idea, notion or opinion will ultimately lead. I think it can get pretty tangly. Because if I see where your opinion has in history led, or where it might lead, aren't we right back to being nervous about certain ideas and wanting to correct them? Nip them in the bud. Punish that idea or train of thought so thoroughly so that an example is made and people will think again before voicing that idea publicly.

Am I misunderstanding that an idea can't hurt you? No, not by itself, I understand that. But where it leads. Have I completely misconstrued part of what you were saying?

The SJW "culture" doesn't consider an idea damaging because of its predicted consequences based on history. I don't think SJW's think that far ahead (or behind). The fact that an idea opposes their ideology is enough to consider it damaging, violent, threatening, etc. Their behavior is infantile in the extreme: if you don't like something, throw a tantrum. Unfortunately, they've often been rewarded for their tantrums, so they continue to throw them. Somebody should have sent them to their room with no supper when they were three-year-olds. (The psychology is more complex than that of course, but bad parenting is a big part of the equation.)

Theoretically, if a particular opinion has ultimately caused society some damage in the past, we should be able to sit down with the persons holding that opinion, lay the facts out on the table, and present the case rationally. Then some debate could be had, and some mutual understandings reached, and a new awareness found. Bat that's the behavior of mature, well-adjusted adults seeking the truth - people who aren't desperately clinging to their half-baked opinions out of sheer ego.