Christopher R. Browning

Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem In 1939, the Nazi regime’s plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period—of how, precisely, the Nazis’ racial policies evolved from persecution and “ethnic cleansing” to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.Focusing on the months between the German conquest of Poland in September 1939–which brought nearly two million additional Jews under Nazi control—and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death camps in the spring of 1942, Christopher R. Browning describes how Poland became a laboratory for experiments in racial policies, from expulsion and decimation to ghettoization and exploitation under local occupation authorities. He reveals how the subsequent attack on the Soviet Union opened the door for an immense radicalization of Nazi Jewish policy—and marked the beginning of the Final Solution. Meticulously documenting the process that led to this fatal development, Browning shows that Adolf Hitler was the key decision-maker throughout, approving major escalations in Nazi persecution of the Jews at victory-induced moments of euphoria. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this groundbreaking work provides an essential chapter in the history of the Holocaust.

A remarkable story of survival for almost three hundred Jews who live to recount the brutalities of a Nazi work camp. In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted Walter Becker, the German chief of police in the Polish city of Starachowice, of war crimes committed against Jews. Thirty years before, Becker had been responsible for liquidating the nearby Jewish ghetto, sending nearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 to slave-labor factories. The shocking acquittal, delivered despite the incriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives this author’s inquiry. Drawing on the rich testimony of survivors of the Starachowice slave-labor camps, Christopher R. Browning examines the experiences and survival strategies of the Jewish prisoners and the policies and personnel of the Nazi guard. From the killings in the market square in 1942 through the succession of brutal camp regimes, there are stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, of desperate choices forced on husbands and wives, parents and children. In the end, the ties of family and neighbor are the sinews of survival. 10 photos.

The Nazi Holocaust haunts the modern imagination as one of the most compelling examples of the human capacity for organized atrocity on a mass scale. This authoritative account of the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy from 1939 to 1942 seeks to answer some of the fundamental questions about what actually happened and why, between the outbreak of war and the emergence of the Final Solution. Christopher Browning's account assesses the historians' interpretations and offers his own insights, based on detailed case studies that uncovered important and telling new evidence.

Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers focuses on controversial issues in current Holocaust scholarship. How did Nazi Jewish policy evolve during the first years of the war? When did the Nazi regime cross the historic watershed from population expulsion and decimation ("ethnic cleansing") to total and systematic extermination? How did Nazi authorities attempt to reconcile policies of expulsion and extermination with the wartime urge to exploit Jewish labor? How were Jewish workers impacted? What role did local authorities play in shaping Nazi policy? What more can we learn about the mindset and behavior of the local perpetrators? Using new evidence, this book attempts to shed light on these important questions. Christopher R. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Path to Genocide (Cambridge University Press 1992) and Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, which received the Jewish National Book Award.

Christopher R. Browning addresses some of the most heated controversies that have arisen from the use of postwar testimony: Hannah Arendt’s uncritical acceptance of Adolf Eichmann’s self-portrayal in Jerusalem; the conviction of Ivan Demjanuk (accused of being Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible") on the basis of survivor testimony and its subsequent reversal by the Israeli Supreme Court; the debate in Poland sparked by Jan Gross’s use of both survivor and communist courtroom testimony in his book Neighbors; and the conflict between Browning himself and Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, regarding methodology and interpretation in the use of pre-trial testimony. Despite these controversies and challenges, Browning delineates the ways in which the critical use of such problematic sources can provide telling evidence for writing Holocaust history. He examines and discusses two starkly different sets of "collected memories"—the voluminous testimonies of notorious Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann and the testimonies of 175 survivors of an obscure complex of factory slave labor camps in the Polish town of Starachowice.

An important concern in understanding the "machinery" of the Holocaust is the timing of the decision to put into effect the Final Solution, the systematic murder of the European Jews. This book explores the crucial first steps in implementing the mass murder, including Hitler's role in the decision-making process. The participation of middle and lower middle echelon Germans, and the development of the technology of destruction, in particular, the gas van for use in the death camps. Looking at events from summer 1941 to Spring 1942, Christopher Browning sheds important new light on the historians' debate about how the policy of systematic mass murder emerged.

German Jewish policy was not the result of a conspiratorial plot hatched in Hitler's mind following Germany's defeat in WWI and then carried out with single-minded purpose and patient cunning through the instrumentation of a monolithic dictatorship. It evolved from a conjuncture of several factors of which Hitler's Anti-semitism was only one. The Jew as universal scapegoat provided consistency in Hitlers Weltanschauung by forming the connecting link between all he opposed and attacked.

En 1939, l’Allemagne nazie, qui projette une recomposition démographique de l’Europe centrale et orientale, entreprend d’expulser les populations juives qui y habitent. À l’automne 1941 est décidée la destruction totale des Juifs.Il s’agit ici de l’étude la plus complète de cette période où la politique raciale nazie a « bifurqué » de la persécution et du « nettoyage ethnique » vers la Solution finale et le génocide juif.La Pologne a servi de laboratoire à la politique raciale du IIIe Reich et, par la suite, l’offensive contre l’Union soviétique a joué un rôle déterminant dans la radicalisation qui a conduit à la Solution finale. De cette évolution, Adolf Hitler est le chef d’orchestre sinistre.Au débat entre fonctionnalistes et intentionnalistes, ce livre apporte de nouveaux arguments et met en lumière les liens inextricables noués entre les hommes, leurs idéologies et les circonstances.

Homens comuns é o melhor livro do seu gênero — talvez mesmo o único. Ele descreve a transformação de um batalhão da polícia alemã, composto por homens da classe média burguesa. Eram, essencialmente, policiais comuns, educados antes da Juventude Hitlerista, e que, portanto, não haviam sido doutrinados quando jovens.

Comment fut élaborée la politique de la « Solution finale » ? Pourquoi avoir eu recours à une main d''œuvre juive ? Comment des hommes «ordinaires» purent-ils mettre en application cette extermination ? À travers ces questions, Christopher R.Browning apporte de nouveaux éléments sur la compréhension du génocide juif. Grace à de nombreux documents d''époque (lettres, témoignages des victimes et bourreaux), l''auteur accorde un soin minutieux à analyser l’action personnelle des individus chargés d''exécuter cette politique de destruction totale. Il révèle les comportements, les motivations ou réactions d''hommes face à leurs actes mais surtout leurs aptitudes à une totale inhumanité.

Geneza "ostatecznego rozwiazania" to praca o przelomowym charakterze, gruntownie udokumentowana i napisana klarownym jezykiem, odslania decydujacy rozdzial dziejów Holokaustu.To najbardziej drobiazgowa, starannie przeprowadzona i wszechstronna analiza ewolucji polityki nazistów wobec Zydów, poczawszy od przesladowan i ,,czystek etnicznych" w roku 1939, po ,,ostateczne rozwiazanie" w postaci Holokaustu w 1942.Koncentrujac sie na okresie miedzy napascia Niemiec na Polske we wrzesniu 1939 roku, w wyniku której pod kontrola niemiecka znalazly sie niemal dwa miliony ,,dodatkowych" Zydów, a poczatkiem deportacji Zydów do obozów zaglady wiosna 1942 roku, Christopher R. Browning opisuje, jak doszlo do tego, ze na ziemiach okupowanej Polski utworzono laboratorium dla eksperymentów w dziedzinie polityki rasowej. Wyjasnia, w jaki sposób pózniejszy atak na Zwiazek Sowiecki umozliwil dalsza radykalizacje nazistowskiej polityki antyzydowskiej i zapoczatkowal ,,ostateczne rozwiazanie".Skrupulatnie dokumentujac proces, który doprowadzil do Holokaustu, Browning wykazuje, ze Adolf Hitler przez caly czas odgrywal glówna role w podejmowaniu najwazniejszych decyzji, aprobujac eskalacje nazistowskich przesladowan Zydów w okresach euforii wywolanej przez sukcesy militarne.Robi wielkie wrazenie... Nie jest to literatura rozrywkowa, lecz jedno z najglebszych, choc nie bezposrednich, rozwazan nad przejawami ludzkiej niegodziwosci w XX wieku. Czytajcie i placzcie.Charles T. Mathewes, Virginia Quarterly ReviewPoslugujac sie w mistrzowski sposób zródlami archiwalnymi i literatura pomocnicza Browning wprowadza swoich czytelników w proces stopniowej radykalizacji polityki nazistów, jaki mial miejsce w kluczowych miesiacach po wybuchu II wojny swiatowej... Ksiazka ta z pewnoscia zostanie uznana za fundamentalna prace na temat genezy Holokaustu.Publisherd WeeklyIm chetniej przywódcy nazistów mówili o radykalnych rozwiazaniach, fundamentalnych rozwiazaniach, rozwiazaniach totalnych, wyplenieniu, calkowitej likwidacji i ostatecznym rozwiazaniu, tym bardziej stawalo sie oczywiste na czym bedzie ono polegac. Browning prowadzi nas tam krok po kroku z niezawodnym intelektualnym mistrzostwem, omijajac jeden falszywy trop za drugim. Trudno sobie wyobrazic, by w mozliwej do przewidzenia przyszlosci jakakolwiek ksiazka mogla przewyzszyc prace Browninga.Times Literary SupplementKsiazka Browninga to lektura obowiazkowa dla wszystkich zainteresowanych problematyka Shoah.Library JournalKsiazka ta jest najbardziej wszechstronna praca Browninga - staranna analiza materialów zródlowych laczy sie w niej z zarysowaniem szerokiego tla geograficznego oraz dialogiem historiozoficznym, prowadzonym zarówno w tekscie, jak i w przypisach. Jest ze wszech miar godna lektury i studiów... W obliczu powaznych problemów z interpretacja, solidni naukowcy starannie analizuja najistotniejsze dokumenty, rozwazaja alternatywy i wyjasniaja na jakiej podstawie doszli do takich, a nie innych wniosków. W swojej doskonalej ksiazce Browning i Matthäus uczynili to i jeszcze wiecej.Richard Breitman, Central European HistoryChristopher R. Browning jest profesorem historii; wyklada na Uniwersytecie Karoliny Pólnocnej w Chapel Hill.

In recent years debates about the nature and future of the West have been high on the political agenda. Prognoses of the Wests imminent demise have been countered by those arguing for its continued relevance, or those arguing that while the West will survive its nature, and the balance of power between its constituent units, is transforming.This book argues that understanding contemporary developments requires subjecting the very idea of the West to critical scrutiny and in particular asking what kind of concept it actually is. Locating the West as a discursive concept the book argues attempts to save, fix or reclaim the meaning of the West are illustrative of political agendas rather than indicative of accurate claims about the essential nature of the West. In contrast, the book argues that as a concept the West is impregnated with various discursive legacies, the most embedded of which are those of a civilisational, modern and political West. However, while attempts to define the Wests essence are therefore doomed to fail, given the concepts historical and discursive flexibility, such attempts reaffirm the legitimising role which claims to the West continue to perform.Beyond this, the book challenges traditional genealogies of the West, which overwhelmingly depict the West as an inside-out concept. In contrast, the book argues that historically outsiders have played an important role in defining the nature of the West and constituting it as a political subject; processes that remain evident today.This book will particularly interest students of critical security studies, critical geopolitics, European politics, American politics and IR theory.