Shocked - Rated 
Comprehensive in its scope, this book is truly shocking. As with many people, I knew of the camps, but did not know of the detailed and well corroberated confessions by men who participated in the face-to-face murder of hundreds of thousands of people in the towns and villages of Poland before the camps were set up. The more distant these events become, and with the passing of the very very few survivors among the victims, a popular easy reading account like this is first class in preventing the development of Holocaust denial
Ordinary Men - Rated 
Christopher Browning's book "Ordinary Men" attempts to give some rational explanation to the reasons why the "ordinary men" of Police Battalion 101 took part in the murder of Jewish men, women and children in the Holocaust. He poses the question "what made them do it?" As well as a very full account of the infamous deeds of Police Battalion 101 he attempts to get behind the psychology of what makes people kill - citing a couple of famous studies: Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment (rigid adherence to orders and an uncritical attitude towards authority), and Stanley Milgram's (blind adherence to authority and peer pressure). Whilst an excellent study in its own right giving a clear analysis of the questions, I feel that it must be read in conjunction with the far more academic study by Daniel Goldhagen "Hitler's Willing Executions". Goldhagen deals with the same questions but his arguments are much more developed - although at times rather too academically written to make the book an easy read! After reading both books, one can try to understand the mind of the "Ordinary Men" who became "Hitler's Willing Executioners", but I still can't help feeling that neither book leaves the reader with a totally satisfactory answer as to why they were capable of killing and cruelty on such an unprecedented scale. I suppose we will never really know for sure.
Horrible But Required Reading - Rated
Descriptions of the Holocaust never lose their power to horrify - the cold bureaucratic language of official reports is particularly sickening. However, those who try to comfort themselves with the illusion that the Holocaust was the work of a unique handful of sadists will find this study of a single Reserve Police Battalion doubly disturbing: sadists there certainly were, but mass murder on such a gigantic scale would not have been possible without the participation of a huge number of "ordinary men". One's sympathies are solely with the Jewish and Polish victims, but an honest man must also ask himself some uncomfortable questions, "What would I have done if I had found myself conscripted into a Reserve Police Battalion and ordered to shoot unarmed men, women, and children? Would I have been one of the few with the courage to refuse to shoot? If so, is that enough? Does morality not demand more? Would I have been capable of more active opposition?" Many people might like to fantasise that they would have rescued like Oskar Schindler, protested like Sophie Scholl, or even resisted like Claus von Stauffenberg. Yet fantasy is what it is: the reality is that for every Schindler, every Sophie Scholl, and every von Stauffenberg, there were thousands of people like the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, most of whom knew that what they were doing was wrong but who did it nonetheless. We should never attempt to justify this, but we need to explain it if we are to stand any chance of preventing such atrocities in future. Professor Browning, like most academics, feels obliged to deny the validity of the Nuremburg Defence, "I was only obeying orders": while he is doubtless correct in saying that historical research has failed to authenticate a single case of a German serviceman being executed for refusal to kill unarmed civilians, a conscript in 1942 was in no position to know that. All the conscript knew was that the Nazi military code mandated capital punishment for refusal to obey orders and the Nazi authorities were not squeamish about executions - whereas the Americans executed only one soldier for desertion in World War Two, the Germans executed thousands. The conscript would also, of course, have witnessed the ruthlessness of his superiors first hand. It would therefore take a brave man to disobey: the fact that some did, and survived, does not negate the fact that the pervasive atmosphere of physical fear in the Third Reich must have had a far bigger impact than most modern academics are prepared to accept at this safe distance. Coercion must therefore be recognised as a significant factor, but many still went far beyond anything they were forced to do. Browning also touches on a number of other factors which he might have explored further: the grey area between obedience to authority and social conformity; the sense of inevitability developed by huge bureaucracies; and the way the men were incriminated gradually, by small steps, from guarding convoys to forming cordons around villages to rounding up Jews to shooting stragglers to massed executions. In the end, Browning is right to conclude that many factors were at work, but the most significant is that most human beings have a strong psychological need to conform. That excuses nothing, but knowing it means we can guard against it. In an age of so-called "political correctness", governments with more potential power over the individual than the frequently chaotic Nazi state, and mass media far more intrusive than anything available to Dr Goebbels, our only hope is to learn to cherish nonconformity. Of course, some say that nothing like the Holocaust could ever happen here and now - but that is probably what the future conscripts of Reserve Police Battalion 101 would have said in 1932. Sorry to go on so long, but the issues raised in this book are important and they really ought to be considered in much greater depth.
An important work with implications for the modern day. - Rated 
Amongst historians this book has quickly reached the status of a classic. But it deserves to have a much broader readership as the subject it tackles - that of how 'ordinary men' can end up doing morally repugnant deeds - has implications that go far beyond its historical context. There is a human tendency to categorise and blame groups of people because it is easier than facing the possibility that anyone is capable of horror. An example would be the claim that 'religion causes wars' - it places the burden on an external agency, on the 'other' rather than the fact that anyone can commit an atrocity.
This is what Browning's book illustrates beautifully; the gradual steps these ordinary men take on the path to atrocity. Browning refers to a number of psychological studies as well as the historical record to illustrate his points and the book is nothing if not frightening in that you can see how this could all to easily happen again. From a reluctance to let down their comrades to the difficulty of disobeying orders from a higher authority you can see how some of these men ended up becoming killers.
Browning's prose is succinct and he explains his points clearly and logically. Whilst the complex ideas don't always make for easy reading, Browning deftly provides examples and explanaions that illustrate his point.
This is an important book and it deserves a wide audience.
A sobering little book - Rated
The question of how "ordinary men" living in Germany became the tools of one of the most monstrous crimes in history has long been asked. Perhaps there is no real answer, but this book goes a long way towards providing a perspective. Reserve Police Batallion 101 was made up of, as the title says, "ordinary men", too old for military service in the German Army and used in what the Germans call "Ordnungspolizei" (Order Police), literally to keep order behind the lines. In the case of 101, "keeping order" meant helping make Poland "judenfrei" by rounding up and executing Polish Jews. It shows that, for every policeman who refused to obey orders, there were many others who went along with varying degrees of acquiesence, for fear of "standing out", discipline, racial indifference or hatred, etc. The frightening lesson is that these men weren't especially evil, they were "ordinary men", just like you and me - and if you put ordinary men in such situations, you get the same result. As we are again seeing ordinary men doing dreadful things in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, this book is a very timely read.
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