The issue of complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust is made even more complicated with the existence of a unit of average middle-aged Germans who became the mass murderers of tens of thousands of Jews. They helped the Holocaust succeed as they were transformed from ordinary men into active criminals. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution by Christopher Browning is the story of how Hitler and his top officers manipulated and changed regular citizens into mass murderers by brainwashing them on the concept of duty and patriotism as they carried out Hitler’s Final Solution in Poland. By the time the 500 men of Police Battalion 101 disbanded in late 1943, they had killed at least 83,000 Jews.
The orders that were given to them were chilling, to say the least. The words did not seem to come from leaders of conscience at all. The activities of the men of Police Battalion 101 were measured and strictly accounted for. The phenomenon that was this battalion makes people today ponder at the mind-boggling transformation of ordinary men into killing machines.
No matter how the Nazis were successful in transforming these ordinary men into mass murderers, human conscience crept in, nonetheless. Some of the men showed remorse and tremendous guilt. The book’s author deftly explains how guilt slowly crept into the minds and hearts of these men who were, by all indication, not the evil souls that Nazi leaders were.
In a time of utter confusion when evil men were running their very dark world and their very troubled lives, there were still some of those that helped orchestrate the grand design of the Holocaust who saw a glimpse of conscience through the pangs of guilt. Nevertheless, they did what they did and were, thus, guilty of the sin of commission as much as they were criminally culpable.
