Ordinary Men, review

A detailed Summary of Ordinary Men, review

The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men, from a variety of backgrounds, education, and age. It would appear that they were not selected by any force other than random chance. Their backgrounds and upbringing, however, did little to prepare these men for the horrors they were to witness and participate in.

The group was made up of both citizens and career policemen. Major Wilhelm Trapp, a career policeman and World War I veteran headed the battalion. Trapp joined the Nazi party in 1932, but never became an office in the SS. His two captains, Hoffmann and Wohlauf, were SS trained officers. The reserve lieutenants, all seven of them, were drafted into the Order Police because they were ordinary. They were middle class, educated, and successful in their civilian lives. Five of them were members of the Nazi party, but none were in the SS. Of thirty-two remaining officers twenty-two were Party members, but none were members of the SS. Sixty-three percent of the rest of the battalion were blue-collar workers. About thirty-five percent were lower-class workers. The remaining two percent were middle-class but not greatly successful. Many were in their late 30s, too old for active army duty,

There last final, and most brutal sweep was the "Harvest Festival". Here they were to wipe out the remaining Jews in the work camps. The men here were now ordered to kill the cooks and servants they had working for them. This sweep was led by the SS and involved digging mass graves that the victims were rounded up into. Once stripped naked, they were ordered to lie down into the grave, where they were sprayed by machine gun fire. The next round was ordered to lie down on those who were already shot. This was even more inhumane then the previous killings because there were no "neck shots", the victims were often only wounded. The wounded wouldn't die instantly, but would be crushed by the next wave of victims being ordered to crawl onto the bodies of their wounded friends and family.

but just right for police duty. They were old enough to know of political ideology other than that of the Nazi party, even though most were members.

They went on through a number of towns, clearing out ghettos and loading people on trains. "By mid-November 1942, following the massacres at Jozefow, Lomzay, Serokomla, Konskowola, and elsewhere, and the liquidation of the ghettos in Miedzyrzec, Lukow, Parczew, Radzyn, and Kock, the men of Reserve Battalion 101 had participated in the outright execution of at least 6,500 Polish Jews and the deportation of at least 42,000 more to the gas chambers of Treblinka." (Browning, 121) Now that that was done, they had to go back through and make sure the towns and ghettos were truly judenfrei (free of Jews). Hence, the "Jew Hunt" began, and the soldiers would be faced with mass executions. This was quite significant because the men were face to face with their victims, only this time many were hardened killers and would handle the situation quite differently. Although there are no numbers as to how many Jews were killed by the 101st during this sweep, there are numbers for other similar groups. For a group near Lublin, "the total was 1,695, or an average of nearly 283 per month", and in Warsaw, "...reflect a total of 1,094 Jews killed by his unit, for an average of nearly 14 Jews per policeman". (Browning, 131) Browning points out that many of these man had participated in ghetto clearing, but few had, up to this point, been involved in such personal killings. "It was a tenacious, remorseless, ongoing campaign in which the 'hunters' tracked

Some common words found in the essay are:
Police Battalion, Battalion Jozefow, Jew Hunt, Harvest Festival, Redeemer Browning, SS Sixty-three, Jews Browning, Wohlauf SS, Jews Miedzyrzec, Majdanek Poniatowa, battalion 101, police battalion, police battalion 101, 101st battalion, reserve police battalion, nazi party, reserve police, ghettos loading people, people trains, loading people, ghettos loading, browning 73, party none ss, jews shot, loading people trains,

Approximate Word count = 1603
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English