Christopher R. Browning's "Ordinary Men"

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses Browning's book "Ordinary Men", where Browning wants the reader to see how a unit of the German Order Police, who committed terrible acts by carrying out a number of killings and other atrocities as part of the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews of Poland, were actually "ordinary men". The paper describes Browning's analysis of these men, which is told in a detailed way and that exposes all the questions that might be raised. The paper also highlights the Browning's difficulty in explaining how ordinary individuals could commit such terrible atrocities against the Jews during the Holocaust.

From the Paper:

"Brown asks how these men faced this dilemma and offers a history of the Order Police, though that history does not explain the central issue of why these men acted so brutally and so out of their normal character. Browning does try to answer the question of why these men acted as they did, though he also points out that no one reason can be offered as to why the many man involved committed the acts they did. Any explanation would apply only to a percentage of the whole and not to all. One force that Browning does cite as important is the conditioning of society, conditioning that accustomed people to respecting and deferring to authority."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.
• Milgram, Stanley. "Behavioral Study of Obedience. In Eliot Aronson (ed.), The social animal (8th ed., pp. 27-55). New York: Worth, 1999.

More papers on Christopher R. Browning's "Ordinary Men":

• Analytical Essay # 4471 : "A Review of Christopher R. Browning's "Ordinary Men"
• Book Review # 128829 : "Book Review - "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning"
• Analytical Essay # 30169 : "Ordinary Men"

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