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Friday, May 14, 2010
Ordinary Men #1
Evaluate Browning's thesis in light of class discussions and the Goldhagen readings. Does it hold water? Do any of Goldhagen's criticism undermine Browning? Discuss, citing examples from all three required readings.
Browning’s views towards the holocaust and the participants seem very sensible to me. Browning argues that the soldiers who committed mass murder were not monsters, but simply men coerced and pressured into involvement in atrocities. Browning does not seem to want to completely excuse the soldiers, but simply show the world that they are human and help others see why these “ordinary men” engaged in such horrific behavior. Since there was not wide spread information on the subject of genocide to the same scale experienced in World War II before, the men involved in the mass executions for Nazi Germany did not have any education or experience in dealing with their situations. Overall I found Browning to be very reasonable, even if his bombardment of statistics were slightly overbearing for me as a reader. Browning’s opinions on the matter is supported by the experiments done by Milgram and Zombardo as well as other events that have come to pass since World War II and now. As seen in Abu Ghraib and several psychological experiments, humans act harshly and out of character when dealing with authority. I understand that Goldhagen believes that the surroundings of Germans at the time of World War II led to the willingness to engage in mass executions, but I personally believe that Browning’s views are much more sound. Goldhagen claims that living in Germany led to a highly anti-Semitic collective consciousness that led to malicious Genocide. Without the full knowledge of a historian comparable to Browning my opinion may easily be flawed but I disagree with Goldhagen, mostly because Browning’s views are supported by history and experiments. People like Milgram and Zombardo have proved that normal people will go surprisingly far if ordered to do so. When authority, regardless of whose authority, becomes involved the actions taken by participants becomes separated from original morals and intentions. Goldhagen points out that the members of Battalion 101 had the opportunity to not participate. Goldhagen claims that because the men still murdered that their intentions were more malicious than Browning suggested. However, Goldhagen’s writing does not take into account how much pressure the men were under even though they were not forced to kill under threat of death as Goldhagen illustrates. It seems as though Goldahgen’s views are somewhat single minded and disregarded by most historians. Overall I did not find Goldhagen to undermine Browning. Goldhagen may be right in that the anti-Semitic culture of Europe may have had something to do with the spirit of Nazi Germany – but not the individual participants of the Order Police, and especially not the unit focused on in Browning’s book.
Browning’s thesis is one of significant value. Not only did he support his ideology with key examples, but the experiments portrayed in the class videos helped prove Browning to be correct. While many say there is no justification for an ordinary man to become a killer when they have the option to excuse themselves, the men defended themselves by stating that they feared their consequences. Nonetheless, as stated in the article, The Evil of Banality by Daniel Goldhagen, “not once in the history of the Holocaust was a German killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews.” As a result, Browning argues several factors that helped individuals with the willingness to kill. “Within virtually ever social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms” (Browning 189). These factors induced things such as dehumanization, peer pressure and the desire to conform. Due to Browning’s logical discussions, Goldhagen supports him in the fact that “even men who were not eager to kill, men who would have been though unlikely to kill, killed with great accomplishment when placed in a proper social psychological setting.” Nonetheless, Goldhagen goes on to show the lack of precision and consistency in Browning’s investigations. For instance, he claims it is out of focus, distorted, and lacks evidence and key information. For instance, one individual who refused to kill in the first operation voluntarily offered to key in the follower operations which Browning failed to mention. Also, there is no evidence that during the killings these men felt shame, which is a powerful and painful emotion that would have been produced by a consciousness of guilt, of having committed moral violations, states Goldhagen. Overall, Goldhagen firmly agrees with Browning’s contributing factors; however, he feels there is much more to it. “Browning is undoubtedly right that social psychological pressures eased the Germans’ transformation into mass murderers. And he is right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets” (Goldhagen 52). However, other sources claim that Goldhagen is the one who lacks in his ideology support. “In demonizing the Germans, Goldhagen resorts to accusation as evidence, or, put in another way, he only suggests proof that he does not supply” (4). Still, I believe that Browning puts forth a thesis that can very well be proven correct. While one article tries to peruse its readers that Adolf Hitler’s polices were due to the spontaneous preferences of the German people, I feel Browning’s ideology holds more water for this situation.
I think Browning's thesis holds up. I think that the reason that Browning's thesis holds water because it takes into consideration the fact that they were human and that they didn't necessarily want to do what they did. In the Goldhagen readings, it said that not everyone who lived in Germany could be portrayed as a killer and I think that can be applied to Browning's thesis. The men in the battalion did what they did because according to Browning they felt the need to conform to those in charge and with their group. On the other hand, the Goldhagen reading said that there were specific categories that the Nazis fit into. There wasn't much room for grey areas whereas in Browning's thesis explained the grey areas. Goldhagen said that the men were either for or against Hitler's or misled by German propaganda. Goldhagen also said that the average person who worked in a flower shop was not morally right and would turn in Jews. Meanwhile, Browning said that most men in the police battalion who were average citizens when they went back home, refrained from participating in the murders and did what they could to get themselves out it. In the Evil Banality, Goldhagen said that the men who doing most of the shooting were the S.S. men. This undermines Browning's thesis to a slight extent because the premise of Browning's thesis is about how ordinary men could shoot and commit mass murder. Goldhagen also says that Browning misinterpreted information such as Trapp's statement. Goldhagen basically states that Browning takes information out of its context and inaccurately portrays the facts. Goldhagen undermines Browning's
Browning’s thesis is one of great importance when it comes to the evaluation of the atrocities during the Holocaust. The acts of the men in Police Battalion 101 are horrific and unthinkable which lead many people to jump to the idea that they were monsters and wanted to kill which Browning says differently. In the book Ordinary Men Browning discusses how peer pressure, the desire to fit in, and authority caused ordinary men to become murders. When you are part of a close knit group, one is very likely to follow the crowd and that holds true in Browning’s book. The men of Police Battalion 101 did not want to seem like cowards or outcasts so they did what they were told. This leads to the other influence, authority. As the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo show, not only peer pressure but authority too plays a huge role in our actions. Even when people were not part of a group they continually followed the orders that were given to them such as in the shocking experiment when a “teacher” have to give an electrical shock to the “student” every time they got a question wrong. Goldhagen feels that this thesis does not have enough support for his states how the men were never threatened when given orders but these experiments with everyday people show how Browning’s thesis holds true. Threatening people with consequences is not the only way to get them to do horrible things which is proved by Browning’s thesis and the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo. Goldhagen does agree with much of Browning’s ideas but still feels that much is missing. He writes how the thesis lacks a focus and support. Also how Browning left out information on how men volunteered to kill and how no one felt shame. The acts of German men can be analyzed from many different points of view but you could never fully understand it unless you were one of them. Just the atrocities of the war alone desensitized the people and the constant anti-Semitism pushed at them only further diminished their feelings. Although Browning may have some faults in his thesis I feel that Goldhagen is the one who truly lacks support for he uses his accusations of Germans as evidence while Browning has true evidence and examples for his thesis.
Browning finished his book with " If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"(Browning 189). At first, the men seemed to be uneasy about the killings and they really got to them, "they were depressed, angered, embittered, and shaken" (69). Many turned to alcohol for the answers to their problems. However, after being in the Reserve Police Battalion for some time, the men stopped being effected by the killings. "The men... seemed scarcely to have been disturbed" (90). Browning's thesis seemed to be that if put in certain awful situations, anyone could turn into a killer. In Ordinary Men, there were hundreds of men who belonged to the Battalion, so most of them were probably not cruel people who wanted to kill thousands of Jews when they first joined it. However, what Browning was saying was that the situation these men were put in forced them to be killers. The factors that forced these were to kill, according to Goldhagen were "peer pressure, the desire to conform, was the reason that most of these men did not extricate themselves from the killing. The social psychological conditions, the objective and keenly felt pressures of the group." Goldhagen also said "The Jews had been dehumanized by the pervasive anti- Semitism of Nazi Germany. Some of the men had professional ambitions that they believed might have been harmed had they refused to kill. During a "race" war, he believes, it is easy to turn civilians into "the enemy." Goldhagen mentioned that Browning had difficulties using the testimonies of the men. A lot of these testimonies could not be trusted because obviously the men were not going to admit to being killers. His criticisms were correct because Browning would often state something, but not have any evidence or enough of it to back it up. I definitely agree with Goldhagen when he said "And he is right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans' behavior in all its facets. The members could have extricated themselves from the killings." Browning kept saying that these men turned into killers because of the situations they were put into, and it could happen to anyone. Not a lot of responsibility was put on these men by Browning, which Goldhagen was saying. These men could have gotten out of it because it was wrong. Browning brought up the fact that there were many opportunities for these men to back out, but most of them did not. Only about 15% of the men chose to back out from the killings. In Demonizing the Germans: Goldhagen and Gellately on Nazism, it talked about the Germans in general, not just the Nazis, allowing the killings of thousands of Jews. "The Germans let Hitler and his minions, soldiers, policemen, and bureaucrats, kill the Jews because they fundamentally agreed with Hitler that this was a good ideas" (2). Not only did the policemen and Nazis kill all these Jews, but Goldhagen goes on to generalize that the Germans just sat back and let all these people die because they agreed with it. Goldhagen basically blamed all of the killings on every single German. He stereotyped that just because you were a German during that time, that meant you were a Nazis against the Jews and the other groups that were percsecuted. It wasn't right that some people who knew about the Holocaust did nothing to stop it, but Goldhagen thought that all the Germans should be blamed for it, when in reality a lot of people didn't know about the killings until after they happened. Browning was right because the men acted a certain way because of their situations, but Goldhagen was right because the men did have the chance to not kill without any consequences.
Browning’s thesis definitely holds water. His thesis is thorough and well-developed. In addition, Browning used a number of primary documents to support his thesis, which made it more reasonable than Goldhangen’s. Browning went through all of the testimonies that were available to him. He accurately and effectively utilized the sources. When reading Ordinary Men, I was so impressed by both the depth of his discussion and the extensive research that he had done.
There are many reasons why Browning’s thesis is far more sensible than that of Goldhagen. For one, he explained what factors had caused the ordinary German citizens to turn into cold-murders of tens of thousands of Jews. Browning argued that because of “depersonalization, habituation, wartime brutalization, conformity, deference to authority, careerism, obedience to orders, and ideological indoctrination,” the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 gradually became used to the killings. He also used the theses/hypotheses of other historians and psychologists to back up his own. For instance, Browning dedicated one chapter on discussing the results of Stanley Milgram’s controversial experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. He concluded from both experiments that it was possible for a perfectly normal, good person to be barbarized, if she/he was under the pressure of conformity, peer pressure, and authority. In a way, Browning eradicated the statement that the Nazis were brutal because they were monsters. Unlike Goldhagen, who had argued that the Holocaust was “uniquely German,” Browning pointed out that wartime brutalization was universal to all countries. For instance, during the Vietnam War, the American troops committed notorious atrocities such as the massacre of My Lai. Also, Browning acknowledged the merits of the opposing views. For example, he cited that Zygmunt Bauman’s argument, “Nazism was cruel because cruel people tended to become Nazis.” While acknowledging the opposing views, Browning pointed out their weaknesses. He concluded that Bauman’s argument was historically inaccurate since “ordinary [German] people did not commit fascist atrocities” and that not the majority of the Germans supported Hitler’s proposals on the race problem.
Six years after the publication of Ordinary Men, Daniel Goldhagen put forth his own theories. While both historians did research that was based on the testimonies of the men from Reserve Police Battalion 101, their arguments could not be any more different. Their disagreement was mainly on the motive for murderous behaviors. Goldhagen wrote that the men were “willing executioners” even though there was plentiful evidence to prove him wrong; many policemen had confessed that they were horrified by the sight of corpses, and many had nightmares about their victims. Nor did he point out that at ten percent of the policemen who had openly expressed their disapproval of their jobs, refused to participate in the shootings. Goldhagen stated that the men of the reserve did “nothing to stop the killing.” This may be bloody true, but he did not acknowledge the amount of stress that each man was under, and also the consequence that one may suffer from acts of insubordination. He also branded the men “passive, indifferent” to the killings, and that they “killed for fun.” This is why Goldhagen’s thesis fails because it is based on the “stereotypic definition of German anti-Semitism.”
In conclusion, without accurate historical evidence, Goldhagen’s thesis did not undermine Browning’s thesis even one bit.
AnnMarie Augusto Mr. Kirby AP European History 31 May 2010
Christopher Browning's book, Ordinary Men, is an aloof assessment of the rationale as to why allegedly ordinary men would, in time of war and necessity, let slide that thin facade of society, which partitions us from animals, and commit atrocities such as the actions described in the book. Christopher R. Browning’s thesis and overall view regarding the participants involved in such acts of violence was sound and holds up. The men in the battalion carried out these horrific actions because of their self-inclined feelings to obey authority. The majority of the men most readily did not want to go forth with the orders they were told, but ultimately caved in and complied with what they were assigned to do. Browning’s last sentence in the book makes the reader think twice about the complex psychological thought process of the men at war. "If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?" Although this does arouse an intricate and thought-provoking question, Browning's objective was to uncover the reasons why normal persons could go down to such horrendous depths. Galdhagen came to the conclusion that during the Holocaust a great fraction of the killers were ordinary Germans who killed because of their upbringing in a intensely anti-Semitic culture, they were ready and willing to carry out the government’s orders to kill Jews. Goldhagen went against Browning’s thesis claiming that the ordinary Germans not only knew about the holocaust and the atrocities it came with, but they actually wanted to take part in it and support it because of the way in which German society had evolved overtime. Goldhagen believes that “Browning's portrait is recognizably that of the battalion, yet it is out of focus, and some of its crucial features appear markedly distorted.” He claims that Browning discusses the difficulties the men had to go through, but he fails to mention the criteria and significance of such verification. Also, as the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo demonstrate, not only peer pressure but authority figureheads play a huge role in human actions and choices. Shockingly enough, when people were not in a group, but on their own making decisions, they repeatedly followed the orders that were demanded of them such as in the appalling experiment when a “teacher” was ordered to give an electrical shock to the “student” every time they got a question wrong. Although Goldhagen does make some good points, I ultimately think Browning’s thesis holds water because of his in-depth reasoning and evidence he using in the book to support his claims.
I feel that Browning’s thesis is of great significance. He takes into consideration how the human mind works and functions when placed in certain situations. This situation just so happens to be the Holocaust in which millions of innocent European Jews were mass murdered due to anti- Semitism.
He does an exceptional job at demonstrating how “ordinary men” were turned into systematic killers uneven though they did not want to kill or become killers. He presents key factors such as conformity, peer pressure, and authority as the driving force of the atrocious actions committed by these German policemen. Therefore, Browning argues that these soldiers that committed these acts were not evil or immoral but that they were forced into doing these horrendous acts. I thought that Browning’s viewpoint to be sensible and that he used evidence and facts to back up his opinions pertaining to the matter at hand. His viewpoints were also supported by the experiments carried out by Zombardo and Milgram. Also, the videos we watched in class helped prove Browning to be right. Also, many people argue that the normal or ordinary men can not just become murders when they were given an option of not participating in the killings and that they policemen defended themselves and their acts due to their fear of the consequences that followed if they did not kill. On the other hand Goldhagen claims that, “not once in the history of the Holocaust was a German killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews”. I feel that this statement holds significant weight however Browning backs up his argument of how the men were peer pressured into doing these atrocious acts as he states towards the end of his book, “Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms” (page 189). This is especially true with the depersonalization of the killings and the soldiers’ need to conform to the situation they were presented. Therefore even though Goldhagen does make a few good points in his argument he doesn’t quite undermine Browning’s opinions concerning the “ordinary men” during the Holocaust.
In my opinion Browning's thesis is right on target. His perception of those involved in the Holocaust is not only very insightful, but seemingly accurate. While Browning does not simply let all soldiers "off the hook", he goes to great length, with great support to show that these men, these "ordinary men" engaged in horrific actions as a result of factors greatly beyond their control. Given the time period, little evidence existed to aid these men in the right direction, or to realize what they were about to embark on or the ultimate results of their actions. Even given this information, or a retrospective look back on what happened, orders are orders and are meant to be followed, and will be followed under great authority ( As show in many post WW2 experiments including at both Stanford and Yale). To summarize his thesis, I would agree in that humans will act out of character in relation to authority. I believe that much of Goldhagen's criticisms are based loosely on facts and too much on a poor understanding of history. Of one consideration I hold to great importance from Goldhagen would be his assertion that Browning failed to mentioned, for example, that many men volunteered to be killers without any shame. While there is a whole psychological profile or explanation that may be attributed to that, Browning's failure to mention such impacts his credibility.
Goldhagen makes the assertion that the anti-Semetic atmosphere of Europe is highly to blame for the participation of many in the Holocaust. This fails to take into consideration a great deal of evidence that supports claims that participation in the Holocaust can be attributed to a great deal of other factors. Among these factors includes the vulnerability to act as directed under authority. The impact of this factor can be directly seen in the Milgram and Zombardo studies, both of which showed an increased willingness to act against moral belief under the pressure of authority.
Goldhagen also points out that many members of Battalion 101 had the option not to participate. While this is true to a certain extent, again, Goldhagen ignores seemingly obvious factors that would prevent a great many from taking such route. Again these factors mainly revolve around the pyschological impact brought about by mass-common action taken by other men under the influence of authority.
In conclusion I do not believe any of Goldhagen's criticisms undermine Browning. Browning thesis is supported by strong historical and experimental data. Goldhagen's assertions are based merely off opinion.
Browning’s thesis that so-called “Ordinary Men” can become mass murders still holds up in light of the Goldhagen readings. Browning’s work is revolutionary in the sense that it puts faces to the men who were given the gruesome task of helping to exterminate the Jewish population in parts of Poland. This significantly changes the way others will look upon these people who otherwise might only be viewed as automatic killing machines. Browning’s work reminds the rest of the world that these men had held normal jobs, had normal families, and led ordinary lives. He forces his audience to pause and think a moment before automatically judging all these men as brutal, heartless and inhuman.
In “The Evil of Banality” Goldhagen recognizes all of these things as being true, but he still sees some gaps and places of stretched truth in Browning’s work. He says that all of Browning’s figures don’t match up, that some of his assumptions don’t hold any merit. He believes that Browning doesn’t answer all questions and that he assumes too much by relaying so heavily on individual testimony. However, I would still give Browning’s thesis great merit. I think that individual testimony is very important in understanding events of such magnitude, such as the Holocaust.
In “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” Goldhagen argues that Hitler was not the manipulator of his forces, but rather the enabler. He says that the German people were in general anti-Semitic and that Hitler was following the wishes of the German people in attempting to exterminate the European Jewish population. While Browning argues that almost anyone can be manipulated into a monster, Goldhagen is saying that the men in Police Battalion 101 became seasoned killers because they were German. Personally, I would have to agree with Browning. Experiments such as the Stanford Prison Experiment have proved that ordinary people can be manipulated into thinking and behaving a certain way all too easily. While Goldhagen’s argument might be more reassuring to the non-German population, it does not hold the same merit as Browning’s.
Browning's thesis is basically the following: While situational, psychological, and other forces may, to some extent, shape our moral and ethical values, it is really the power of conformity and to a smaller extent, authority figure(s), that really cause us to behave the way we do. He goes about proving this by analyzing the actions of a specific group of individuals, the Reserve Police Batallion 101, and shows how though they were primarily only "forced" to act the way they did due to propaganda and some social and psychological forces, it was really the desire to conform and the obedience to authority that caused them to behave the way they did. While Goldhagen and Browning agree that it was "the participation of numerous 'ordinary' Germans in the mass murder of Jews, and second, the high degree of voluntarism they exhibited," they fundamentally disagree on the reasons why the Police Batallion, and to a larger extent, the German populace of the time, behaved the way they did. Goldhagen believes that due to a strong, already existent hatred and discrimination towards Jews, the German populace's indifference to the actions of their government in respect to the Final Solution, and their election of Hitler, that the German people are "willing executioners" and not ordinary men that were swayed by forces greater than them. He states that, "personalized cruelty and violence toward Jews was the rule, not the exception, during the Holocaust." I find his thesis and suggestions to be heavily inappropriate and generalizing of 80 million citizens of Hitler's Third Reich. As the second reading states, this is absolutely untrue for a number of reasons, one of them being that by making these assertions, Golldhagen essentially argues that all types of Germans, those who did not express concern with the Jewish populace, those who agreed, etc. He fails to consider that the same forces of conformity and authority that binded those 80-90% of the police executioners in the Reserve Batallion most probably also held the German people back from expressing much concern over the treatment of the Jews. Goldhagen attempts to generalize, while Browning uses bucket loads of primary documents to support his argument, and uses the Milgram and Zombardo experiments as support to back up his thesis. I do not believe Goldhagen's argument holds water. Browning was absolutely correct in his assessment of the Police Batallion, and I believe that any people, pushed to the extremes that the German populace was pushed to following World War I would have reacted almost, if not worse than how the Germans behaved in World War II. The German people were not willing executioners, they were ordinary people who, even in the context of the Nazi attitudes and beliefs that prevailed in Nazi Germany, acted in the way they did because of the forces that affect all of us, some more affected than others, conformity and the obedience to authority that all of us are raised to listen to. The Holocaust is over; it happened, and it really showed us how evil we as a species can be, even to each other, but the Germans are not the only people that would behave in such a fashion- it is just as likely that it could have been any other people on Earth, if they were faced with the same forces the Germans encountered. Goldhagen also does not take into account the power of the forces the Germans encountered before he denounces the German people as willing executioners. He does not undermine Browning, and his thesis is not really that valid in comparison with that of Browning.
I think Brownings view points were right on point. he believed that the soldiers who committed the crime were not people with pure evil thoughts but were just normal people taken from normal households who were put under orders and felt obligated and pressured to comply.Browning doesnt want to completely forget about the actions the soldiers had committed but he just wants to be able to get the point across that if we were put in the position that the soldiers were how would we react and truth be told we probably would order the bad commands not because we are evil but because its human and its in our nature to follow commands from people who are superior than us even if they are not right. “Browning is undoubtedly right that social psychological pressures eased the Germans’ transformation into mass murderers. And he is right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets” (Goldhagen 52). Goldhagen supports what browning says about the soldiers but he believes that the pressure put on ordinary men can be an excuse to only a certain extent because there is only so much that pressure can do. pressure cant kill the person. the soldier kills the person with his own will. he can step down. he can put his own life on the line but reality is, they wont. the zimbardo and milgram experiment also supports brownings thesis. it shows how sometimes pressure isnt the only factor that plays a role in the way people take orders but superiority also plays a huge factor. when the player would press the button the shock the person, they did it even when frightened to death because they knew they "had no choice".
Browning's thesis regarding the Holocaust and the atrocities that occurred is without a doubt significant and valuable. He argues that although the actions were unimaginably horrible, there were many reasons that could have accounted for the actions taken. "As important as the lack of time for reflection was the pressure for conformity" (Browning 71). Browning takes into account that the human psyche is often desperate to fit in and not draw attention to oneself. He also says that while there were many men in uniform, not all of them were directly involved with the mass murder of thousands of Jews - "If only a dozen policemen stepped out at the beginning to extricate themselves from the impending mass murder, a much larger number either sought to evade the shooting by less conspicuous methods or asked to be released from the firing squads once the shooting had begun" (74). Browning also mentions the fact that some men felt obligated to participate because of their "careerist ambitions" (75). Rather than painting a two-dimensional picture of monstrous men who kill people with no guilt or care, Browning sculpts a much more complex model of many individual men and the thoughts going through their minds that explain layered reasons as to why they performed the actions that they did. Based on class discussions, Browning's thesis definitely holds water. Based on experiments and occurrences in history such as the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, many people are far too willing to conform. Goldhagen's criticism does and does not undermine Browning's thesis. While Goldhagen refers to the book as "oddly incomplete," "out of focus," and "remarkably distorted," he also agrees with Browning by saying that anyone can become a cold killer if put into certain circumstances (Evil of Banality). Goldhagen also states that there are problems regarding interpretation, such as the choice to use the word "killer" or "shooter" (Evil of Banality). However, I do not think that Goldhagen's criticisms hold much water because he does not have specific evidence regarding what actually happened during World War Two and instead talks about how people would read the book - without hard facts and figures, it is difficult to trust Goldhagen's opinions due to a "huge logical lapse" (Demonizing the Germans).
Browning thesis holds significant water. He states that the actions of these basically ordinary Germans were forced by peer pressure, government influence of anti-emetic ideals, and changing mentalities brought on by witnessing killings and brutal beatings. This thesis is backed up by both Milgrams and Zimbardo’s experiments. They show that when ordinary people are put into extraordinary circumstances where they are giving great power of the lives of other, many times they will develop sadistic actions. Goldhagen does give this credit to Browning in The Evil of Banality. Yet he says Browning faltered in his idea of the ordinary man. He goes into great discussion on how an ordinary Aztec man is different from that of an ordinary man today. This idea, is brought up again when he discusses the fact that ordinary German men of the time were already influenced by the anti-Semitic ideas of the strongly influential Nazi government. However Goldhagen does not discuss what Browning had said about the origin of these German men. Many of these German soldiers were from Hamburg, a city far away from the Nazi heartland of Bavaria, and also one with a high Jewish population. Many of these police officers grew up with Jewish influences from friends, neighbors, and employees. Many weren’t known to be anti-Semitic, they truly were ordinary, no more anti-Semitic than many Americans or British men. It seems that Goldhagen simply read Ordinary Men, and then researched the minor flaws he could find. So even though many of Goldhagen’s criticisms of Browning’s work at first show possible flaws in Browning’s work, at the end of it all through further research it shows that Goldhagen didn’t fully investigate Ordinary Men. He simply took pieces of information that would easily support his theories. Browning had to use interviews and unfinished sources to create his book. Reading Goldhagen’s articles only further proves the thesis of Browning.
In my mind, Browning’s thesis is still plausible. Though he may have occasionally speculated (which I don’t think he did), the majority of his arguments are backed by hard facts, witnesses’ first-hand accounts, and a confident tone. I still believe that Browning is correct in saying that the men in the Police Battalion 101 were ordinary men situated in a gruesome situation and as a result became cold-blooded killers and that Goldhagen’s statement, “The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 Were not ordinary "men," but ordinary members of an extraordinary political culture, the culture of Nazi Germany, which was possessed Of a hallucinatory, lethal view of the Jews. That view was the mainspring of what was, in essence, voluntary barbarism” is not, in its entirety, effective enough an argument to defuse Browning’s thesis. I believe this because the culture of Nazi Germany is part of the situation that these individuals were part of. Also, the area that this battalion came from was never completely absorbed by the Nazi movement. It is true that the men in the battalion may have harbored some Anti-Semitic views, but over all their actions are more in line/similar with the actions of individuals in the experiments conducted in the United States. Thus, Goldhagen’s argument loses some credibility. A second part of Goldhagen’s criticism that I feel he is incorrect in stating is the fact that he believes Browning speculated too much. Browning used many primary sources and valid facts fro support his thesis and being interested in this topic made inferences and incorporated his findings and beliefs into his book. That does not signify that his argument is unsound. If anything, it proves that he is curious historian/ researcher who was out to look for the answer to his question. Finally, Browning’s book looks mainly at how ordinary men can be pushed to do extreme things and his book reflects that he discovered how the situation can manipulate the mind. Though Goldhagen says that Browning’s closing statement about how anyone could be killers, he is incorrect in taking this statement o the extreme by saying, “His explanation, then, is essentially situational. Even men who were not eager to kill, men who would have been thought unlikely to kill, killed with great accomplishment when placed in a proper social psychological setting. And so, he implies, would the rest of us, or at least those of us who harbor some prejudice. We, too, he thinks, would succumb to similar pressures, especially to the pressure to conform.” This statement is extreme(ly wrong) because even Goldhagen himself states that Browning relied heavily on the Milgram and Stanford experiments, where it was proven normal friendly people could do horrible things. Thus Goldhagen ignorantly stating his belief that it not plausible to imply that even we can do awful things is laughable because he is momentarily turned a blind eye to facts he himself used to when criticizing Browning. To conclude, Browning’s thesis holds water despite Goldhagen’s attempts at criticizing it.
Browning’s thesis is more valid than Goldenhagen’s for the main reason that he utilized primary sources and the theories of others to create his thesis. He poured over records of mass killings and interviews of members of the Police Battalion 101 and applied the results of the Stanford prison experiment and Milgram experiments to his thesis. In fact, he spends a whole chapter outlining how those experiments apply. What makes it even more believable is that he accounts for grey areas where Goldenhagen does not. Goldenhagen puts people into two categories, those who believe in Hitler and those who don’t, those who are misled by propaganda, those who will or won’t commit immoral acts. Browning accounts for the people who are in between these people: the people who switch between committing wrong acts, the ones who weren’t sure of what they thought about Jews. Another way that Browning’s thesis stands stronger is in the fact that he derails Goldenhagen’s thesis of the Holocaust being caused by anti-Semitism by explaining when the men were going to kill Jews that meeting Jews from their area had a big impact since many of the men had Jewish friends. How could anti-Semitism be causing their horrific acts if they weren’t anti-Semitic? Browning’s thesis is supported by research done by Milgram and Zimbardo, esteemed psychologists, in that they show that peer pressure ca cause humans to do horrific things. This is a lesson that people should keep with them.
Browning believed that even though the men who committed mass murder for the Nazi’s during WWII were given the option to avoid the firing squad chose not to because they felt overwhelming pressure to do as their peers, as well as the fear of negative consequences towards their careers. These circumstances, though not complete excuses, should be considered when deciding who is to blame as well as who is to be punished and the severity of the punishments. I completely agree with Browning on this. Yes, the men all committed heinous crimes that cannot go unpunished. But, there is no limit to the amount of pressure a person can receive from themselves, from their peers, from their leaders, and from society. That pressure is the reason why ordinary men who would ever commit murder went on to kill hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Jews. They couldn’t bear the thought of being persecuted by the other soldiers for refusing to kill. They didn’t want to lose the chance of being promoted or having a future in the armed forces. They didn’t want to disappoint the country and the leaders which they were given the task of protecting. Browning using firsthand accounts and facts which he clearly presents in order to back up the findings I have come to agree with. Goldhagen on the other hand chooses to target the social culture of Nazi Germany as the catalyst that took ordinary men and made cold blooded killers. Personally I don’t believe that a single thing could cause hundreds of men to take actions that they never thought in their entire lives they could or would commit. Browning points out many different things that caused the change in the ordinary men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 to become participants in genocide. The German government did work very hard to convince its citizens that Jews and other minorities were the enemy, but I don’t believe that even the most crazed country propagandizing anti-Semitism could convert hundreds of men into cold blooded killers. Also, Goldhagen’s accusations that Browning speculates lacks merit. While Browning doesn’t have a complete knowledge of the exact thought process of every member of the Reserve 101, every conclusion that he makes is completely based off of the use of firsthand accounts, written documents, and factual statistics. I don’t believe that the assumptions made by Browning were without strong evidence.
Despite Goldhagen's criticism, Browning's thesis is still valid. Goldhagen primarily criticizes that Browning relies heavily on testimony from members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 itself, and points out especially the factor of self-serving bias in such testimony ("The Evil of Banality").
However, despite some fudged information such as several quote misattributions and apparent fact-concealing on Browning's part ("The Evil of Banality"), much of his thesis still stands, that ordinary men can be turned into killers through the psychological power of groupthink, situational duress, and authority. "Demonizing the Germans" notes that Goldhagen oversimplifies the German population into a group composed only of sadists, automatons, and indifferent people; yet this doesn't hold water, as it fails to acknowledge those ordinary people who comprised RPB 101 also held morals and even so, committed atrocities.
In some ways, Goldhagen does undermine Browning by noting that he failed to acknowledge that not all members of RPB 101 were as compassionate as portrayed; for instance, one man noted for volunteering to sit out of the Janeslaw Massacre went and participated, volunteered, even, for future massacres ("The Evil of Banality"). Examples such as these, if true, severely undermine Browning's thesis of situational pressures and the moral awareness of the men in RPB 101.
Overall, however, Browning's thesis does present a new point of view on the Nazis and the active role of those involved in massacres, and should be considered an important analysis of the period, no matter the possible factual omissions.
I feel Browning's thesis is significant and can be seen in many events through out history and modern times. Although Goldhagen felt that there were more factors that caused the men to become murderers, his criticism did not completely undermine Browning's ideas.
I feel that Browning's thesis was very important and could connect to many incidents in history. One experiment done in later studies observed individuals given an inhumane task. A researcher would order the individual to ask another unseen individual a question, and if answered incorrectly the man would have to send a shock to the respondent. Like Browning's "Ordinary Men" many of the individuals held no personal hatred towards the victims and did not know the victim. It is shown here that individuals will follow orders when given by someone seen as a superior or one with authority. The man in the later experiment was not given an incentive or punishment, yet followed through without much resistance, like the soldiers. In a similar situation a game show had volunteered contestants ask a man questions and send him a shock for his incorrect answers. Like the man in the experiment, the contestants participated in the inhumane practice without an incentive and although some hesitated they did not say no and stop. This contestants listened to a mere host, the "Ordinary Men" were under a military authority which can be seen as a greater force.
Another study that showed the role of figure heads was the prison experiment. Several college students volunteered to stay within a prison to study several affects. One group of students became the "wardens" while the others were prisoners. Through out their time the students became their roles and lost their initial morals. One student said that when he put on his uniform he became the character, that it was his costume and he became someone else entirely. This could apply to the ordinary men in the Holocaust.
In addition, peer pressure plays an enormous role in individual's behaviors. The men in "Ordinary Men" were exposed to the growing antisemitism, and although they had no previous hatred for the Jewish community, they began to conform and follow the mass trend. Leaders, such as Hitler, will use persuasiveness to mold followers into believing that the blame can be placed on one group of people and as the idea spreads, more are willing to accept the new thoughts. Peer pressure can also be seen in everyday situations. Simply a teenager giving into peer pressure to experiment with drugs. The teen, for the most part is not being threatened, but mob mentality brings them to give into the pressure and although it may go against their beliefs, they will follow the crowd.
Although Goldhagen may be correct that there are several more factors that would lead to the "Ordinary Men" becoming murderers, I feel Browning was very accurate and his ideology can be seen in many situations, even today.
Christopher Browning’s thesis is of great significance and is very sensible because he says that the men who were participating in the mass murder and genocide weren’t at fault but rather lost in their violence. The way the men in Police Battalion 101 acted were terrible and absurd and make people jump to conclusion that they were horrible people and should be severely punished. But the men did not really have a choice and carried out bad commands given to them because of their self inclined feelings to obey authority, in a way they were forced by peer pressure. In real life, if they actually had a choice, most of men probably did not really want to carry out the orders but ultimately caved in and complied with what they were assigned to do. On the other hand, Browning doesn’t utterly forget and excuse the wrong of the actions of the men but want to get the point to get across that if we ourselves were put in the positions that the men were put in, we probably would order the bad commands not because we actually mean it and are bad but because it’s human and it’s in our nature to follow commands from people who are superior than us even if they are wrong. Goldhagen agrees with Browning’s ideas but feels that much is still missing. He states Browning is “undoubtedly right” and is “right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets,” (52). He says how Browning’s thesis lacks a focus and support. Goldhagen feels that this thesis does not have enough support for his states how the men were never threatened when given orders. Browning says that these men became murderers because of the circumstances they were put into. Not much responsibility was put forth on the men by Browning, which Goldhagen was saying. These men could have escaped because it was terrible.
Personally I was not completely convinced by Browning’s theory. It is well developed and supported, but I found myself not completely satisfied with Browning’s reasons for the men of police battalion 101 transforming into murderers. One of my main concerns was that I felt as if he made it seem as though the transformation into a killer was a natural one, something that just anybody could be swayed to do. Browning states “If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men could not?” (Browning 189). I felt as if this oversimplified things. The idea that peer pressure and the need to conform was not an adequate enough explanation as the things these men did were horrible and vicious. I felt as Goldhagen did in that there needs to be greater focus placed on the men’s backgrounds as well as their attitude towards Jewish people. Again is comes back to the fact that the testimonies are not always accurate and may not provide the best idea of who actually was morally against the killing, but was participating anyway. Goldhagen’s idea of what is an “ordinary man” is also very interesting. His idea of what is considered ordinary is very true as the men of the battalion had been living in Hitler’s regime exposed to all of the propaganda that came with it. Browning pays little attention to how the men were manipulated by Hitler’s message in the beginning and throughout there time in the service. Thus this area is very lacking and is one that should be examined more closely as these men due to how they lived before may have been more prone to violence or more susceptible to the idea of killing as in the end they seemed to be okay with it. Maybe Browning’s theory would hold true if they were just moving their victims to the death camps or shooting in forced situations, but many volunteered in some situations such as like in the Jew Hunts. Thus a greater explanation and psychological analysis is needed in many cases. Goldhagen is not perfect in his explanation either. While he considers all those who were in the battalions as killers who were all racists who fully believed in the cause this was not necessarily the case either. There was a mix of people and diversity of positions within the group. While he “lumps all kinds of Germans under one label; those who could not care less; those who rejoiced in Hitler’s policies” (Demonizing the Germans: Goldhagen and Gellately on Nazism). Some did oppose the movement, but were too afraid to do anything about it though there were some that did stand up to the Nazi regime. Though these people may have been few and far between they did represent the ideas of many of the people in the country at the time. It is just difficult to know now based on the little evidence known today. But really is there any explanation for why or how these people will be able to do what they did? One cannot hope to be able to rationalize such barbaric behavior unless one has been in that situation because maybe Browning was right that anyone could become a killer under the right circumstances.
Browning’s thesis that anyone could become killers under certain circumstance is something that I thought to have been too generalized. I personally do not think that everyone could be made to do something even when threatened with his/her life. Therefore, in the case of the Reserved Police Battalion 101 there must have been a negative attitude towards Jews inside the heart of the men. I mean there has to be which Browning neglected to portray. I do not think that someone can just become a killer over night. Even though Goldhagen criticizes to the extreme saying that these men wanted to do or in their heart wanted to kill might not be absolutely right, but I do agree with him in the sense that they must have felt justified after sometimes or lost their minds totally to have done what they did. I also agree with the fact that these men over time living in Germany did get biased on the issue because of Nazi propaganda which probably might have also been a driving force to make these men vicious killers. Goldhagen’s also points out the same fact that I pointed out in my last reading that the men did have the option not to perform the task they did; therefore, they must have had some reasoning to do what they did which Browning neglected in his writing. I personally would certainly point out some of the missing bits and pieces to show why what happened happened to RPB 101 or the probable reason which Browning neglected. I don’t think Goldhagen undermined Browning’s thesis but he simply put forth what he personally believed which holds more water in my opinion than Browning. I do not believe fear of what might happen to one or authority would make any man killers. I simply think Browning simply forgot or wanted his reader to ponder on the probable causes of why the men became killers and they did what they did.
As a matter of fact I think Browning would also agree to my opinion given above because he says at one point that nothing can excuse one from being accountable for their action.
I feel that despite the fact that Browning fully describe all of the appalling crimes that were carried out throughout the holocaust while not completely excusing them for their wrongdoings, he still grants them too much of his own sympathy by explaining how they were somewhat pressured into murdering innocent people. I feel that throughout his book, he attempts to analyze the mental state of the men too deeply rather than just focusing on their actions alone. Overall, Browning’s opinion on the matter differs from mine because while I agree that the soldiers of Battalion 101 had outside pressures influencing most of their actions, I also do not believe this justifies any of their wrongdoings. One aspect of the novel that I was appreciative for was that Browning simply states his own opinions on the matter without forcing them upon his audience. While reading Ordinary Men I felt as though I was being well informed on the subject matter but was still able to form my own opinion on the situation as well.
Goldhagen on the other hand views the holocaust as being s unique situation and does not believe that it could ever happen again and that the main reason for the its occurance was the fact that it took place inc an anti-Semitic location as Germany. “To Goldhagen, the Holocaust was uniquely German. For this reason it would be reasonable to conclude on the basis of his analysis that “it could not possibly happen here” wherever that “here” might be.” Browning believed Goldhagen’s thesis to be invalid. In the Afterword of Browning’s book he addresses Goldhagen’s criticisms along with analyzing his thesis. “It erases all differentiation and subsumes all manifestations of anti-Semitism in Germany under a single rubric” (Browning, 194). I agree with Browning on this particular point in that Goldhagen makes the soldiers intentions to be more malevolent than they truly were. He seemed to believe that every soldier acted upon anti-Semitic motives when in reality as Browning points out, they were acting upon fear and pressure from their fellow soldiers and senior officers. Once again, regarding the experiments that have been conducted as a response to the holocaust and other genocide tragedies; I believe that they fail to justify any of the committed crimes. They only manage to explain to the public why or how genocide would come about and the motives behind the murderer’s actions.
I think that Browning's thesis is still strong after being compared to Goldhagen's.
Browning's thesis does not claim that all of the men who murdered Jews were monsters, but people who were pressured and manipulated by the situations they were put into. However, Goldhagen argues that most Germans were anit-Semitic or did not care about what was going on around them. While he says that Hitler merely initiated their actions, Browning does not assume as much and argues that they were manipulated. I personally find it hard to believe that an entire country of people held the same hatred for the same minority. Browning's thesis seems much more plausible.
One reasons why Browning's thesis seems much stronger is that it is repeatable. When we look at Zimbardo and Milgram's experiments, it is clear to see that people can be easily manipulated into doing horrible tasks that they ordinarily would never dream of doing. In addition, Goldhagen mentions the passivity of the Germans towards the horrible treatment of Jews, again blaming it on anti-semitism. However, I believe that it should be blamed on human nature. Humans have the habit of assuming someone else will take care of it. For example, there have been instances when people have been murdered because bystanders assumed someone else had already called 911.
While it is certainly possible that outside forces influenced the mass murder of Jews, I find it much more likely that the men who Goldhagen is quick to call "monsters" were manipulated by the situations they were put into. To conclude, even after reading Goldhagen's criticism, Browning's thesis still seems as strong, if not stronger, to me.
According to Goldhagen, the men who killed in Ordinary Men, even when given the choice not to, were sociopaths. However, I do believe that Browning's thesis that these men had no real choice remains true despite any undermining criticism that Goldhagen offers. Goldhagen will stop at nothing to criticize anyone who had ever killed Jews. He himself is Jewish, so it is not a surprise that he would be against the killing of Jews and have a biased opinion on whether or not men were forced to do so. It is in this way that he is not a completely valid historian; however he does raise points that are at least worth consideration. Men given a choice to not kill who still do kill, may be considered killers. What is still not readily available is how much societal pressure was placed upon those who took the "no" route, and held down their weapons. These men could have been equivalents of lepers, for not following suit with the "eliminationist antisemitism" that Goldhagen states ran rampant in Germany. Were the Ordinary Men, Hitler's Willing Executioners? I think not. Browning's thesis stands true despite bombardment from Goldhagen, who undermines every aspect of it. Goldhagen would love to see any living men executed, which would certainly be ironic. Browning would love to see the men's former positions forgotten, which really is the correct route to be taken in lieu of this situation. Hitler willed it, and unless individuals had penchants for death, they had no choice than to obey. Otherwise, they were subject to being punished, chastised, and heckled from the Fuhrer himself, or any other Hitler driven force (even the Hitler Youth could have heckled someone into insanity).
Browning provides a very fascinating view of the causes behind the actions of the men involved in the Holocaust, who committed doubtlessly some of the cruelest and most brutal acts ever performed in times of war or otherwise. I personally believe his thesis to be credible and accurate. As the Zimbardo and Milgrim experiment has shown, people are inclined to act out of character to follow orders from superiors even if they morally disagree with what the orders entail, even if they know they will be acting cruel and brutal, even if they know that they will be hurting or killing another. I believe that Goldhagen has a very poor knowledge of history, and that this is shown in his criticisms of Browning. While I would not disagree that there was indeed an anti-Semitic atmosphere in Germany at the time of the Holocaust, I do not believe that this alone can be accepted as the reason behind the Holocaust. Browning's argument that men will act differently under orders must also be considered, as it is backed up by a great deal of historical evidence as well as scientific study. Goldhagen's argument that men could choose not to participate in the cruel actions of the Holocaust is difficult to take seriously, as there were quite clearly many factors that made such a decision far from obvious and cut-and-dry.
Ultimately, I believe that Browning's arguments hold far more water than Goldhagen's.
I believe that Browning’s thesis still stands after Goldhagen’s criticisms. His main point was to find a reason why these ordinary men participated in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. He concluded that peer pressure and conformity were of the most plausible reasons for these horrible atrocities. One of Goldhagen’s arguments was that Browning did not compare the battalion to the German population as a whole. I still believe that Browning’s thesis still stands because most of the men there were just “ordinary men” and the fine details do not take away from the fact that most people put in this situation would go with group. In addition to this it was said that, to Goldhagen’s the Holocaust occurred because it was in Germany and that I would not have happened anywhere else and that it was “uniquely German” (119). This contradicts Browning’s idea that ordinary people would have committed the same horrible things if they were in the same situations as the men in the battalion. Due to the peer pressure and the desire to conform, people will most likely do whatever everyone else is doing in order to fit in. I believe this statement of Browning’s still hold’s water because of the Milgram experiments that backed up this notion of people’s likelihood to conform, even when it means carrying out obvious immoral actions.
Browning believed that it was conformity and authority that caused ordinary men to turn into mass murderers. The authority of officers and Hitler held a high anti-Semitist belief. They believed that all Jews were horrible and that they were responsible for many horrible events (ex. WWI). Therefore, the officers gave the command to persecute Jews at large. Browning argues that the soldiers performed these duties because they needed to follow orders from their superiors. Also, as every other soldier was performing this duty, there was a sense of pressure to conform. Browning suggests that “The social psychological conditions, the objective and keenly felt pressures of the group, the fear of being held in contempt by one’s comrades: these were what turned these men into killers”. Goldhagen on the other hand had a different belief. He believed that Browning’s support did not clearly define his thesis. Goldhagen argues that the perpetrators interviewed may have given Browning false information. Not only did they have many motivations for lying (minimize their own involvement with the crimes), but the events occurred 20-30 years ago and their memories could be distorted. Also, Browning treats the Jews under the role subsumed by the “image of the enemy” that is commonly developed during the time of war. However, this is inaccurate to say because the Jews were not an organized state and had not had organized armies to withstand the Germans. Goldhagen argues that, “Conceiving of the Jews as “the enemy” depended upon the German’s prior possession of a profoundly anti-Semitic, hallucinatory image of them” (Goldhagen).
I believe that Brownings thesis was very accurate. Browning startes that the men o The Reserve Police Battalion 101 were ordinary men who were put in an unordiantry situation and had no choice but the transform. But through it all they still remained humans with natural human reactions. Browning begins his book with saying "They were middle-aaged family men of working-and lower-middle-class background from the ity of Hamburg" throughout the novel he clearley stresses how normal these men were. These men were not taken into this because they had evil thoughts and intentions, they were simlply formed into this through the pressure of society. Throughout all the difficult tasks they were told to accomplish the men were constantly pulling themselves out in the middle of it all because they simply could not take it anymore. The men would have physical reactions such as vomiting at the site of what they were doing, or even not doing some of the things they were told to do such as kill the children simply because they couldent do it. Most men even turned to alcohol to help them through it. Even though Browning does not forget that the men did do something morally wrong, he justifys it with "they simlpy had no choice". Goldhagen thesis was different however. He believed that yes, the men were put in difficult situations, but they they should still be punished for their actions. "But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets”. I believe that Browning was much better able to back up his thesis with statistics and facts.
Browning’s thesis, I feel, is true for the most part, but it has some flaws. In Ordinary Men, Browning argues that these people in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 should not be fully blamed for their actions. That they were people like all people who were put in a situation that revealed the darker side of human nature. Browning pointed out that anyone would have acted as they had acted in the situation that they were in. “Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority , and indeed could scarcely function otherwise.” (Browning 189) It is also made a point that a society requires a figure head or something that represents a person or group that leads. And sadly in this case that authority believed in doing something so horrid as murdering innocent people. But because of fear or the need to conform to something, the battalion did what they were told as anybody else would have. These men were subject to the moral norms of the group as human nature directs them to. It can sadly, not be helped in most cases except for the most scrupulous among them. And even then, they might refuse to kill, but they will sit aside quietly while thousands are killed. Goldhagen does go to critizice Browning’s view and his point also holds to be plausible. He argued that even though the men were doing horrid things because of the society around them, there is no evidence that that were opposed to it at all if they didn’t at least try to fight against it. He states, “The members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could have extricated themselves from the task of killing Jews, had they really been inwardly opposed to it. Few showed a real inclination to do so. Instead, they volunteered for killing operations, and they killed with dedication, even zeal.” (The Evil of Banality) The question is how could you tell between those who were truly too afraid to go against the norm even though they were inwardly against it and those who didn’t mind the killing because of the pressures of the group. Because of this, Browning’s thesis lacks. However Goldhagens view, “…in Goldhagen’s view that they did absolutely nothing to stop the killings, They did not raise their voices. They did not demonstrate. They did not publicly mourn.” (Demonizing the Germans), can be argued because he doesn’t have proof that this didn’t happen. His arguments are stopped by lack of research and primary accounts where as Ordinary Man is more reliable in this area.
Browning’s thesis, while legitimate, is flawed. He fails to take into account the actual social standards of the time and how rampant anti-Semitism was a leading cause for why the men were able to make the jump from honest civilians to desensitized killers. The fact is, an individual who is not by nature a sociopath is more often than not likely to refuse shooting a woman or child or old man at point blank range into a mass grave filled with hundreds of bodies. It takes another component that Browning disregards, the fact that ending a life is easier if you consider it to have less value than your own. Even in Browning’s work, he refers to the Jews that were massacred in very cold, inhuman terms. He presents numbers and isolated incidents of the killings without any remorse or attempt to shed light on the horrifying reality of the actual deaths. It is this attitude, I would imagine, that the members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 adopted towards their victims. An example of this fact was that the only times some of the men felt the gravity of the killings that they performed was when they realized that the Jews they were shooting were from an area near their own homes. Once they saw the Jews as real humans, same as themselves, and not an inferior alien race, they began to have misgivings about their actions. Goldhagen’s thesis is also legitimate, but is still not what I believe to be the actual reason for the killing. He bases the reasons for the killings on peer pressure and other psychological pressures, and then goes to the extreme by placing the blame for the Holocaust on the German people as a whole, although he does identify anti-Semitism as a major cause. Ultimately I feel that Browning’s thesis is too lenient and Goldhagen’s is too radical; the true reason for why the men of Battalion 101 came to be ruthless killers is somewhere in the middle, a combination of the rampant anti-Semitism of the time and the social expectations of a group of men with a distasteful task. When one factors in the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo, you must take into account that these were isolated incidents and simulations, and not exactly comparable to the situation faced by these men (putting a gun to an innocent human being’s head and pulling the trigger.) Although a person in a closed setting might try to stick with what everyone else is doing, like answering a question with the wrong answer with everyone else when you know it is not the right one, this is hardly comparable to the pressure to murder, to end a life. Ultimately for these reasons, I found myself unsatisfied with all of the theses that were presented.
Browning points out that the ordinary men weren’t actually forced to kill unarmed prisoners but instead were given the option to sit out. Although the men weren’t actually forced to perform these heinous crimes, most if not all felt pressured into doing it. There was a huge amount of pressure put on these men and one cannot understand their situation unless actually put into it. These men were peer pressured into following orders and many felt if they weren’t obedient their careers could be in jeopardy. I agree with Browning considering the fact that these men were put into an unpleasant situation and the pressure they received affected their choice to follow orders. I tend to agree more with Browning than Goldhagen. For example Goldhagen pointed to the anti-Semitism of German society as the reason for the actions taken against the Jews. Although it is most likely true that many Germans disliked Jews, this doesn’t provide a convincing reason for the Germans to act so cruelly. A dislike of someone doesn’t necessarily lead to cruel murder. A person who doesn’t like Jews probably wouldn’t kill a huge number of Jews just because he doesn’t like them. Human compassion would come into play; most people wouldn’t become a vicious killer just because of a difference in belief. The fact that Goldhagen is himself a Jew also shows that his opinion is biased. Also, Goldhagen directly attacks Browning’s work, claiming that it is all based off speculation. It seems obvious to me that Browning doesn’t claim to understand exactly what went through the mind of every German. His view is his opinion on what he believes most Germans were thinking. He uses the valuable help of first-hand accounts and statistics to form his view.
Browning’s views seem to make more sense than those of Goldhagen. The idea that those who carried out genocidal acts were but ordinary people put under enormous authoritarian and conformist pressure makes more sense, and is more scientific, than Goldhagen’s claims. The claims of Goldhagen—that the anti-Semitic atmosphere in Germany generated intensely malicious feelings towards Jews in the heart of the average German seems far too sensational, and is not as well-supported as Browning’s claim. Goldhagen’s stance is the morally lazy way to look at the Holocaust. His theory leaves intact the humanity and morality of the average human, allowing us all to feel good about ourselves. Humans are basically good creatures; only brainwashed monsters could commit the acts done by the Nazis. This is an incorrect and dangerous belief. The fact that most do not want to acknowledge is that each and every one of us has the capacity to murder in cold blood. This capacity is deeply buried due to the extreme consequences that society places upon murder. As a result, it requires extreme pressures to unlock the killer within the individual. This capacity is usually only unlocked in dangerous circumstances, when the individual’s life, or a thing that (s)he cares about equally as much, is at stake (a hot-blooded killing as opposed to a cold-blooded murder.) However, as shown by Browning’s testament, the capacity to kill when unpressured by threat of death or similar horrible fate, can be produced through pressures of other kinds. Mainly, these are the pressure to obey authority, and the pressure to conform to society. These are deeply ingrained drives. Humans are taught to obey authority from a very early age, as without obedience, authority cannot exist. First we are taught to obey our parents, then, our teachers, then our government. The system of authority also forms the foundation for the human concept of morality. The most basic concept of morality comes from the idea that misbehavior invokes punishment. Many humans never get beyond this form of morality and so excuse immoral acts if these acts are condoned by authority, even if the authority figure in question is obviously evil to a more conscientious person. The compulsion to conform is also deeply ingrained in the human mind. Even at the earliest ages, humans that do not conform to social norms are hated, ridiculed, and ostracized from mainstream society. The conformist social system consists of people following the general norm to gain a place in society and then carefully avoiding anything that makes them unusual/undesirable. In the case of the police in Browning’s book, as well as the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib, this manifested itself in not wanting to appear weak in front of one’s comrades. Browning’s thesis certainly holds more water than Goldhagen’s, and to accept Goldhagen’s thesis is to risk falling into the trap that took the men of Police Battalion 101.
I believe that Browning’s thesis has significant value and does “hold water” despite Goldhagen’s objections. In writing Ordinary Men, Browning sought to show that the men who committed mass murder and genocide were not inhuman monsters, but simply people who followed orders because of social pressures and their natural reaction to authority. I admit, and most of the class admitted in our discussions, that at least to a degree we would act the same way. I also think that before reading Ordinary Men and looking at Browning’s portrayal of the human side of these “killers” we may have not been able to recognize this, and almost certainly would not have been able to admit it. Other than our class’s personal opinions on how we would behave in the same situation, Browning’s ideas are backed up by historical evidence and by experiments, such as the Milgram experiment and Zimbardo’s prison experiment. Goldhagen remarks upon the fact that the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 had an opportunity to not kill. They could opt not to participate in the killings without any consequences to them, but they did not take it. Goldhagen uses this to support his idea that they were more than just following orders, and that there was malicious intent behind their actions. Browning argues that their refusal to take the out was rather due to peer pressure, a natural desire to go with the group and not be the only one to stand up and say “no”. Furthermore, the experiments I mentioned above show that it is human instinct to follow orders, and it can reasonably be assumed that these men were at least in part following that instinct. That being said, there is far more evidence against Goldhagen’s theory of malicious intent behind the actions of the average German soldier/policeman than for it. With that said I believe that this part of Goldhagen’s arguments doesn’t undermine Browning’s ideas. Goldhagen also argues that it was Nazi propaganda and the environment of Nazi Germany that led Germans to become killers. This contradicts Browning’s theory that it was peer pressure and a natural instinct to follow orders. Browning’s ideas, however, are supported by experiments, like Milgram’s, Zimbardo’s, and others, and by historical events from WWII all the way to the recent horrors committed at Abu Ghrab. This part of Goldhagen’s ideas, I believe, does not undermine Browning’s theory either. Overall Browning’s ideas have a solid basis and solid support and Goldhagen’s theories do little to nothing to undermine them.
Browning's thesis still holds somewhat true despite the criticisms of Goldhagen. His thesis still holds true because like he said "They were middle-aaged family men of working-and lower-middle-class background from the city of Hamburg," which shows that a believed average peson thrust into a situation as extreme as the one the men in Ordinary Men experienced will submit to their baser instincts and animalistic nature so as to no be ostricised from society. So his thesis that peer pressure and authority figures can make an ordinary person do extreme things is true. However Goldhagen thought that the German people should be looked at as a whole and this holds some weight. The people whom Browning studied were not leaders or people of renown they were followers or sheep to anyone who showed confidence and leadership qualities. A different outcome might have come about if more successful and stronger individuals were placed in that situation because they might not be as affected by peer pressure and authority figures because they are their own person and confident in themselves that if they do what they think is right then others will follow. So Browning can't say that anyone thrust into that situation will submit because if someone is strong enought they won't, but he still can say that an average ordinary person will repeat the same actions as the men in the book because they people looking for someone to tell them what to do.
I feel that Browning’s thesis looks better and better when compared to that of Goldhagen. Browning admits that the perpetrators of the Holocaust are by no means guiltless, but that they indeed were human and should be treated as such, rather than as monsters. The Holocaust was the first large scale genocide to be widely reported, meaning that there was no precedent for what happened to the executioners. While Browning’s book was admittedly a slow, unexciting read, it made sense. The same cannot be said for Goldhagen, who leans too heavily on the idea of racial indoctrination as the main means of excuse for mass murder. I feel that Browning’s ideas make more sense. Several of the men described in Borwning’s book personally knew Jews and for that reason, had trouble with the killings. However, there is no evidence of anyone in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 feeling, as Goldhagen puts it, “a hallucinatory, lethal view of the Jews.”
Browning’s thesis, when considered in the context of our class readings, still holds remarkably well, especially when one reads the afterword to Ordinary Men, which refutes many of Goldhagen’s points. I don’t find Goldhagen’s thesis particularly persuasive, especially after reading “Demonizing the Germans” and Browning’s afterword. Despite Goldhagen’s criticisms of Ordinary Men, Browning’s thesis still holds. In his book, Browning effectively utilizes court records, psychological experiments, and other documents to paint a vivid picture of Germany and explain the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101, which killed thousands of Jews despite being generally composed of lower-class, middle-aged men. His explanation of the transformation of the battalion from troubled and disturbed soldiers (to an extent) and Jozeflow to policemen actively seeking out, hunting, and killing Jews is well-supported with historical evidence. I found the testimony of former members of the battalion in court, especially when discussing the “Jew Hunts” at Parczew and other places, was particularly effective. His synthesis of Zimbardo and Milgrim’s experiments into the psychological fabric of the narrative was quite relevant as well. In contrast, I found Goldhagen’s criticisms weak and without solid historical foundation. I first found a problem with Goldhagen’s assertion that “the men did not come from the "lower orders…but roughly mirrored the occupational profile of Germany at the time”. To me, it seems that the occupational profile of Germany at the time is irrelevant; whether or not a majority of the German was of the same class as the policemen simply does not seem important. To me, the point of that passage was less that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were in some way unique or special but were actually just every day Germans. Furthermore, I found Goldhagen’s criticism of the way that Browning portrays the attitude of the policemen troubling. Goldhagen merely cites one source of such “jocularity” from only one policemen and fails to show that other policemen felt the same way. Browning even acknowledged that some members of the battalion were sadistic, something that Goldhagen seems to forget. However, I did find Goldhagen’s point about evaluating the veracity of the testimony important. He correctly points out that it was in the defendant’s best interest “to minimize their own complicity in the crimes” and that many of the things said were unfalsifiable. The mere possibility of falsehood, however, does not invalidate Browning’s argument. In “Demonizing the Germans”, Goldhagen does not come off as any better. His idea that the “anti-Semitic movement came to power—indeed was elected to power” is, as the author points out, flat-out wrong. Either Goldhagen failed to adequately research adequately or was contorting the facts- neither option Is particularly flattering. As the author of the criticism of Goldhagen’s work points out, Goldhagen also failed to address many authoritative works on Nazi Germany which contradict his thesis, including works by Allen and Gordon. I also personally find Goldhagen’s idea that because a country has a past of anti-Semitism, that past cannot be erased and the anti-Semitism is bound to show up again somewhat offensive and flat-out wrong. Granted, it is true that a country’s past shapes its ideals and leaders to a certain extent. But to, say, assert that the United States will one day break out in race riots again because our country has a history of slavery is just ridiculous. Also, as Browning pointed out, this theory does not take into account positive interaction between the two groups. As Browning notes, Goldhagen does not account for the emancipation of Jews in Germany. Wouldn’t this, too, have some sort of effect on the national psyche? What about our abolishment of slavery? To me, the theory just doesn’t hold up and Brownings thesis is still valid.
In light of various class discussions and after reading the Goldhagen readings, I think Browning’s thesis does have some merit to it. One of the main reasons why I think that Browning’s thesis hold more credit is due to the fact that he utilizes various primary sources and manipulates other similar theories to come up with a theory that is completely his own. Browning’s thesis is that these ordinary men were transformed into murderous human being due to extreme pressure from their surroundings. Throughout his work browning maintains that Reserve Police Battalion 101 was ordinary men who were put in a unordinary situation and had no choice but the transform. After analyzing various interviews from the members of the police battalion 101, he tries to apply these results to the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgrim Experiment. While Goldenhagen puts people into two categories, those who believe in Hitler and those who don’t, Browning accounts for the people in between. He accounts for the people who the people who switch between committing wrong acts, the ones who weren’t sure of what they thought about Jews. Thus making his thesis even more believable. Browning doesn’t think that these men should be punished for their actions because they simply had no other choice. While Goldhagen thinks that these men were still responsible for their despicable actions even though they were under immense pressure. In the end I just think that Browning backed up his thesis with more information, and statistics, while Goldhagen just talked about his thesis.
In my opinion, Browning’s thesis is certainly valid. His stance that the men who participated in the Holocaust were not “monsters,”, instead they can be seen as the result of men pressured into carrying out horrific orders , partly because their authority had led them to believe their actions were, in the long term, beneficial for their country. However, Browning does obviously not completely leave the men faultless, as clearly each man had their own free will and could have done the right thing, even with the consequences. Browning just attempts to convey to his readers how these “ordinary men” were capable of committing such atrocious crimes against humanity. With Browning’s sometimes seemingly countless amounts of evidence, I consequently found Browning’s theses to be overall very reasonable. That being said, I believe that Goldhagen has a point, since the anti-Semitic feelings of the German obviously contributed to the Holocaust and in a way even made the tasks of the men who had to carry out the orders more logical in a sense. But I still firmly believe that Browning’s views are more legitimate in that there are countless occurrences in history and scientific experiments that support his view. Both the Stanford prison experiment and the scientific experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo amazed me, as it conveyed how truly any man, under the right circumstances and peer pressure, can be convinced to do anything. This can additionally be seen in the situation in Abu Ghraib, where once dutiful soldiers horribly mistreated the prisoners. The pictures of them posing in such a nonchalant way next to the exposed bodies of the prisoners disgusted me, but the video does a great job in giving both sides of the story thus some sympathy is drawn towards the soldier as it is easy to see how harsh their living circumstances were and how it could have driven them to do something so cruel, but obviously it does not excuse their actions. Thus, I believe history and experimentation has proven Browning’s thesis to be more compelling.
Browning thesis is respectable and holds much merit. Browning also did he research very well. Using original Nazi documents to support his thesis. In my mind this made Browning thesis hold together better then Goldhangen’s. Browning used the personal testimonies of over 400 individuals from police battalions. This research and his depth of thought on each mans psyche is very well done and only makes his work that much more impressive. Many argue that a men cannot or would not become a mass murder if they were given an option of not participating in the killings and that battalion guarded themselves against the fear of the punishment of not following orders and killing innocents. Goldhagen counters this in his argument saying that, “not once in the history of the Holocaust was a German killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill a Jew”. Hearing this you may ask yourself how Browning can be right. Browning backs up his argument of how the men were "peer pressured" into these crimes against humanity “the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms”. This statement holds true the soldier's killings and the need to conform to the situation they were presented. Goldhagen does support his argument, it never quite holds the power that Browning’s thesis does about “ordinary men” becoming "willing executioners" during the Holocaust. Goldhagen's thesis was simply not put together as well as Browings was making this an almost incomplete argument. Goldhagen never had a chance to undermine browning since his research wasn't complete.
In Ordinary Men Browning argues that the men who carried out the mass murder of the Holocaust were not sociopaths, or psychotics, or anything out of the ordinary at all. They were simply regular men put in very unusual situations. I found this to be a very sensible conclusion. Goldhagen did argue this point, however when the two ideas are compared, Browning's simply becomes all the more reasonable. Browning's theories did have a lot of support. The Milligram experiment, a long with other similar tests, came the the same conclusion as Browning (on a much smaller scale)- that typical people can become 'evil' if put in positions of power and even slightly pressured to act in a negative way. Browning also had a lot of documentation on his side, which could be overwhelming at times. He was at an advantage that he had approximately 400 testimonials to work from. That was juxtaposed with statistics about the liquidation of Jews across Europe and Browning's point becomes loud and clear. It was hard to keep a lot of the story straight due the the manner in which the information was presented (it was mostly a bombardment), but he piece was still extremely disturbing and difficult to read, as it ought to have been. It was not light fair. Browning's conclusions are, to me, completely reasonable and accurate.
Brownings thesis towards the Holocaust, to me, is actually quite logical and reasonable. He seemed to decrease the demonization of the Nazis, claiming how peer pressure and a mass uprising can force human beings to commit acts otherwise unimaginable. The men of Battalion 101 were simply obeying orders. Should they be excused from all the malicious acts that they committed? Killing innocent men woman and children in Poland? Absolutely not, but the men were, simply “Ordinary.” Hamburg civilians, butchers, businessmen, fathers, and everyday citizens, that were put in extraordinary situations that many of which did not know how to cope.
Goldhagan, however, has a much more accusatory and offense opinion. I felt that he, in reality, was merely bashing the German people for being anti-Semitic, and merely blaming the incident due to high levels of anti-Semitism that was throughout Europe before and during the Second World War. However, Goldhagan does make the strong and valid point that the member of Battalion 101 had the option NOT to participate. Despite the strong point, I feel that Browning’s theory is much more widely accepted, and holds more water than Goldhagans merely because of his neutral presence when presenting his theory, rather than Goldhagans more offensive and directive standpoint on the issue.
The hypothesis that Cristopher Browning puts forth in "Ordinary Men" does have some degree of validity and merit to it, but it does seem to be only a partial assessment and to lack completeness. This is reinforced by several of Goldhagen's assertions that Browning may have reinterpreted or misinterpreted several important details and statistics. This does not seem unreasonable, honestly, since Browning imbues his audience with nothing but statistics, making it difficult to sort out which are accurate and which have been over/underexaggerated. Furthermore, as Goldhagen is quick to demonstrate, Browning relies almost exclusively on the testimony of the members of the Battalion, which is clearly biased to some degree. It is also doubtful, continues Goldhagen, that the men were quite consistently as compassionate as portrayed.
Be that as it may, Goldhagen's counter-hypothesis is not watertight either. There is not a great degree of historical evidence to support a number of his claims and the hypothesis itself goes too far in the opposite direction. One can neither blame social circumstances nor the men themselves exclusively; the dynamics of social psychology, groupthink, pressure to conform, power and authority, etc. are far too complex to make a concrete hypothesis either way. In truth,a combination that would lie between both hypotheses is the most correct and thorough explanation.
Browning's thesis on the Holocaust makes sense to me. Browning uses many primary sources that help benefit his statements throughout the book. The men of The Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men. Goldhagen has very different views on the Holocaust itself and sometimes contradicts what Browning is saying. Goldhagen has many of his arguments supported by actual facts and history in general. Browning's views have been backed up by not only history but also experiments as well. Both of the authors suggest that the "ordinary men" had a chance not to participate in the slaughtering and killing of innocent people. I found that Goldhagen did undermine Browning. He was right about the anti-semitic culture of Europe but did not focus on the unit in the book "Ordinary Men".
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Browning’s views towards the holocaust and the participants seem very sensible to me. Browning argues that the soldiers who committed mass murder were not monsters, but simply men coerced and pressured into involvement in atrocities. Browning does not seem to want to completely excuse the soldiers, but simply show the world that they are human and help others see why these “ordinary men” engaged in such horrific behavior. Since there was not wide spread information on the subject of genocide to the same scale experienced in World War II before, the men involved in the mass executions for Nazi Germany did not have any education or experience in dealing with their situations.
Overall I found Browning to be very reasonable, even if his bombardment of statistics were slightly overbearing for me as a reader. Browning’s opinions on the matter is supported by the experiments done by Milgram and Zombardo as well as other events that have come to pass since World War II and now. As seen in Abu Ghraib and several psychological experiments, humans act harshly and out of character when dealing with authority.
I understand that Goldhagen believes that the surroundings of Germans at the time of World War II led to the willingness to engage in mass executions, but I personally believe that Browning’s views are much more sound. Goldhagen claims that living in Germany led to a highly anti-Semitic collective consciousness that led to malicious Genocide. Without the full knowledge of a historian comparable to Browning my opinion may easily be flawed but I disagree with Goldhagen, mostly because Browning’s views are supported by history and experiments. People like Milgram and Zombardo have proved that normal people will go surprisingly far if ordered to do so. When authority, regardless of whose authority, becomes involved the actions taken by participants becomes separated from original morals and intentions.
Goldhagen points out that the members of Battalion 101 had the opportunity to not participate. Goldhagen claims that because the men still murdered that their intentions were more malicious than Browning suggested. However, Goldhagen’s writing does not take into account how much pressure the men were under even though they were not forced to kill under threat of death as Goldhagen illustrates.
It seems as though Goldahgen’s views are somewhat single minded and disregarded by most historians.
Overall I did not find Goldhagen to undermine Browning. Goldhagen may be right in that the anti-Semitic culture of Europe may have had something to do with the spirit of Nazi Germany – but not the individual participants of the Order Police, and especially not the unit focused on in Browning’s book.
Browning’s thesis is one of significant value. Not only did he support his ideology with key examples, but the experiments portrayed in the class videos helped prove Browning to be correct. While many say there is no justification for an ordinary man to become a killer when they have the option to excuse themselves, the men defended themselves by stating that they feared their consequences. Nonetheless, as stated in the article, The Evil of Banality by Daniel Goldhagen, “not once in the history of the Holocaust was a German killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews.” As a result, Browning argues several factors that helped individuals with the willingness to kill. “Within virtually ever social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms” (Browning 189). These factors induced things such as dehumanization, peer pressure and the desire to conform. Due to Browning’s logical discussions, Goldhagen supports him in the fact that “even men who were not eager to kill, men who would have been though unlikely to kill, killed with great accomplishment when placed in a proper social psychological setting.” Nonetheless, Goldhagen goes on to show the lack of precision and consistency in Browning’s investigations. For instance, he claims it is out of focus, distorted, and lacks evidence and key information. For instance, one individual who refused to kill in the first operation voluntarily offered to key in the follower operations which Browning failed to mention. Also, there is no evidence that during the killings these men felt shame, which is a powerful and painful emotion that would have been produced by a consciousness of guilt, of having committed moral violations, states Goldhagen. Overall, Goldhagen firmly agrees with Browning’s contributing factors; however, he feels there is much more to it. “Browning is undoubtedly right that social psychological pressures eased the Germans’ transformation into mass murderers. And he is right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets” (Goldhagen 52).
However, other sources claim that Goldhagen is the one who lacks in his ideology support. “In demonizing the Germans, Goldhagen resorts to accusation as evidence, or, put in another way, he only suggests proof that he does not supply” (4). Still, I believe that Browning puts forth a thesis that can very well be proven correct. While one article tries to peruse its readers that Adolf Hitler’s polices were due to the spontaneous preferences of the German people, I feel Browning’s ideology holds more water for this situation.
I think Browning's thesis holds up. I think that the reason that Browning's thesis holds water because it takes into consideration the fact that they were human and that they didn't necessarily want to do what they did. In the Goldhagen readings, it said that not everyone who lived in Germany could be portrayed as a killer and I think that can be applied to Browning's thesis. The men in the battalion did what they did because according to Browning they felt the need to conform to those in charge and with their group. On the other hand, the Goldhagen reading said that there were specific categories that the Nazis fit into. There wasn't much room for grey areas whereas in Browning's thesis explained the grey areas. Goldhagen said that the men were either for or against Hitler's or misled by German propaganda. Goldhagen also said that the average person who worked in a flower shop was not morally right and would turn in Jews. Meanwhile, Browning said that most men in the police battalion who were average citizens when they went back home, refrained from participating in the murders and did what they could to get themselves out it. In the Evil Banality, Goldhagen said that the men who doing most of the shooting were the S.S. men. This undermines Browning's thesis to a slight extent because the premise of Browning's thesis is about how ordinary men could shoot and commit mass murder. Goldhagen also says that Browning misinterpreted information such as Trapp's statement. Goldhagen basically states that Browning takes information out of its context and inaccurately portrays the facts. Goldhagen undermines Browning's
Browning’s thesis is one of great importance when it comes to the evaluation of the atrocities during the Holocaust. The acts of the men in Police Battalion 101 are horrific and unthinkable which lead many people to jump to the idea that they were monsters and wanted to kill which Browning says differently. In the book Ordinary Men Browning discusses how peer pressure, the desire to fit in, and authority caused ordinary men to become murders. When you are part of a close knit group, one is very likely to follow the crowd and that holds true in Browning’s book. The men of Police Battalion 101 did not want to seem like cowards or outcasts so they did what they were told. This leads to the other influence, authority. As the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo show, not only peer pressure but authority too plays a huge role in our actions. Even when people were not part of a group they continually followed the orders that were given to them such as in the shocking experiment when a “teacher” have to give an electrical shock to the “student” every time they got a question wrong. Goldhagen feels that this thesis does not have enough support for his states how the men were never threatened when given orders but these experiments with everyday people show how Browning’s thesis holds true. Threatening people with consequences is not the only way to get them to do horrible things which is proved by Browning’s thesis and the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo. Goldhagen does agree with much of Browning’s ideas but still feels that much is missing. He writes how the thesis lacks a focus and support. Also how Browning left out information on how men volunteered to kill and how no one felt shame. The acts of German men can be analyzed from many different points of view but you could never fully understand it unless you were one of them. Just the atrocities of the war alone desensitized the people and the constant anti-Semitism pushed at them only further diminished their feelings. Although Browning may have some faults in his thesis I feel that Goldhagen is the one who truly lacks support for he uses his accusations of Germans as evidence while Browning has true evidence and examples for his thesis.
Browning finished his book with " If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"(Browning 189). At first, the men seemed to be uneasy about the killings and they really got to them, "they were depressed, angered, embittered, and shaken" (69). Many turned to alcohol for the answers to their problems. However, after being in the Reserve Police Battalion for some time, the men stopped being effected by the killings. "The men... seemed scarcely to have been disturbed" (90). Browning's thesis seemed to be that if put in certain awful situations, anyone could turn into a killer. In Ordinary Men, there were hundreds of men who belonged to the Battalion, so most of them were probably not cruel people who wanted to kill thousands of Jews when they first joined it. However, what Browning was saying was that the situation these men were put in forced them to be killers. The factors that forced these were to kill, according to Goldhagen were "peer pressure, the desire to conform, was the reason that most of these men did not extricate themselves from the killing. The social psychological conditions, the objective and keenly felt pressures of the group." Goldhagen also said
"The Jews had been dehumanized by the pervasive anti- Semitism of Nazi Germany. Some of the men had professional ambitions that they believed might have been harmed had they refused to kill. During a "race" war, he believes, it is easy to turn civilians into "the enemy."
Goldhagen mentioned that Browning had difficulties using the testimonies of the men. A lot of these testimonies could not be trusted because obviously the men were not going to admit to being killers. His criticisms were correct because Browning would often state something, but not have any evidence or enough of it to back it up.
I definitely agree with Goldhagen when he said "And he is right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans' behavior in all its facets. The members could have extricated themselves from the killings." Browning kept saying that these men turned into killers because of the situations they were put into, and it could happen to anyone. Not a lot of responsibility was put on these men by Browning, which Goldhagen was saying. These men could have gotten out of it because it was wrong. Browning brought up the fact that there were many opportunities for these men to back out, but most of them did not. Only about 15% of the men chose to back out from the killings.
In Demonizing the Germans: Goldhagen and Gellately on Nazism, it talked about the Germans in general, not just the Nazis, allowing the killings of thousands of Jews. "The Germans let Hitler and his minions, soldiers, policemen, and bureaucrats, kill the Jews because they fundamentally agreed with Hitler that this was a good ideas" (2). Not only did the policemen and Nazis kill all these Jews, but Goldhagen goes on to generalize that the Germans just sat back and let all these people die because they agreed with it. Goldhagen basically blamed all of the killings on every single German. He stereotyped that just because you were a German during that time, that meant you were a Nazis against the Jews and the other groups that were percsecuted. It wasn't right that some people who knew about the Holocaust did nothing to stop it, but Goldhagen thought that all the Germans should be blamed for it, when in reality a lot of people didn't know about the killings until after they happened.
Browning was right because the men acted a certain way because of their situations, but Goldhagen was right because the men did have the chance to not kill without any consequences.
Browning’s thesis definitely holds water. His thesis is thorough and well-developed. In addition, Browning used a number of primary documents to support his thesis, which made it more reasonable than Goldhangen’s. Browning went through all of the testimonies that were available to him. He accurately and effectively utilized the sources. When reading Ordinary Men, I was so impressed by both the depth of his discussion and the extensive research that he had done.
There are many reasons why Browning’s thesis is far more sensible than that of Goldhagen. For one, he explained what factors had caused the ordinary German citizens to turn into cold-murders of tens of thousands of Jews. Browning argued that because of “depersonalization, habituation, wartime brutalization, conformity, deference to authority, careerism, obedience to orders, and ideological indoctrination,” the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 gradually became used to the killings. He also used the theses/hypotheses of other historians and psychologists to back up his own. For instance, Browning dedicated one chapter on discussing the results of Stanley Milgram’s controversial experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. He concluded from both experiments that it was possible for a perfectly normal, good person to be barbarized, if she/he was under the pressure of conformity, peer pressure, and authority. In a way, Browning eradicated the statement that the Nazis were brutal because they were monsters. Unlike Goldhagen, who had argued that the Holocaust was “uniquely German,” Browning pointed out that wartime brutalization was universal to all countries. For instance, during the Vietnam War, the American troops committed notorious atrocities such as the massacre of My Lai. Also, Browning acknowledged the merits of the opposing views. For example, he cited that Zygmunt Bauman’s argument, “Nazism was cruel because cruel people tended to become Nazis.” While acknowledging the opposing views, Browning pointed out their weaknesses. He concluded that Bauman’s argument was historically inaccurate since “ordinary [German] people did not commit fascist atrocities” and that not the majority of the Germans supported Hitler’s proposals on the race problem.
Six years after the publication of Ordinary Men, Daniel Goldhagen put forth his own theories. While both historians did research that was based on the testimonies of the men from Reserve Police Battalion 101, their arguments could not be any more different. Their disagreement was mainly on the motive for murderous behaviors. Goldhagen wrote that the men were “willing executioners” even though there was plentiful evidence to prove him wrong; many policemen had confessed that they were horrified by the sight of corpses, and many had nightmares about their victims. Nor did he point out that at ten percent of the policemen who had openly expressed their disapproval of their jobs, refused to participate in the shootings. Goldhagen stated that the men of the reserve did “nothing to stop the killing.” This may be bloody true, but he did not acknowledge the amount of stress that each man was under, and also the consequence that one may suffer from acts of insubordination. He also branded the men “passive, indifferent” to the killings, and that they “killed for fun.” This is why Goldhagen’s thesis fails because it is based on the “stereotypic definition of German anti-Semitism.”
In conclusion, without accurate historical evidence, Goldhagen’s thesis did not undermine Browning’s thesis even one bit.
AnnMarie Augusto
Mr. Kirby
AP European History
31 May 2010
Christopher Browning's book, Ordinary Men, is an aloof assessment of the rationale as to why allegedly ordinary men would, in time of war and necessity, let slide that thin facade of society, which partitions us from animals, and commit atrocities such as the actions described in the book. Christopher R. Browning’s thesis and overall view regarding the participants involved in such acts of violence was sound and holds up. The men in the battalion carried out these horrific actions because of their self-inclined feelings to obey authority. The majority of the men most readily did not want to go forth with the orders they were told, but ultimately caved in and complied with what they were assigned to do. Browning’s last sentence in the book makes the reader think twice about the complex psychological thought process of the men at war. "If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?" Although this does arouse an intricate and thought-provoking question, Browning's objective was to uncover the reasons why normal persons could go down to such horrendous depths. Galdhagen came to the conclusion that during the Holocaust a great fraction of the killers were ordinary Germans who killed because of their upbringing in a intensely anti-Semitic culture, they were ready and willing to carry out the government’s orders to kill Jews. Goldhagen went against Browning’s thesis claiming that the ordinary Germans not only knew about the holocaust and the atrocities it came with, but they actually wanted to take part in it and support it because of the way in which German society had evolved overtime. Goldhagen believes that “Browning's portrait is recognizably that of the battalion, yet it is out of focus, and some of its crucial features appear markedly distorted.” He claims that Browning discusses the difficulties the men had to go through, but he fails to mention the criteria and significance of such verification. Also, as the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo demonstrate, not only peer pressure but authority figureheads play a huge role in human actions and choices. Shockingly enough, when people were not in a group, but on their own making decisions, they repeatedly followed the orders that were demanded of them such as in the appalling experiment when a “teacher” was ordered to give an electrical shock to the “student” every time they got a question wrong. Although Goldhagen does make some good points, I ultimately think Browning’s thesis holds water because of his in-depth reasoning and evidence he using in the book to support his claims.
I feel that Browning’s thesis is of great significance. He takes into consideration how the human mind works and functions when placed in certain situations. This situation just so happens to be the Holocaust in which millions of innocent European Jews were mass murdered due to anti- Semitism.
He does an exceptional job at demonstrating how “ordinary men” were turned into systematic killers uneven though they did not want to kill or become killers. He presents key factors such as conformity, peer pressure, and authority as the driving force of the atrocious actions committed by these German policemen. Therefore, Browning argues that these soldiers that committed these acts were not evil or immoral but that they were forced into doing these horrendous acts. I thought that Browning’s viewpoint to be sensible and that he used evidence and facts to back up his opinions pertaining to the matter at hand. His viewpoints were also supported by the experiments carried out by Zombardo and Milgram. Also, the videos we watched in class helped prove Browning to be right. Also, many people argue that the normal or ordinary men can not just become murders when they were given an option of not participating in the killings and that they policemen defended themselves and their acts due to their fear of the consequences that followed if they did not kill. On the other hand Goldhagen claims that, “not once in the history of the Holocaust was a German killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews”. I feel that this statement holds significant weight however Browning backs up his argument of how the men were peer pressured into doing these atrocious acts as he states towards the end of his book, “Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms” (page 189). This is especially true with the depersonalization of the killings and the soldiers’ need to conform to the situation they were presented. Therefore even though Goldhagen does make a few good points in his argument he doesn’t quite undermine Browning’s opinions concerning the “ordinary men” during the Holocaust.
In my opinion Browning's thesis is right on target. His perception of those involved in the Holocaust is not only very insightful, but seemingly accurate. While Browning does not simply let all soldiers "off the hook", he goes to great length, with great support to show that these men, these "ordinary men" engaged in horrific actions as a result of factors greatly beyond their control. Given the time period, little evidence existed to aid these men in the right direction, or to realize what they were about to embark on or the ultimate results of their actions. Even given this information, or a retrospective look back on what happened, orders are orders and are meant to be followed, and will be followed under great authority ( As show in many post WW2 experiments including at both Stanford and Yale). To summarize his thesis, I would agree in that humans will act out of character in relation to authority.
I believe that much of Goldhagen's criticisms are based loosely on facts and too much on a poor understanding of history. Of one consideration I hold to great importance from Goldhagen would be his assertion that Browning failed to mentioned, for example, that many men volunteered to be killers without any shame. While there is a whole psychological profile or explanation that may be attributed to that, Browning's failure to mention such impacts his credibility.
Goldhagen makes the assertion that the anti-Semetic atmosphere of Europe is highly to blame for the participation of many in the Holocaust. This fails to take into consideration a great deal of evidence that supports claims that participation in the Holocaust can be attributed to a great deal of other factors. Among these factors includes the vulnerability to act as directed under authority. The impact of this factor can be directly seen in the Milgram and Zombardo studies, both of which showed an increased willingness to act against moral belief under the pressure of authority.
Goldhagen also points out that many members of Battalion 101 had the option not to participate. While this is true to a certain extent, again, Goldhagen ignores seemingly obvious factors that would prevent a great many from taking such route. Again these factors mainly revolve around the pyschological impact brought about by mass-common action taken by other men under the influence of authority.
In conclusion I do not believe any of Goldhagen's criticisms undermine Browning. Browning thesis is supported by strong historical and experimental data. Goldhagen's assertions are based merely off opinion.
Browning’s thesis that so-called “Ordinary Men” can become mass murders still holds up in light of the Goldhagen readings. Browning’s work is revolutionary in the sense that it puts faces to the men who were given the gruesome task of helping to exterminate the Jewish population in parts of Poland. This significantly changes the way others will look upon these people who otherwise might only be viewed as automatic killing machines. Browning’s work reminds the rest of the world that these men had held normal jobs, had normal families, and led ordinary lives. He forces his audience to pause and think a moment before automatically judging all these men as brutal, heartless and inhuman.
In “The Evil of Banality” Goldhagen recognizes all of these things as being true, but he still sees some gaps and places of stretched truth in Browning’s work. He says that all of Browning’s figures don’t match up, that some of his assumptions don’t hold any merit. He believes that Browning doesn’t answer all questions and that he assumes too much by relaying so heavily on individual testimony. However, I would still give Browning’s thesis great merit. I think that individual testimony is very important in understanding events of such magnitude, such as the Holocaust.
In “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” Goldhagen argues that Hitler was not the manipulator of his forces, but rather the enabler. He says that the German people were in general anti-Semitic and that Hitler was following the wishes of the German people in attempting to exterminate the European Jewish population. While Browning argues that almost anyone can be manipulated into a monster, Goldhagen is saying that the men in Police Battalion 101 became seasoned killers because they were German. Personally, I would have to agree with Browning. Experiments such as the Stanford Prison Experiment have proved that ordinary people can be manipulated into thinking and behaving a certain way all too easily. While Goldhagen’s argument might be more reassuring to the non-German population, it does not hold the same merit as Browning’s.
Browning's thesis is basically the following: While situational, psychological, and other forces may, to some extent, shape our moral and ethical values, it is really the power of conformity and to a smaller extent, authority figure(s), that really cause us to behave the way we do. He goes about proving this by analyzing the actions of a specific group of individuals, the Reserve Police Batallion 101, and shows how though they were primarily only "forced" to act the way they did due to propaganda and some social and psychological forces, it was really the desire to conform and the obedience to authority that caused them to behave the way they did. While Goldhagen and Browning agree that it was "the participation of numerous 'ordinary' Germans in the mass murder of Jews, and second, the high degree of voluntarism they exhibited," they fundamentally disagree on the reasons why the Police Batallion, and to a larger extent, the German populace of the time, behaved the way they did. Goldhagen believes that due to a strong, already existent hatred and discrimination towards Jews, the German populace's indifference to the actions of their government in respect to the Final Solution, and their election of Hitler, that the German people are "willing executioners" and not ordinary men that were swayed by forces greater than them. He states that, "personalized cruelty and violence toward Jews was the rule, not the exception, during the Holocaust."
I find his thesis and suggestions to be heavily inappropriate and generalizing of 80 million citizens of Hitler's Third Reich. As the second reading states, this is absolutely untrue for a number of reasons, one of them being that by making these assertions, Golldhagen essentially argues that all types of Germans, those who did not express concern with the Jewish populace, those who agreed, etc. He fails to consider that the same forces of conformity and authority that binded those 80-90% of the police executioners in the Reserve Batallion most probably also held the German people back from expressing much concern over the treatment of the Jews. Goldhagen attempts to generalize, while Browning uses bucket loads of primary documents to support his argument, and uses the Milgram and Zombardo experiments as support to back up his thesis. I do not believe Goldhagen's argument holds water. Browning was absolutely correct in his assessment of the Police Batallion, and I believe that any people, pushed to the extremes that the German populace was pushed to following World War I would have reacted almost, if not worse than how the Germans behaved in World War II. The German people were not willing executioners, they were ordinary people who, even in the context of the Nazi attitudes and beliefs that prevailed in Nazi Germany, acted in the way they did because of the forces that affect all of us, some more affected than others, conformity and the obedience to authority that all of us are raised to listen to. The Holocaust is over; it happened, and it really showed us how evil we as a species can be, even to each other, but the Germans are not the only people that would behave in such a fashion- it is just as likely that it could have been any other people on Earth, if they were faced with the same forces the Germans encountered. Goldhagen also does not take into account the power of the forces the Germans encountered before he denounces the German people as willing executioners. He does not undermine Browning, and his thesis is not really that valid in comparison with that of Browning.
I think Brownings view points were right on point. he believed that the soldiers who committed the crime were not people with pure evil thoughts but were just normal people taken from normal households who were put under orders and felt obligated and pressured to comply.Browning doesnt want to completely forget about the actions the soldiers had committed but he just wants to be able to get the point across that if we were put in the position that the soldiers were how would we react and truth be told we probably would order the bad commands not because we are evil but because its human and its in our nature to follow commands from people who are superior than us even if they are not right. “Browning is undoubtedly right that social psychological pressures eased the Germans’ transformation into mass murderers. And he is right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets” (Goldhagen 52). Goldhagen supports what browning says about the soldiers but he believes that the pressure put on ordinary men can be an excuse to only a certain extent because there is only so much that pressure can do. pressure cant kill the person. the soldier kills the person with his own will. he can step down. he can put his own life on the line but reality is, they wont. the zimbardo and milgram experiment also supports brownings thesis. it shows how sometimes pressure isnt the only factor that plays a role in the way people take orders but superiority also plays a huge factor. when the player would press the button the shock the person, they did it even when frightened to death because they knew they "had no choice".
Browning's thesis regarding the Holocaust and the atrocities that occurred is without a doubt significant and valuable. He argues that although the actions were unimaginably horrible, there were many reasons that could have accounted for the actions taken. "As important as the lack of time for reflection was the pressure for conformity" (Browning 71). Browning takes into account that the human psyche is often desperate to fit in and not draw attention to oneself. He also says that while there were many men in uniform, not all of them were directly involved with the mass murder of thousands of Jews - "If only a dozen policemen stepped out at the beginning to extricate themselves from the impending mass murder, a much larger number either sought to evade the shooting by less conspicuous methods or asked to be released from the firing squads once the shooting had begun" (74). Browning also mentions the fact that some men felt obligated to participate because of their "careerist ambitions" (75).
Rather than painting a two-dimensional picture of monstrous men who kill people with no guilt or care, Browning sculpts a much more complex model of many individual men and the thoughts going through their minds that explain layered reasons as to why they performed the actions that they did.
Based on class discussions, Browning's thesis definitely holds water. Based on experiments and occurrences in history such as the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, many people are far too willing to conform.
Goldhagen's criticism does and does not undermine Browning's thesis. While Goldhagen refers to the book as "oddly incomplete," "out of focus," and "remarkably distorted," he also agrees with Browning by saying that anyone can become a cold killer if put into certain circumstances (Evil of Banality). Goldhagen also states that there are problems regarding interpretation, such as the choice to use the word "killer" or "shooter" (Evil of Banality). However, I do not think that Goldhagen's criticisms hold much water because he does not have specific evidence regarding what actually happened during World War Two and instead talks about how people would read the book - without hard facts and figures, it is difficult to trust Goldhagen's opinions due to a "huge logical lapse" (Demonizing the Germans).
Browning thesis holds significant water. He states that the actions of these basically ordinary Germans were forced by peer pressure, government influence of anti-emetic ideals, and changing mentalities brought on by witnessing killings and brutal beatings. This thesis is backed up by both Milgrams and Zimbardo’s experiments. They show that when ordinary people are put into extraordinary circumstances where they are giving great power of the lives of other, many times they will develop sadistic actions. Goldhagen does give this credit to Browning in The Evil of Banality. Yet he says Browning faltered in his idea of the ordinary man. He goes into great discussion on how an ordinary Aztec man is different from that of an ordinary man today. This idea, is brought up again when he discusses the fact that ordinary German men of the time were already influenced by the anti-Semitic ideas of the strongly influential Nazi government. However Goldhagen does not discuss what Browning had said about the origin of these German men. Many of these German soldiers were from Hamburg, a city far away from the Nazi heartland of Bavaria, and also one with a high Jewish population. Many of these police officers grew up with Jewish influences from friends, neighbors, and employees. Many weren’t known to be anti-Semitic, they truly were ordinary, no more anti-Semitic than many Americans or British men. It seems that Goldhagen simply read Ordinary Men, and then researched the minor flaws he could find. So even though many of Goldhagen’s criticisms of Browning’s work at first show possible flaws in Browning’s work, at the end of it all through further research it shows that Goldhagen didn’t fully investigate Ordinary Men. He simply took pieces of information that would easily support his theories. Browning had to use interviews and unfinished sources to create his book. Reading Goldhagen’s articles only further proves the thesis of Browning.
In my mind, Browning’s thesis is still plausible. Though he may have occasionally speculated (which I don’t think he did), the majority of his arguments are backed by hard facts, witnesses’ first-hand accounts, and a confident tone.
I still believe that Browning is correct in saying that the men in the Police Battalion 101 were ordinary men situated in a gruesome situation and as a result became cold-blooded killers and that Goldhagen’s statement, “The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 Were not ordinary "men," but ordinary members of an extraordinary political culture, the culture of Nazi Germany, which was possessed Of a hallucinatory, lethal view of the Jews. That view was the mainspring of what was, in essence, voluntary barbarism” is not, in its entirety, effective enough an argument to defuse Browning’s thesis. I believe this because the culture of Nazi Germany is part of the situation that these individuals were part of. Also, the area that this battalion came from was never completely absorbed by the Nazi movement. It is true that the men in the battalion may have harbored some Anti-Semitic views, but over all their actions are more in line/similar with the actions of individuals in the experiments conducted in the United States. Thus, Goldhagen’s argument loses some credibility.
A second part of Goldhagen’s criticism that I feel he is incorrect in stating is the fact that he believes Browning speculated too much. Browning used many primary sources and valid facts fro support his thesis and being interested in this topic made inferences and incorporated his findings and beliefs into his book. That does not signify that his argument is unsound. If anything, it proves that he is curious historian/ researcher who was out to look for the answer to his question.
Finally, Browning’s book looks mainly at how ordinary men can be pushed to do extreme things and his book reflects that he discovered how the situation can manipulate the mind. Though Goldhagen says that Browning’s closing statement about how anyone could be killers, he is incorrect in taking this statement o the extreme by saying, “His explanation, then, is essentially situational. Even men who were not eager to kill, men who would have been thought unlikely to kill, killed with great accomplishment when placed in a proper social psychological setting. And so, he implies, would the rest of us, or at least those of us who harbor some prejudice. We, too, he thinks, would succumb to similar pressures, especially to the pressure to conform.” This statement is extreme(ly wrong) because even Goldhagen himself states that Browning relied heavily on the Milgram and Stanford experiments, where it was proven normal friendly people could do horrible things. Thus Goldhagen ignorantly stating his belief that it not plausible to imply that even we can do awful things is laughable because he is momentarily turned a blind eye to facts he himself used to when criticizing Browning.
To conclude, Browning’s thesis holds water despite Goldhagen’s attempts at criticizing it.
Browning’s thesis is more valid than Goldenhagen’s for the main reason that he utilized primary sources and the theories of others to create his thesis. He poured over records of mass killings and interviews of members of the Police Battalion 101 and applied the results of the Stanford prison experiment and Milgram experiments to his thesis. In fact, he spends a whole chapter outlining how those experiments apply. What makes it even more believable is that he accounts for grey areas where Goldenhagen does not. Goldenhagen puts people into two categories, those who believe in Hitler and those who don’t, those who are misled by propaganda, those who will or won’t commit immoral acts. Browning accounts for the people who are in between these people: the people who switch between committing wrong acts, the ones who weren’t sure of what they thought about Jews. Another way that Browning’s thesis stands stronger is in the fact that he derails Goldenhagen’s thesis of the Holocaust being caused by anti-Semitism by explaining when the men were going to kill Jews that meeting Jews from their area had a big impact since many of the men had Jewish friends. How could anti-Semitism be causing their horrific acts if they weren’t anti-Semitic? Browning’s thesis is supported by research done by Milgram and Zimbardo, esteemed psychologists, in that they show that peer pressure ca cause humans to do horrific things. This is a lesson that people should keep with them.
Browning believed that even though the men who committed mass murder for the Nazi’s during WWII were given the option to avoid the firing squad chose not to because they felt overwhelming pressure to do as their peers, as well as the fear of negative consequences towards their careers. These circumstances, though not complete excuses, should be considered when deciding who is to blame as well as who is to be punished and the severity of the punishments. I completely agree with Browning on this. Yes, the men all committed heinous crimes that cannot go unpunished. But, there is no limit to the amount of pressure a person can receive from themselves, from their peers, from their leaders, and from society. That pressure is the reason why ordinary men who would ever commit murder went on to kill hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Jews. They couldn’t bear the thought of being persecuted by the other soldiers for refusing to kill. They didn’t want to lose the chance of being promoted or having a future in the armed forces. They didn’t want to disappoint the country and the leaders which they were given the task of protecting. Browning using firsthand accounts and facts which he clearly presents in order to back up the findings I have come to agree with.
Goldhagen on the other hand chooses to target the social culture of Nazi Germany as the catalyst that took ordinary men and made cold blooded killers. Personally I don’t believe that a single thing could cause hundreds of men to take actions that they never thought in their entire lives they could or would commit. Browning points out many different things that caused the change in the ordinary men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 to become participants in genocide. The German government did work very hard to convince its citizens that Jews and other minorities were the enemy, but I don’t believe that even the most crazed country propagandizing anti-Semitism could convert hundreds of men into cold blooded killers. Also, Goldhagen’s accusations that Browning speculates lacks merit. While Browning doesn’t have a complete knowledge of the exact thought process of every member of the Reserve 101, every conclusion that he makes is completely based off of the use of firsthand accounts, written documents, and factual statistics. I don’t believe that the assumptions made by Browning were without strong evidence.
Despite Goldhagen's criticism, Browning's thesis is still valid. Goldhagen primarily criticizes that Browning relies heavily on testimony from members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 itself, and points out especially the factor of self-serving bias in such testimony ("The Evil of Banality").
However, despite some fudged information such as several quote misattributions and apparent fact-concealing on Browning's part ("The Evil of Banality"), much of his thesis still stands, that ordinary men can be turned into killers through the psychological power of groupthink, situational duress, and authority. "Demonizing the Germans" notes that Goldhagen oversimplifies the German population into a group composed only of sadists, automatons, and indifferent people; yet this doesn't hold water, as it fails to acknowledge those ordinary people who comprised RPB 101 also held morals and even so, committed atrocities.
In some ways, Goldhagen does undermine Browning by noting that he failed to acknowledge that not all members of RPB 101 were as compassionate as portrayed; for instance, one man noted for volunteering to sit out of the Janeslaw Massacre went and participated, volunteered, even, for future massacres ("The Evil of Banality"). Examples such as these, if true, severely undermine Browning's thesis of situational pressures and the moral awareness of the men in RPB 101.
Overall, however, Browning's thesis does present a new point of view on the Nazis and the active role of those involved in massacres, and should be considered an important analysis of the period, no matter the possible factual omissions.
I feel Browning's thesis is significant and can be seen in many events through out history and modern times. Although Goldhagen felt that there were more factors that caused the men to become murderers, his criticism did not completely undermine Browning's ideas.
I feel that Browning's thesis was very important and could connect to many incidents in history. One experiment done in later studies observed individuals given an inhumane task. A researcher would order the individual to ask another unseen individual a question, and if answered incorrectly the man would have to send a shock to the respondent. Like Browning's "Ordinary Men" many of the individuals held no personal hatred towards the victims and did not know the victim. It is shown here that individuals will follow orders when given by someone seen as a superior or one with authority. The man in the later experiment was not given an incentive or punishment, yet followed through without much resistance, like the soldiers. In a similar situation a game show had volunteered contestants ask a man questions and send him a shock for his incorrect answers. Like the man in the experiment, the contestants participated in the inhumane practice without an incentive and although some hesitated they did not say no and stop. This contestants listened to a mere host, the "Ordinary Men" were under a military authority which can be seen as a greater force.
Another study that showed the role of figure heads was the prison experiment. Several college students volunteered to stay within a prison to study several affects. One group of students became the "wardens" while the others were prisoners. Through out their time the students became their roles and lost their initial morals. One student said that when he put on his uniform he became the character, that it was his costume and he became someone else entirely. This could apply to the ordinary men in the Holocaust.
In addition, peer pressure plays an enormous role in individual's behaviors. The men in "Ordinary Men" were exposed to the growing antisemitism, and although they had no previous hatred for the Jewish community, they began to conform and follow the mass trend. Leaders, such as Hitler, will use persuasiveness to mold followers into believing that the blame can be placed on one group of people and as the idea spreads, more are willing to accept the new thoughts. Peer pressure can also be seen in everyday situations. Simply a teenager giving into peer pressure to experiment with drugs. The teen, for the most part is not being threatened, but mob mentality brings them to give into the pressure and although it may go against their beliefs, they will follow the crowd.
Although Goldhagen may be correct that there are several more factors that would lead to the "Ordinary Men" becoming murderers, I feel Browning was very accurate and his ideology can be seen in many situations, even today.
Christopher Browning’s thesis is of great significance and is very sensible because he says that the men who were participating in the mass murder and genocide weren’t at fault but rather lost in their violence. The way the men in Police Battalion 101 acted were terrible and absurd and make people jump to conclusion that they were horrible people and should be severely punished. But the men did not really have a choice and carried out bad commands given to them because of their self inclined feelings to obey authority, in a way they were forced by peer pressure. In real life, if they actually had a choice, most of men probably did not really want to carry out the orders but ultimately caved in and complied with what they were assigned to do. On the other hand, Browning doesn’t utterly forget and excuse the wrong of the actions of the men but want to get the point to get across that if we ourselves were put in the positions that the men were put in, we probably would order the bad commands not because we actually mean it and are bad but because it’s human and it’s in our nature to follow commands from people who are superior than us even if they are wrong.
Goldhagen agrees with Browning’s ideas but feels that much is still missing. He states Browning is “undoubtedly right” and is “right that such pressures are powerful. But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets,” (52). He says how Browning’s thesis lacks a focus and support. Goldhagen feels that this thesis does not have enough support for his states how the men were never threatened when given orders. Browning says that these men became murderers because of the circumstances they were put into. Not much responsibility was put forth on the men by Browning, which Goldhagen was saying. These men could have escaped because it was terrible.
Personally I was not completely convinced by Browning’s theory. It is well developed and supported, but I found myself not completely satisfied with Browning’s reasons for the men of police battalion 101 transforming into murderers. One of my main concerns was that I felt as if he made it seem as though the transformation into a killer was a natural one, something that just anybody could be swayed to do. Browning states “If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men could not?” (Browning 189). I felt as if this oversimplified things. The idea that peer pressure and the need to conform was not an adequate enough explanation as the things these men did were horrible and vicious. I felt as Goldhagen did in that there needs to be greater focus placed on the men’s backgrounds as well as their attitude towards Jewish people. Again is comes back to the fact that the testimonies are not always accurate and may not provide the best idea of who actually was morally against the killing, but was participating anyway. Goldhagen’s idea of what is an “ordinary man” is also very interesting.
His idea of what is considered ordinary is very true as the men of the battalion had been living in Hitler’s regime exposed to all of the propaganda that came with it. Browning pays little attention to how the men were manipulated by Hitler’s message in the beginning and throughout there time in the service. Thus this area is very lacking and is one that should be examined more closely as these men due to how they lived before may have been more prone to violence or more susceptible to the idea of killing as in the end they seemed to be okay with it. Maybe Browning’s theory would hold true if they were just moving their victims to the death camps or shooting in forced situations, but many volunteered in some situations such as like in the Jew Hunts. Thus a greater explanation and psychological analysis is needed in many cases.
Goldhagen is not perfect in his explanation either. While he considers all those who were in the battalions as killers who were all racists who fully believed in the cause this was not necessarily the case either. There was a mix of people and diversity of positions within the group. While he “lumps all kinds of Germans under one label; those who could not care less; those who rejoiced in Hitler’s policies” (Demonizing the Germans: Goldhagen and Gellately on Nazism). Some did oppose the movement, but were too afraid to do anything about it though there were some that did stand up to the Nazi regime. Though these people may have been few and far between they did represent the ideas of many of the people in the country at the time. It is just difficult to know now based on the little evidence known today. But really is there any explanation for why or how these people will be able to do what they did? One cannot hope to be able to rationalize such barbaric behavior unless one has been in that situation because maybe Browning was right that anyone could become a killer under the right circumstances.
Browning’s thesis that anyone could become killers under certain circumstance is something that I thought to have been too generalized. I personally do not think that everyone could be made to do something even when threatened with his/her life. Therefore, in the case of the Reserved Police Battalion 101 there must have been a negative attitude towards Jews inside the heart of the men. I mean there has to be which Browning neglected to portray. I do not think that someone can just become a killer over night. Even though Goldhagen criticizes to the extreme saying that these men wanted to do or in their heart wanted to kill might not be absolutely right, but I do agree with him in the sense that they must have felt justified after sometimes or lost their minds totally to have done what they did. I also agree with the fact that these men over time living in Germany did get biased on the issue because of Nazi propaganda which probably might have also been a driving force to make these men vicious killers. Goldhagen’s also points out the same fact that I pointed out in my last reading that the men did have the option not to perform the task they did; therefore, they must have had some reasoning to do what they did which Browning neglected in his writing. I personally would certainly point out some of the missing bits and pieces to show why what happened happened to RPB 101 or the probable reason which Browning neglected. I don’t think Goldhagen undermined Browning’s thesis but he simply put forth what he personally believed which holds more water in my opinion than Browning. I do not believe fear of what might happen to one or authority would make any man killers. I simply think Browning simply forgot or wanted his reader to ponder on the probable causes of why the men became killers and they did what they did.
As a matter of fact I think Browning would also agree to my opinion given above because he says at one point that nothing can excuse one from being accountable for their action.
I feel that despite the fact that Browning fully describe all of the appalling crimes that were carried out throughout the holocaust while not completely excusing them for their wrongdoings, he still grants them too much of his own sympathy by explaining how they were somewhat pressured into murdering innocent people. I feel that throughout his book, he attempts to analyze the mental state of the men too deeply rather than just focusing on their actions alone. Overall, Browning’s opinion on the matter differs from mine because while I agree that the soldiers of Battalion 101 had outside pressures influencing most of their actions, I also do not believe this justifies any of their wrongdoings. One aspect of the novel that I was appreciative for was that Browning simply states his own opinions on the matter without forcing them upon his audience. While reading Ordinary Men I felt as though I was being well informed on the subject matter but was still able to form my own opinion on the situation as well.
Goldhagen on the other hand views the holocaust as being s unique situation and does not believe that it could ever happen again and that the main reason for the its occurance was the fact that it took place inc an anti-Semitic location as Germany. “To Goldhagen, the Holocaust was uniquely German. For this reason it would be reasonable to conclude on the basis of his analysis that “it could not possibly happen here” wherever that “here” might be.” Browning believed Goldhagen’s thesis to be invalid. In the Afterword of Browning’s book he addresses Goldhagen’s criticisms along with analyzing his thesis. “It erases all differentiation and subsumes all manifestations of anti-Semitism in Germany under a single rubric” (Browning, 194). I agree with Browning on this particular point in that Goldhagen makes the soldiers intentions to be more malevolent than they truly were. He seemed to believe that every soldier acted upon anti-Semitic motives when in reality as Browning points out, they were acting upon fear and pressure from their fellow soldiers and senior officers.
Once again, regarding the experiments that have been conducted as a response to the holocaust and other genocide tragedies; I believe that they fail to justify any of the committed crimes. They only manage to explain to the public why or how genocide would come about and the motives behind the murderer’s actions.
I think that Browning's thesis is still strong after being compared to Goldhagen's.
Browning's thesis does not claim that all of the men who murdered Jews were monsters, but people who were pressured and manipulated by the situations they were put into. However, Goldhagen argues that most Germans were anit-Semitic or did not care about what was going on around them. While he says that Hitler merely initiated their actions, Browning does not assume as much and argues that they were manipulated. I personally find it hard to believe that an entire country of people held the same hatred for the same minority. Browning's thesis seems much more plausible.
One reasons why Browning's thesis seems much stronger is that it is repeatable. When we look at Zimbardo and Milgram's experiments, it is clear to see that people can be easily manipulated into doing horrible tasks that they ordinarily would never dream of doing. In addition, Goldhagen mentions the passivity of the Germans towards the horrible treatment of Jews, again blaming it on anti-semitism. However, I believe that it should be blamed on human nature. Humans have the habit of assuming someone else will take care of it. For example, there have been instances when people have been murdered because bystanders assumed someone else had already called 911.
While it is certainly possible that outside forces influenced the mass murder of Jews, I find it much more likely that the men who Goldhagen is quick to call "monsters" were manipulated by the situations they were put into. To conclude, even after reading Goldhagen's criticism, Browning's thesis still seems as strong, if not stronger, to me.
According to Goldhagen, the men who killed in Ordinary Men, even when given the choice not to, were sociopaths. However, I do believe that Browning's thesis that these men had no real choice remains true despite any undermining criticism that Goldhagen offers.
Goldhagen will stop at nothing to criticize anyone who had ever killed Jews. He himself is Jewish, so it is not a surprise that he would be against the killing of Jews and have a biased opinion on whether or not men were forced to do so. It is in this way that he is not a completely valid historian; however he does raise points that are at least worth consideration. Men given a choice to not kill who still do kill, may be considered killers. What is still not readily available is how much societal pressure was placed upon those who took the "no" route, and held down their weapons. These men could have been equivalents of lepers, for not following suit with the "eliminationist antisemitism" that Goldhagen states ran rampant in Germany.
Were the Ordinary Men, Hitler's Willing Executioners? I think not. Browning's thesis stands true despite bombardment from Goldhagen, who undermines every aspect of it. Goldhagen would love to see any living men executed, which would certainly be ironic. Browning would love to see the men's former positions forgotten, which really is the correct route to be taken in lieu of this situation. Hitler willed it, and unless individuals had penchants for death, they had no choice than to obey. Otherwise, they were subject to being punished, chastised, and heckled from the Fuhrer himself, or any other Hitler driven force (even the Hitler Youth could have heckled someone into insanity).
Browning provides a very fascinating view of the causes behind the actions of the men involved in the Holocaust, who committed doubtlessly some of the cruelest and most brutal acts ever performed in times of war or otherwise. I personally believe his thesis to be credible and accurate. As the Zimbardo and Milgrim experiment has shown, people are inclined to act out of character to follow orders from superiors even if they morally disagree with what the orders entail, even if they know they will be acting cruel and brutal, even if they know that they will be hurting or killing another.
I believe that Goldhagen has a very poor knowledge of history, and that this is shown in his criticisms of Browning. While I would not disagree that there was indeed an anti-Semitic atmosphere in Germany at the time of the Holocaust, I do not believe that this alone can be accepted as the reason behind the Holocaust. Browning's argument that men will act differently under orders must also be considered, as it is backed up by a great deal of historical evidence as well as scientific study. Goldhagen's argument that men could choose not to participate in the cruel actions of the Holocaust is difficult to take seriously, as there were quite clearly many factors that made such a decision far from obvious and cut-and-dry.
Ultimately, I believe that Browning's arguments hold far more water than Goldhagen's.
I believe that Browning’s thesis still stands after Goldhagen’s criticisms. His main point was to find a reason why these ordinary men participated in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. He concluded that peer pressure and conformity were of the most plausible reasons for these horrible atrocities. One of Goldhagen’s arguments was that Browning did not compare the battalion to the German population as a whole. I still believe that Browning’s thesis still stands because most of the men there were just “ordinary men” and the fine details do not take away from the fact that most people put in this situation would go with group.
In addition to this it was said that, to Goldhagen’s the Holocaust occurred because it was in Germany and that I would not have happened anywhere else and that it was “uniquely German” (119). This contradicts Browning’s idea that ordinary people would have committed the same horrible things if they were in the same situations as the men in the battalion. Due to the peer pressure and the desire to conform, people will most likely do whatever everyone else is doing in order to fit in. I believe this statement of Browning’s still hold’s water because of the Milgram experiments that backed up this notion of people’s likelihood to conform, even when it means carrying out obvious immoral actions.
Browning believed that it was conformity and authority that caused ordinary men to turn into mass murderers. The authority of officers and Hitler held a high anti-Semitist belief. They believed that all Jews were horrible and that they were responsible for many horrible events (ex. WWI). Therefore, the officers gave the command to persecute Jews at large. Browning argues that the soldiers performed these duties because they needed to follow orders from their superiors. Also, as every other soldier was performing this duty, there was a sense of pressure to conform. Browning suggests that “The social psychological conditions, the objective and keenly felt pressures of the group, the fear of being held in contempt by one’s comrades: these were what turned these men into killers”. Goldhagen on the other hand had a different belief. He believed that Browning’s support did not clearly define his thesis. Goldhagen argues that the perpetrators interviewed may have given Browning false information. Not only did they have many motivations for lying (minimize their own involvement with the crimes), but the events occurred 20-30 years ago and their memories could be distorted. Also, Browning treats the Jews under the role subsumed by the “image of the enemy” that is commonly developed during the time of war. However, this is inaccurate to say because the Jews were not an organized state and had not had organized armies to withstand the Germans. Goldhagen argues that, “Conceiving of the Jews as “the enemy” depended upon the German’s prior possession of a profoundly anti-Semitic, hallucinatory image of them” (Goldhagen).
I believe that Brownings thesis was very accurate. Browning startes that the men o The Reserve Police Battalion 101 were ordinary men who were put in an unordiantry situation and had no choice but the transform. But through it all they still remained humans with natural human reactions. Browning begins his book with saying "They were middle-aaged family men of working-and lower-middle-class background from the ity of Hamburg" throughout the novel he clearley stresses how normal these men were. These men were not taken into this because they had evil thoughts and intentions, they were simlply formed into this through the pressure of society. Throughout all the difficult tasks they were told to accomplish the men were constantly pulling themselves out in the middle of it all because they simply could not take it anymore. The men would have physical reactions such as vomiting at the site of what they were doing, or even not doing some of the things they were told to do such as kill the children simply because they couldent do it. Most men even turned to alcohol to help them through it. Even though Browning does not forget that the men did do something morally wrong, he justifys it with "they simlpy had no choice". Goldhagen thesis was different however. He believed that yes, the men were put in difficult situations, but they they should still be punished for their actions. "But such pressures cannot begin to account for the Germans’ behavior in all its facets”. I believe that Browning was much better able to back up his thesis with statistics and facts.
Browning’s thesis, I feel, is true for the most part, but it has some flaws. In Ordinary Men, Browning argues that these people in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 should not be fully blamed for their actions. That they were people like all people who were put in a situation that revealed the darker side of human nature. Browning pointed out that anyone would have acted as they had acted in the situation that they were in. “Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority , and indeed could scarcely function otherwise.” (Browning 189) It is also made a point that a society requires a figure head or something that represents a person or group that leads. And sadly in this case that authority believed in doing something so horrid as murdering innocent people. But because of fear or the need to conform to something, the battalion did what they were told as anybody else would have. These men were subject to the moral norms of the group as human nature directs them to. It can sadly, not be helped in most cases except for the most scrupulous among them. And even then, they might refuse to kill, but they will sit aside quietly while thousands are killed. Goldhagen does go to critizice Browning’s view and his point also holds to be plausible. He argued that even though the men were doing horrid things because of the society around them, there is no evidence that that were opposed to it at all if they didn’t at least try to fight against it. He states, “The members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could have extricated themselves from the task of killing Jews, had they really been inwardly opposed to it. Few showed a real inclination to do so. Instead, they volunteered for killing operations, and they killed with dedication, even zeal.” (The Evil of Banality) The question is how could you tell between those who were truly too afraid to go against the norm even though they were inwardly against it and those who didn’t mind the killing because of the pressures of the group. Because of this, Browning’s thesis lacks. However Goldhagens view, “…in Goldhagen’s view that they did absolutely nothing to stop the killings, They did not raise their voices. They did not demonstrate. They did not publicly mourn.” (Demonizing the Germans), can be argued because he doesn’t have proof that this didn’t happen. His arguments are stopped by lack of research and primary accounts where as Ordinary Man is more reliable in this area.
Browning’s thesis, while legitimate, is flawed. He fails to take into account the actual social standards of the time and how rampant anti-Semitism was a leading cause for why the men were able to make the jump from honest civilians to desensitized killers. The fact is, an individual who is not by nature a sociopath is more often than not likely to refuse shooting a woman or child or old man at point blank range into a mass grave filled with hundreds of bodies. It takes another component that Browning disregards, the fact that ending a life is easier if you consider it to have less value than your own.
Even in Browning’s work, he refers to the Jews that were massacred in very cold, inhuman terms. He presents numbers and isolated incidents of the killings without any remorse or attempt to shed light on the horrifying reality of the actual deaths. It is this attitude, I would imagine, that the members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 adopted towards their victims. An example of this fact was that the only times some of the men felt the gravity of the killings that they performed was when they realized that the Jews they were shooting were from an area near their own homes. Once they saw the Jews as real humans, same as themselves, and not an inferior alien race, they began to have misgivings about their actions.
Goldhagen’s thesis is also legitimate, but is still not what I believe to be the actual reason for the killing. He bases the reasons for the killings on peer pressure and other psychological pressures, and then goes to the extreme by placing the blame for the Holocaust on the German people as a whole, although he does identify anti-Semitism as a major cause. Ultimately I feel that Browning’s thesis is too lenient and Goldhagen’s is too radical; the true reason for why the men of Battalion 101 came to be ruthless killers is somewhere in the middle, a combination of the rampant anti-Semitism of the time and the social expectations of a group of men with a distasteful task. When one factors in the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo, you must take into account that these were isolated incidents and simulations, and not exactly comparable to the situation faced by these men (putting a gun to an innocent human being’s head and pulling the trigger.) Although a person in a closed setting might try to stick with what everyone else is doing, like answering a question with the wrong answer with everyone else when you know it is not the right one, this is hardly comparable to the pressure to murder, to end a life. Ultimately for these reasons, I found myself unsatisfied with all of the theses that were presented.
Browning points out that the ordinary men weren’t actually forced to kill unarmed prisoners but instead were given the option to sit out. Although the men weren’t actually forced to perform these heinous crimes, most if not all felt pressured into doing it. There was a huge amount of pressure put on these men and one cannot understand their situation unless actually put into it. These men were peer pressured into following orders and many felt if they weren’t obedient their careers could be in jeopardy. I agree with Browning considering the fact that these men were put into an unpleasant situation and the pressure they received affected their choice to follow orders. I tend to agree more with Browning than Goldhagen. For example Goldhagen pointed to the anti-Semitism of German society as the reason for the actions taken against the Jews. Although it is most likely true that many Germans disliked Jews, this doesn’t provide a convincing reason for the Germans to act so cruelly. A dislike of someone doesn’t necessarily lead to cruel murder. A person who doesn’t like Jews probably wouldn’t kill a huge number of Jews just because he doesn’t like them. Human compassion would come into play; most people wouldn’t become a vicious killer just because of a difference in belief. The fact that Goldhagen is himself a Jew also shows that his opinion is biased. Also, Goldhagen directly attacks Browning’s work, claiming that it is all based off speculation. It seems obvious to me that Browning doesn’t claim to understand exactly what went through the mind of every German. His view is his opinion on what he believes most Germans were thinking. He uses the valuable help of first-hand accounts and statistics to form his view.
Browning’s views seem to make more sense than those of Goldhagen. The idea that those who carried out genocidal acts were but ordinary people put under enormous authoritarian and conformist pressure makes more sense, and is more scientific, than Goldhagen’s claims. The claims of Goldhagen—that the anti-Semitic atmosphere in Germany generated intensely malicious feelings towards Jews in the heart of the average German seems far too sensational, and is not as well-supported as Browning’s claim.
Goldhagen’s stance is the morally lazy way to look at the Holocaust. His theory leaves intact the humanity and morality of the average human, allowing us all to feel good about ourselves. Humans are basically good creatures; only brainwashed monsters could commit the acts done by the Nazis. This is an incorrect and dangerous belief. The fact that most do not want to acknowledge is that each and every one of us has the capacity to murder in cold blood. This capacity is deeply buried due to the extreme consequences that society places upon murder. As a result, it requires extreme pressures to unlock the killer within the individual. This capacity is usually only unlocked in dangerous circumstances, when the individual’s life, or a thing that (s)he cares about equally as much, is at stake (a hot-blooded killing as opposed to a cold-blooded murder.) However, as shown by Browning’s testament, the capacity to kill when unpressured by threat of death or similar horrible fate, can be produced through pressures of other kinds. Mainly, these are the pressure to obey authority, and the pressure to conform to society. These are deeply ingrained drives. Humans are taught to obey authority from a very early age, as without obedience, authority cannot exist. First we are taught to obey our parents, then, our teachers, then our government. The system of authority also forms the foundation for the human concept of morality. The most basic concept of morality comes from the idea that misbehavior invokes punishment. Many humans never get beyond this form of morality and so excuse immoral acts if these acts are condoned by authority, even if the authority figure in question is obviously evil to a more conscientious person. The compulsion to conform is also deeply ingrained in the human mind. Even at the earliest ages, humans that do not conform to social norms are hated, ridiculed, and ostracized from mainstream society. The conformist social system consists of people following the general norm to gain a place in society and then carefully avoiding anything that makes them unusual/undesirable. In the case of the police in Browning’s book, as well as the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib, this manifested itself in not wanting to appear weak in front of one’s comrades.
Browning’s thesis certainly holds more water than Goldhagen’s, and to accept Goldhagen’s thesis is to risk falling into the trap that took the men of Police Battalion 101.
I believe that Browning’s thesis has significant value and does “hold water” despite Goldhagen’s objections. In writing Ordinary Men, Browning sought to show that the men who committed mass murder and genocide were not inhuman monsters, but simply people who followed orders because of social pressures and their natural reaction to authority. I admit, and most of the class admitted in our discussions, that at least to a degree we would act the same way. I also think that before reading Ordinary Men and looking at Browning’s portrayal of the human side of these “killers” we may have not been able to recognize this, and almost certainly would not have been able to admit it.
Other than our class’s personal opinions on how we would behave in the same situation, Browning’s ideas are backed up by historical evidence and by experiments, such as the Milgram experiment and Zimbardo’s prison experiment.
Goldhagen remarks upon the fact that the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 had an opportunity to not kill. They could opt not to participate in the killings without any consequences to them, but they did not take it. Goldhagen uses this to support his idea that they were more than just following orders, and that there was malicious intent behind their actions. Browning argues that their refusal to take the out was rather due to peer pressure, a natural desire to go with the group and not be the only one to stand up and say “no”. Furthermore, the experiments I mentioned above show that it is human instinct to follow orders, and it can reasonably be assumed that these men were at least in part following that instinct. That being said, there is far more evidence against Goldhagen’s theory of malicious intent behind the actions of the average German soldier/policeman than for it. With that said I believe that this part of Goldhagen’s arguments doesn’t undermine Browning’s ideas.
Goldhagen also argues that it was Nazi propaganda and the environment of Nazi Germany that led Germans to become killers. This contradicts Browning’s theory that it was peer pressure and a natural instinct to follow orders. Browning’s ideas, however, are supported by experiments, like Milgram’s, Zimbardo’s, and others, and by historical events from WWII all the way to the recent horrors committed at Abu Ghrab. This part of Goldhagen’s ideas, I believe, does not undermine Browning’s theory either.
Overall Browning’s ideas have a solid basis and solid support and Goldhagen’s theories do little to nothing to undermine them.
Browning's thesis still holds somewhat true despite the criticisms of Goldhagen. His thesis still holds true because like he said "They were middle-aaged family men of working-and lower-middle-class background from the city of Hamburg," which shows that a believed average peson thrust into a situation as extreme as the one the men in Ordinary Men experienced will submit to their baser instincts and animalistic nature so as to no be ostricised from society. So his thesis that peer pressure and authority figures can make an ordinary person do extreme things is true. However Goldhagen thought that the German people should be looked at as a whole and this holds some weight. The people whom Browning studied were not leaders or people of renown they were followers or sheep to anyone who showed confidence and leadership qualities. A different outcome might have come about if more successful and stronger individuals were placed in that situation because they might not be as affected by peer pressure and authority figures because they are their own person and confident in themselves that if they do what they think is right then others will follow. So Browning can't say that anyone thrust into that situation will submit because if someone is strong enought they won't, but he still can say that an average ordinary person will repeat the same actions as the men in the book because they people looking for someone to tell them what to do.
I feel that Browning’s thesis looks better and better when compared to that of Goldhagen. Browning admits that the perpetrators of the Holocaust are by no means guiltless, but that they indeed were human and should be treated as such, rather than as monsters. The Holocaust was the first large scale genocide to be widely reported, meaning that there was no precedent for what happened to the executioners. While Browning’s book was admittedly a slow, unexciting read, it made sense. The same cannot be said for Goldhagen, who leans too heavily on the idea of racial indoctrination as the main means of excuse for mass murder. I feel that Browning’s ideas make more sense. Several of the men described in Borwning’s book personally knew Jews and for that reason, had trouble with the killings. However, there is no evidence of anyone in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 feeling, as Goldhagen puts it, “a hallucinatory, lethal view of the Jews.”
Browning’s thesis, when considered in the context of our class readings, still holds remarkably well, especially when one reads the afterword to Ordinary Men, which refutes many of Goldhagen’s points. I don’t find Goldhagen’s thesis particularly persuasive, especially after reading “Demonizing the Germans” and Browning’s afterword.
Despite Goldhagen’s criticisms of Ordinary Men, Browning’s thesis still holds. In his book, Browning effectively utilizes court records, psychological experiments, and other documents to paint a vivid picture of Germany and explain the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101, which killed thousands of Jews despite being generally composed of lower-class, middle-aged men. His explanation of the transformation of the battalion from troubled and disturbed soldiers (to an extent) and Jozeflow to policemen actively seeking out, hunting, and killing Jews is well-supported with historical evidence. I found the testimony of former members of the battalion in court, especially when discussing the “Jew Hunts” at Parczew and other places, was particularly effective. His synthesis of Zimbardo and Milgrim’s experiments into the psychological fabric of the narrative was quite relevant as well.
In contrast, I found Goldhagen’s criticisms weak and without solid historical foundation. I first found a problem with Goldhagen’s assertion that “the men did not come from the "lower orders…but roughly mirrored the occupational profile of Germany at the time”. To me, it seems that the occupational profile of Germany at the time is irrelevant; whether or not a majority of the German was of the same class as the policemen simply does not seem important. To me, the point of that passage was less that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were in some way unique or special but were actually just every day Germans. Furthermore, I found Goldhagen’s criticism of the way that Browning portrays the attitude of the policemen troubling. Goldhagen merely cites one source of such “jocularity” from only one policemen and fails to show that other policemen felt the same way. Browning even acknowledged that some members of the battalion were sadistic, something that Goldhagen seems to forget. However, I did find Goldhagen’s point about evaluating the veracity of the testimony important. He correctly points out that it was in the defendant’s best interest “to minimize their own complicity in the crimes” and that many of the things said were unfalsifiable. The mere possibility of falsehood, however, does not invalidate Browning’s argument.
In “Demonizing the Germans”, Goldhagen does not come off as any better. His idea that the “anti-Semitic movement came to power—indeed was elected to power” is, as the author points out, flat-out wrong. Either Goldhagen failed to adequately research adequately or was contorting the facts- neither option Is particularly flattering. As the author of the criticism of Goldhagen’s work points out, Goldhagen also failed to address many authoritative works on Nazi Germany which contradict his thesis, including works by Allen and Gordon. I also personally find Goldhagen’s idea that because a country has a past of anti-Semitism, that past cannot be erased and the anti-Semitism is bound to show up again somewhat offensive and flat-out wrong. Granted, it is true that a country’s past shapes its ideals and leaders to a certain extent. But to, say, assert that the United States will one day break out in race riots again because our country has a history of slavery is just ridiculous. Also, as Browning pointed out, this theory does not take into account positive interaction between the two groups. As Browning notes, Goldhagen does not account for the emancipation of Jews in Germany. Wouldn’t this, too, have some sort of effect on the national psyche? What about our abolishment of slavery? To me, the theory just doesn’t hold up and Brownings thesis is still valid.
In light of various class discussions and after reading the Goldhagen readings, I think Browning’s thesis does have some merit to it. One of the main reasons why I think that Browning’s thesis hold more credit is due to the fact that he utilizes various primary sources and manipulates other similar theories to come up with a theory that is completely his own. Browning’s thesis is that these ordinary men were transformed into murderous human being due to extreme pressure from their surroundings. Throughout his work browning maintains that Reserve Police Battalion 101 was ordinary men who were put in a unordinary situation and had no choice but the transform. After analyzing various interviews from the members of the police battalion 101, he tries to apply these results to the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgrim Experiment. While Goldenhagen puts people into two categories, those who believe in Hitler and those who don’t, Browning accounts for the people in between. He accounts for the people who the people who switch between committing wrong acts, the ones who weren’t sure of what they thought about Jews. Thus making his thesis even more believable. Browning doesn’t think that these men should be punished for their actions because they simply had no other choice. While Goldhagen thinks that these men were still responsible for their despicable actions even though they were under immense pressure. In the end I just think that Browning backed up his thesis with more information, and statistics, while Goldhagen just talked about his thesis.
In my opinion, Browning’s thesis is certainly valid. His stance that the men who participated in the Holocaust were not “monsters,”, instead they can be seen as the result of men pressured into carrying out horrific orders , partly because their authority had led them to believe their actions were, in the long term, beneficial for their country. However, Browning does obviously not completely leave the men faultless, as clearly each man had their own free will and could have done the right thing, even with the consequences. Browning just attempts to convey to his readers how these “ordinary men” were capable of committing such atrocious crimes against humanity. With Browning’s sometimes seemingly countless amounts of evidence, I consequently found Browning’s theses to be overall very reasonable. That being said, I believe that Goldhagen has a point, since the anti-Semitic feelings of the German obviously contributed to the Holocaust and in a way even made the tasks of the men who had to carry out the orders more logical in a sense. But I still firmly believe that Browning’s views are more legitimate in that there are countless occurrences in history and scientific experiments that support his view. Both the Stanford prison experiment and the scientific experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo amazed me, as it conveyed how truly any man, under the right circumstances and peer pressure, can be convinced to do anything. This can additionally be seen in the situation in Abu Ghraib, where once dutiful soldiers horribly mistreated the prisoners. The pictures of them posing in such a nonchalant way next to the exposed bodies of the prisoners disgusted me, but the video does a great job in giving both sides of the story thus some sympathy is drawn towards the soldier as it is easy to see how harsh their living circumstances were and how it could have driven them to do something so cruel, but obviously it does not excuse their actions. Thus, I believe history and experimentation has proven Browning’s thesis to be more compelling.
Browning thesis is respectable and holds much merit. Browning also did he research very well. Using original Nazi documents to support his thesis. In my mind this made Browning thesis hold together better then Goldhangen’s. Browning used the personal testimonies of over 400 individuals from police battalions. This research and his depth of thought on each mans psyche is very well done and only makes his work that much more impressive.
Many argue that a men cannot or would not become a mass murder if they were given an option of not participating in the killings and that battalion guarded themselves against the fear of the punishment of not following orders and killing innocents. Goldhagen counters this in his argument saying that, “not once in the history of the Holocaust was a German killed, sent to a concentration camp, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill a Jew”. Hearing this you may ask yourself how Browning can be right. Browning backs up his argument of how the men were "peer pressured" into these crimes against humanity “the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms”. This statement holds true the soldier's killings and the need to conform to the situation they were presented. Goldhagen does support his argument, it never quite holds the power that Browning’s thesis does about “ordinary men” becoming "willing executioners" during the Holocaust. Goldhagen's thesis was simply not put together as well as Browings was making this an almost incomplete argument. Goldhagen never had a chance to undermine browning since his research wasn't complete.
In Ordinary Men Browning argues that the men who carried out the mass murder of the Holocaust were not sociopaths, or psychotics, or anything out of the ordinary at all. They were simply regular men put in very unusual situations. I found this to be a very sensible conclusion. Goldhagen did argue this point, however when the two ideas are compared, Browning's simply becomes all the more reasonable. Browning's theories did have a lot of support. The Milligram experiment, a long with other similar tests, came the the same conclusion as Browning (on a much smaller scale)- that typical people can become 'evil' if put in positions of power and even slightly pressured to act in a negative way.
Browning also had a lot of documentation on his side, which could be overwhelming at times. He was at an advantage that he had approximately 400 testimonials to work from. That was juxtaposed with statistics about the liquidation of Jews across Europe and Browning's point becomes loud and clear. It was hard to keep a lot of the story straight due the the manner in which the information was presented (it was mostly a bombardment), but he piece was still extremely disturbing and difficult to read, as it ought to have been. It was not light fair. Browning's conclusions are, to me, completely reasonable and accurate.
Brownings thesis towards the Holocaust, to me, is actually quite logical and reasonable. He seemed to decrease the demonization of the Nazis, claiming how peer pressure and a mass uprising can force human beings to commit acts otherwise unimaginable. The men of Battalion 101 were simply obeying orders. Should they be excused from all the malicious acts that they committed? Killing innocent men woman and children in Poland? Absolutely not, but the men were, simply “Ordinary.” Hamburg civilians, butchers, businessmen, fathers, and everyday citizens, that were put in extraordinary situations that many of which did not know how to cope.
Goldhagan, however, has a much more accusatory and offense opinion. I felt that he, in reality, was merely bashing the German people for being anti-Semitic, and merely blaming the incident due to high levels of anti-Semitism that was throughout Europe before and during the Second World War. However, Goldhagan does make the strong and valid point that the member of Battalion 101 had the option NOT to participate. Despite the strong point, I feel that Browning’s theory is much more widely accepted, and holds more water than Goldhagans merely because of his neutral presence when presenting his theory, rather than Goldhagans more offensive and directive standpoint on the issue.
The hypothesis that Cristopher Browning puts forth in "Ordinary Men" does have some degree of validity and merit to it, but it does seem to be only a partial assessment and to lack completeness. This is reinforced by several of Goldhagen's assertions that Browning may have reinterpreted or misinterpreted several important details and statistics. This does not seem unreasonable, honestly, since Browning imbues his audience with nothing but statistics, making it difficult to sort out which are accurate and which have been over/underexaggerated. Furthermore, as Goldhagen is quick to demonstrate, Browning relies almost exclusively on the testimony of the members of the Battalion, which is clearly biased to some degree. It is also doubtful, continues Goldhagen, that the men were quite consistently as compassionate as portrayed.
Be that as it may, Goldhagen's counter-hypothesis is not watertight either. There is not a great degree of historical evidence to support a number of his claims and the hypothesis itself goes too far in the opposite direction. One can neither blame social circumstances nor the men themselves exclusively; the dynamics of social psychology, groupthink, pressure to conform, power and authority, etc. are far too complex to make a concrete hypothesis either way. In truth,a combination that would lie between both hypotheses is the most correct and thorough explanation.
Browning's thesis on the Holocaust makes sense to me. Browning uses many primary sources that help benefit his statements throughout the book. The men of The Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men. Goldhagen has very different views on the Holocaust itself and sometimes contradicts what Browning is saying. Goldhagen has many of his arguments supported by actual facts and history in general. Browning's views have been backed up by not only history but also experiments as well. Both of the authors suggest that the "ordinary men" had a chance not to participate in the slaughtering and killing of innocent people. I found that Goldhagen did undermine Browning. He was right about the anti-semitic culture of Europe but did not focus on the unit in the book "Ordinary Men".
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