Overview

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Batallion 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.

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9781538408728

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Reviews

It is the care with which Browning examines the evidence, as well as the soberness of his conclusions, that gives this work such power and impact. -- Kirkus Reviews A remarkable-and singularly chilling-glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust. -- Newsweek A staggering and important book, a book that manages without polemic to communicate at least an intimation of the unthinkable. -- Chicago Tribune Helps us understand, better than we did before, not only what they did to make the Holocaust happen but also how they were transformed psychologically from the ordinary men of [the] title into active participants in the most monstrous crime in human history. -- New York Times Book Review

Helps us understand, better than we did before, not only what they did to make the Holocaust happen but also how they were transformed psychologically from the ordinary men of [the] title into active participants in the most monstrous crime in human history. -- New York Times Book Review A staggering and important book, a book that manages without polemic to communicate at least an intimation of the unthinkable. -- Chicago Tribune A remarkable-and singularly chilling-glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust. -- Newsweek It is the care with which Browning examines the evidence, as well as the soberness of his conclusions, that gives this work such power and impact. -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Christopher R. Browning is an American historian of the Holocaust. He was a professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, from 1974 to 1999. In 1999, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to accept an appointment as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History. Browning won the National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust in 1994 for Ordinary Men. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll's House, and Long Day's Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen's birthday honors for services to drama. Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than three thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile's Golden Voices in 2012.

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