Ordinary Men
Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
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Ordinary Men
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Narrated by:
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Kevin Gallagher
About this listen
“A remarkable - and singularly chilling - glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust." (Newsweek)
Now available in audio for the first time, Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews - now with a new afterword and additional photographs.
Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2017 Christopher R. Browning (P)2020 HarperAudioWhat listeners say about Ordinary Men
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 24-01-2022
Great insight into the atrocities of war
This book is a bit tough to get through, because it is quite academic, but it is very rewarding as well. I suspect the people leaving a bad review failed to get through the first chapters of the book. the later chapters is where the book really shines.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Matt Macdonald
- 13-04-2021
Chilling account
A perspective that was thoughtful and thorough in its telling. I found the psychological analysis interesting and the research to be excellent.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Emil Barna
- 14-02-2022
Heartbreaking
A vivid exploration into the pith of human evil, at least in terms of potentiality. If you're after a case study of why ordinary people commit atrocious acts of violence and perpetuate an us-them mentality, look no further. You won't forget this in a hurry...
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Andrew
- 10-01-2023
Utterly devastating
Amazing book and so so sad.
Shame about all the waffle of the last 2 chapters. Should have just left it as it was before the updated chapters.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 11-01-2021
Jordan B Peterson Mandatory Reading list and for a good reason.
This book serves to remind all of us that the atrocities of WW2 are innate in all of us. Don’t be naive and think you would have been Schindler when you liked would have been a silence majority
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Gary Patton
- 02-02-2023
Eternal vigilance
People said that this could never happen again, 2019-2022 proved them wrong .
Reserve Police Battalion 101 should be a standard training case-study material for all police forces around the world.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 07-03-2023
Disturbing but essential reading
It would be nice to think that the men who committed such atrocities were monsters, but as the title suggests, most began as ordinary men. I would like to think I would have been one of the few who refused but my heart tells me otherwise
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Kindle Customer
- 16-05-2020
heavy and confronting
This work is an incredible look into human depravity. however it's heavy on history/ politics and can be hard to follow at times.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Michael
- 25-12-2020
Insightful
Loved how similiar the conditions were to the current state of the world during covid 19 and the 2020 presidential election.
How the public beloved certain things that would benefit them and slowly buy eventually acted on them
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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- Whyme
- 26-11-2024
Fascinating but not the ending
A litany of truly awful statistics which became mind numbing after the first few hours. The conclusions drawn were hard to deduce other than that a monster lives in all of us. The latter part of the book is poor, degenerating into a defence of the book against criticism by other writers in the field.
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