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Ordinary Men

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Submitted By k50smart
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#1 What was the purpose of the Order Police? What was their function within the larger Nazi hierarchy? Generally speaking, who were the members of Police Battalion 101 (their background, age, affiliations, occupations, etc.) The purpose of the Order Police, a group of about 500 policemen, most of them being from Hamburg, was made up of ordinary men. Most of them were in their 30's and 40's because they were too old to join the army or they were from the middle or lower class. It included men who were professional policemen, businessmen, truck drivers, machine operators, teachers and construction workers before the war. Battalion 101 of the Order Police and alongside other Order Police battalions had enough power needed to carry out the devastating mass killings of the Jews in Poland. The Order police were involved in mass atrocities against the Jews as Browning states in the third chapter. In this chapter he gives insight of how Jews were murdered in the Soviet Union. Orders to kill innocent Jews or anyone who was suspected to be anti-Germany, came from the German government. Alongside the Jews being killed they were also humiliated. Some of the police commanders were extremely rude like urinating on a Jew while they are begging for mercy. Many Jew were forced into the woods and shot and also moved to concentration camps. In the fourth chapter of the book the order police were trusted with moving the Jews as they were commanded to do.

#2 What happened at the massacre of Jozefow? How did the soldiers react to their orders and how did they justify their actions? In September 1939, Jozefow was bombed by the German Luftwaffe, much of the town was destroyed. Towards the end of September 1939, the Soviet Army showed up in Jozefow, but only stayed a short amount of time. The Soviets left with about 1,000 local Jews that decided to escape to the Soviet Union. Only the poor people stayed in Jozefow. On May 11th, 1942 three men organized a special Aktion in Jozefow. They shot roughly 130 Jews that were on the streets and in the local mine. The first massacre in the village was so horrific it stunned the Germans in the civil occupation administration. The largest massacre happened on July 13th, 1942. On that specific day men of the 101st Reserve Police Battalion executed 1,300 to 1,500 Jews in Jozefow. This massacre was led by Major Trapp. They were taken from their living quarters and congregated at the market square. From there they chose about 300 young men and took them to the railway station and were deported by train to Lublin. The other people were shot, after a short ride in trucks, in the forest a little ways away from their village. The execution took place on both sides of the road. The soldiers reacted to their orders accordingly and did what they were told to do. They justified their actions by simply doing what they were told to do.

#3 According to Browning, how did these so-called “ordinary men” become killers? What factors were involved in this metamorphosis?

Battalion 101 was sent to Poland to conduct the "special action." The members weren't told what that action would be. They ended up playing a significant role in the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe. In 1942, three months before the battalion arrived in Poland, nearly a quarter of the Holocausts victims had been killed. Most of them were killed in the Soviet Union. Although a lot of the mass murdering took place in Poland. The Order Police were the answer to the Holocaust dream. Jews were being killed by guns but it was too costly and psychologically hard on the killers. It was Globocnik's job to come up with a better way to execute the Jews. His solution was gas chambers, which wouldn’t be as hard on the Germans psychologically. Twenty long years later during interrogations, battalion veterans that said they stopped shooting at Jozefow had a sense of disgust. Some of the felt like they could leave at any time because they had no intentions of doing what they were later on in life. On the other hand, most of the men felt like they had to stay and carry out their duties that they were given. They felt obligated to do what they were told. They were being told that the Jews were their enemies and that they need to be killed because Germany’s enemies were doing the same thing to them (Germany).

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