Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

If the men of Battalion 101 have a choice in regard to their actions, then we must ask why they chose to commit mass murder when “almost all of them—at least initially—[are] horrified and disgusted by what they [are] doing” (184). Browning suggests that a key reason for this is “the pressure of conformity—the basic identification of men in uniform with their comrades and the strong urge not to separate themselves from the group by stepping out” (71). Certainly, it is true that while the men do not face official punishments for not participating in the killing, they do receive “disparaging remarks” (103) from their peers. Many of those who “step out” (2) report being called “weakling” (66), “coward,” “traitor” (116), and “shitheads” (103). More than this, those “who [do] not shoot [risk] isolation, rejection, and ostracism,” which is “a very uncomfortable prospect within the framework of a tight-knit unit stationed abroad among a hostile population” (185).

As such, the move to actually “break ranks and step out, to adopt overtly nonconformist behavior, was simply beyond most of the men” (184). Even those who do refuse to kill often work to avoid any sense that they are judging the others, fearing that refusing to shoot will be “seen as a form of moral reproach of one’s comrades” or as suggesting that “the nonshooter […] was ‘too good’ to do such things” (185). Accordingly, recalling the motif of weakness, they frequently plead “not that they [are] ‘too good’ but rather that they [are] ‘too weak’ to kill” (185). Importantly, this theme intersects with anti-Semitism because the men’s primary concern with how they appear is only made possible by dismissing the vast significance of murdering tens of thousands of Jews so that their “concern for their standing in the eyes of their comrades [is] not matched by any sense of human ties with their victims” because they consider Jews to be “outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility” (73).

Apart from exceptional figures like Gnade, few of the men admit to or are openly accused of anti-Semitism. Of course, a key part of this may be “judicial calculation, involving both self-incrimination and the incrimination of comrades” (147). However, it is also important to consider the fact that much of the propaganda the men encounter is not specifically targeted at older men like themselves. Even more importantly, such propaganda is certainly not concerned with undermining their inhibitions against murdering “unarmed Jewish women and children” (183). As such, it is difficult “to believe that any of this material could have deprived the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the capacity for independent thought” (184).

On the other hand, few of the men who actually refuse to shoot do so because of “[p]olitically and ethically motivated opposition” or “opposition to the regime’s anti-Semitism in particular” (75), but rather are simply expressing “sheer physical revulsion against what they [are] doing” (74). Likewise, it is also certainly the case that they, like the rest of the country, are exposed to anti-Semitic propaganda in a more generalized manner. At the very least, they are exposed to the idea of Jews as a general enemy of Germany, something that Trapp appeals to in his speech before the first massacre, in which he suggests that some of the Jews of Józefów are “involved with the partisans” and that “Jews […] instigated the American boycott that [has] damaged Germany” (2). Likewise, this idea is present in the orders that policemen involved in the killing of Jews “are to be instructed continuously about the political necessity of the measures” (14). As such, if nothing else, the men undeniably take on the idea that Jews are, like wartime enemies,“ outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility” (73), which excludes “the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators” (186).