Executive Summary.

With this book, I’ve decided to mix things up just a little and give my raw notes and a few comments toward the end, rather than an odd-ball ‘book review’ from the unique perspective of someone reading for literary research rather than as an historical researcher.

That said, the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 is, to say the least, disturbing. The latter part of the book, pages 191 to 291, are two Afterwords, written six and then twenty five years after first publication. I didn’t deal too heavily with these since they don’t treat directly with the story of the Reserve Battalion. What they do discuss is a difference of opinions and approaches to the issue of why men who, by all accounts should be among the lest Nazified in the whole of the Third Reich, should become mass killers in its service. Without going into too much detail, Mr. Browning appears to be of the opinion that circumstance and environment – I use both of those terms to capture a wide array of elements that may or may not be present at any particular time, such as conformity and subservience to authority – can, have and do create the conditions for ordinary men such as these to become the mass killers that they were in the service of the Final Solution.

If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men, p 189

Raw Notes.

I’ll just use only the salient raw notes as I think they might prove more interesting than breaking down the whole book. Doing the latter covers material that isn’t relevant to Lock Out Tag Out, whereas doing the former might highlight themes in the story and might lead a reader to go read Mr. Browning’s book. Only a sociopath could read it and not be disturbed.

Quotes are underlined.

My comments are in italics.

Preface.

xviii – peculiar green uniforms of the Order Police

1 – One Morning in Jósefów.

2 – The Jews had instigated the American boycott that had damaged Germany – Major Trapp, RPB101 C.O. justifying the first aktion.

2 – The Order Police.

3 – The Order Police … large police formations with military training and equipment.
4 – Himmler divided the various German police into two branches… The second branch was the Order Police under Kurt Daluege
5 – If they enlisted in the Order Police, the new young policemen were exempted from conscription into the army.
6 – …by mid-1940, the size of the Order Police had grown to 244,500.
7 – Order Police ∴ supervised local LE.
…there was a second chain of command for all policies and operations that involved the joint action of the Order Police with the Security Police and other SS units.
2nd Chain of Cmd gave Himmler opportunity for quicker political order issuance.

3 – The Order Police and the Final Solution: Russia 1941.

9 – Einsatzgruppen formed from ideological/political “irregulars.”
10 – …adding another 5,500 Order Police to the 500 already assigned to the Einsatzgruppen.
11 – “Barbarossa decree” … removed the actions of German soldiers toward Russian civilians from the jurisdiction of military courts and explicitly approved collective reprisal against entire villages.
When several Jewish leaders appeared at the headquarters of the 221st Security Division of General Pflugbeil and knelt at his feet, begging for army protection, one member of Police Battalion 309 unzipped his fly and urinated on them while the general turned his back.
12 – …appear before the Slavic peoples as a master and show them they he was a German – Maj. Gen. Retzlaff’s farewell address, June 10.
14 – The battalion and company commanders are especially to provide for the spiritual care of the men who participate in this action. The impressions of the day are to be blotted out through the holding of social events in the evenings. Furthermore the men are to be instructed continuously about the political necessity of the measures. – Col. Montua, Police Regt. Ctr, order July 11. Could use verbatim.
16 – Between Aug 31 and Oct 2, the need to explain the shooting of Jewish women was no longer felt.
25 – It’s clear that those giving the orders understood that slaughtering innocents is a traumatic act for the perpetrators and they attempted to shift the psychological burden from the German police to their collaborators.

4 – The Order Police and the Final Solution: Deportation.

27 – …the Order Police supplied one officer and fifteen men to each transport… deportation trains from within the Reich from Fall 1941 to Spring 1945
28 – …train Da 38 was dispatched from Vienna at 7:08 p.m. on June 14, 1942 … in Lublin at 9 p.m. on June 16, SS-Obersturmführer … had 51 Jews capable of work between the ages of 15 and 50 removed from the train and taken to a work camp. The passage deals with an incident free deportation train.
36 – …desperate attempts of the deported Jews to escape … 25 percent of the deported Jews dying on the train… The quoted report deals with the train guards running out of ammunition and Mr. Browning reminds us that No one participating in the events described in this report could have had the slightest doubt what he was involved in…

5 – Reserve Police Battalion 101.

40 – The commission quickly found fault with our procedures. They objected that we struggled under the burden of the old and sick. …they did not initially give us the order to shoot them on the spot, rather they contented themselves with making it clear to us that nothing could be done with such people. Recollection of drafted reservist ‘Bruno Probst’ – a pseudonym.
41 – …Police Battalion 61 was guarding the Warsaw ghetto. There the company captain openly encouraged shooting at the ghetto wall. The most notorious shooters were not rotated to other duties but were kept permanently on ghetto guard duty. The company recreation room was decorated with racist slogans, and a Star of David hung above the bar. A mark was made on the bar door for each Jew shot, and “victory celebrations” were reportedly held on days when high scores were recorded. – the other side of the Warsaw ghetto from Yisrael Gutman’s ‘Jews of Warsaw.’
43 – …escort duty on the Jewish transports was “highly coveted” because of the chance to travel, and was assigned only to a “favored” few.
48 – Of RPB 101 – By virtue of their age, of course, all went through their formative period in the pre-Nazi era. These were men who had known political standards and moral norms other than those of the Nazis.

6 – Arrival in Poland.

49 – A method different from the firing squad operations used against Russian Jewry was deemed essential for the murder of European Jews … one that was more efficient, less public, and less burdensome psychologically for the killers. Which is why we won’t start there. The BBF is the solution which appears coincident with the problem.
50 – Who to staff the BBFs, disposal and re-ed sites?
51 – The Head of Operations will need to control both Black Forces and the Police (as opposed to local LE)
Local LE is ALWAYS critical for knowledge of local and prevailing conditions.
52 – Anti-communist and anti-Semitic hate went hand-in-hand. We need a ‘cover hate’ of this sort.
Volunteers for firing squad duty drawn from Prisoners – ostensibly of war, but not always treated as such – who basically volunteered to not starve to death.
53 – On June 20, 1942, the battalion received orders for a “special action” in Poland. …the men were led to believe that they would be performing guard duty. There is no indication whatsoever that even the officers suspected the true nature of the duties that awaited them.
54 – Globocnik, SS & Police head, decided that although the indistrial slaughter had been halted by a shortage of rolling stock, the killing could continue through firing squad in ghettos and camps where Jews had been and continued to be collected.

7 – Initiation to Mass Murder: The Jósefów Massacre.

55 – …1,800 Jews in Jósefów … male Jews of working age were to be sent to one of Globocnik’s camps in Lublin. The women, children and elderly were simply to be shot on the spot. Can’t directly reflect in BBF. No ♀, no factory. Elderly, sich & children might be, and those not BBF bound. In other words, if the intent is not to populate the BBF then the situation is similar.
56 – Lt. Heinz Buchmann: …made clear … he “would in no case participate in such an action, in which defenseless women and children were shot.” He asked for another assignment. He was given duties that did not directly partake.
57 – Maj. Trapp announces the operation, gives opportunity to step out. About a dozen do, out of 500.
59 – Cpt. Hoffman, who had been furious one of his men had stepped out, complained that the operation hadn’t been pursued ‘energetically enough.’ Mr. Browning has earlier indicated Hoffman had been in the Nazi party since 16 and was, prima facie at least, a believer.
60 – Dr. Shoenfelder (a pseudonym) the Btn physician, instructs on how to shoot in order to induce the immediate death of the victim.
The shooting site is well within earshot of the marketplace where the victims had been gathered. Some 300 able-bodied Jews had been pulled for work camps: it had to have become clear to them at this point that the families they had left behind were being shot.
61-68 – There is a fairly detailed description of this first mass killing that doesn’t directly bear, except to include reports of Policemen finding ways to not participate. Obviously an insufficient number.

8 – Reflections on a Massacre.

71 – Mr. Browning considers reasons that the number who opted out when given the opportunity was so small. He cites the surprise nature of the duty, which drastically foreshortened the opportunity for reflection and the pressure for conformity.
72 – Mr. Browning also reports that, at their trials, most of the participants denied that they had any choice.
…the political values and vocabulary of the 1960s were useless in explaining the situation in which they found had themselves in 1942. How does this translate for LOTO?
73 – This is the page for the Three Arrows quote. It highlights how the participants rationalized their actions and perhaps should be viewed alongside Himmler’s proud declaration that the SS could do such horrible things and still remain ‘decent men.’ They thought what they were doing was repugnant but necessary, perhaps like killing all the rats in a rats nest to prevent plague.
This is also where the phrase The Jews stood outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility first appears. In short, there was no perceived responsibility for the welfare of their victims in any way, dehumanized perhaps beyond the point of plague rats.
74 – …at least 80 percent of those called upon to shoot continued to do so until 1,500 Jews from Jósefów had been killed. Bear in mind that planning for this aktion had been so short sighted that there was no provision for burial or even basic theft from the corpses.
In his Posen speech of October 4, 1943, Himmler spoke of those who could no longer participate, “one whose nerves are finished, one who is weak. Then one can say: Good, go take your pension.”
77 – The psychological burden was to be passed to the Trawniki men, those prisoners who had volunteered to collaborate with the SS rather than starve to death. Mr. Browning suggests that the failure of these butchers to appear at Alekzandrów to conduct the planned slaughter there was the most likely explanation of that mysterious incident … when they didn’t show up, [Maj. Trapp] released the Jews his men had rounded up. It should be borne in mind, however, that this event would have been prior to the normalization of slaughtering innocent Jews since, of his own volition, Maj. Trapp elected to round up and slaughter Jews in preference to Poles when conduction a reprisal action against a village later on.

9 – Łomazy: The Descent of Second Company.

82 – “Most of the other comrades drank so much solely because of the many shootings of Jews, for such a life was quite intolerable sober.”
83 – The Hiwis (Hawniki men, the volunteers from starvation) were the prime shooters for Łomazy: In their state of intoxicated excitment, the Hiwis initially began shooting the Jews at the entry to the grave. “As a result, the Jews killed first blocked the slope…” … “The Jews who followed had to climb onand later even clamber over those shot earlier, because the grave was filled with corpses almost to the edge.” Meanwhile… The number of shooters steadily diminished as one by one the Hiwis fell into a drunken stupor. As a result, men of the Reserve Battalion had to step in.
85 – …valuables and clothing were collected, and the bodies disposed of in a mass grave. The BBF plan would be similar in organization from the start – profiteering.
Having killed already, the men did not experience such a traumatic shock … killing was something one could get used to. Important this is shown, if including slaughter, which is far from certain at time of research.
87 – The company commanders … and not Trapp were thus in a position to set the tone. Referring to the absence of an explicit option to the assigned members to step out – Maj. Trapp had given an explicit choice, the company commanders, members of the SS, did not.

10 – The August Deportations to Treblinka.

88 – Far from any railway station Łomazy … could not be easily deported. Is there a rail network of similar utility to the 1940s Polish & European networks here in Tennessee? A direct transplant would result in a large number of massacres and this does not fit with the plot at all.
90 – When not directly involved in the killing… “…for the Jews affected these deportations meant the path to death…” Spared direct participation in the killing the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 seem scarcely t have been disturbed by this awareness… Out of sight was truly out of mind.
91 – Recounts how Captain Wohlauf brought his young newlywed bride on a honeymoon to personally witness the slaughter, particularly on p 93. Wohlauf himself is described as energetic and bright … lacked all discipline and was too much impressed with himself. Also, soldierly, energetic, full of life, and possessed leadership qualities. … “ready at any time without reservation to go to the limit for the National Socialist state.”
95 – The description of brutality on the previous page is highlighted as being inversely proportional to the ratio of Nazis to Jews. Fewer Nazis running the deportation effort equated to an increase in the brutality used.

11 – Late September Shootings.

99 – Returning to Cpt. Wohlauf, when his bride did not accompany him: …Jurich complained about Wohlauf. After the captain had ordered this “shit” he had “sneaked off”… Unable to show off to his new bride… Wohlauf apparently had no desire to be present at the killing.
100 – Sergeant Jobst is ambushed and killed: Major Trapp soon called back … Lublin had ordered a retaliation shooting of 200 people…
101 – …males were brought to the school gymnasium where Trap… …anxious to alienate the local population as little as possible … made the selection in consultation with the Polish mayor. …strangers and temporary residents … and those “without sufficient means of existence…” When the total shot falls far short of the quota… Trapp had apparently hit upon an ingenious was to meet it … his policement would shoot Jews from the Kock ghetto.
103 – Lt. Buchmann had refused to take part in the killings and had been protected by Maj. Trapp. He is quoted: “Among my subordinates many understood my position, but others made disparaging remarks…” A few … followed his example … and told the company first sergeant, Kammer, “that they were neither able nor willing to take part in such actions anymore.” Kammer did not report them. Instead he yelled at them, calling them “shitheads” who were “good for nothing.” But for the most part he freed them from participating in further Jewish actions. … As long as there was no shortage of men willing to do the murderous job at hand, it was much easier to accommodate Buchmann and the men who emulated him than to make trouble over them.

12 – The Deportations Resume.

104 – 113 – This chapter includes the meeting of a Jewish woman from Hamburg who had owned a movie theater … that one of the policemen had frequented, and is a good discussion of how far into brutality the operation had descended. Beyond Lt. Gnade’s introduction of a strip-search for valuables in which over garments were stolen, the deviation from details already covered is in terms of order of magnitude and depravity.

13 – The Strange Health of Captain Hoffmann.

114 – 120 – Capt. Hoffman is described as suffering physical ailment symptoms probably of a psychosomatic nature. His symptoms being worst during aktions, the men, including Maj. Trapp suspected him of being less than committed. …it is clear that rather than using his illness to escape an assignment that involved the killing the Jews of Poland, Hoffmann made every effort to hide it from his superiors and to avoid being hospitalized. If mass murder was giving Hoffmann stomach pains, it was a fact he was deeply ashamed of and sought to overcome to the best of his ability.

14 – The “Jew Hunt.”

121 – 132 – The “Jew Hunt” was the pursuit of fugitive Jews in the countryside – realistically meaning any Jew who had escaped either on-the-spot execution or deportation to a death camp. It involved encountering the victims face-to-face as in the first massacre at Jósefów, and further contrasted those who had settled into the routine and become eager killers from the minority of nonconformists who managed to preserve a beleaguered sphere of moral autonomy that emboldened them to employ patterns of behavior and stratagems of evasion that kept them from becoming killers at all.

15 – The Last Massacres: “Harvest Festival.”

135 – November 1943 … “harvest festival” (Erntefest) massacre, the single largest German killing operation against Jews in the entire war. …42,000 Jews in the Lublin district…
136 – …Himmler had been plagued with complaints … about the removal of Jewish workers essential to the war effort. …he agreed to spare some Jewish workers on the condition that they were lodged in camps and ghettos entirely under SS control. Similar BBF pretext. Can we source this order?
136 – The inmates of the Lublin labor camps would … have to be killed in a single massive operation that would catch them by surprise. …Erntefest.
The remainder of the chapter covers the isolation of the camps and the massacre of inmates in a manner designed to keep them off guard.

17 – Germans, Poles, and Jews.

150 – Referring to the post-war trial… To admit an explicitly political or ideological dimension to their behavior, to concede that the morally inverted world of National Socialism – so at odds with the political culture and accepted norms of the 1960s – had made perfect sense to them at the time, would be to admit that they were political and moral eunuchs who simply accommodated to each successive regime. That was a truth with which few either wanted or were able to come to grips. This is the crux of the matter. They were the products of a morally bankrupt environment. This neither absolves them of responsibility, however, nor castigates them. They were too week and scared to go against the flow.
157 – There is an interesting allusion to the role of local law enforcement… Only one witness, however, told of Polish policemen accompanying the German patrols and taking part in the shooting on two occasions. In contrast, Toni Bentheim recounted what happened when the Polish police in Komarówka reported that they had captured four Jews. Drucker ordered Bentheim to shoot them. After he had taken the Jews to the cemetery, where he intended to shoot all four by himself, his submachine gun jammed. He thereupon asked the Polish policeman who had accompanied him “if he wanted to take care of it. To my surprise, however, he refused.” Bentheim used his pistol. Local law enforcement participation was not entirely enthusiastic.

18 – Ordinary Men.

159 – … “war hates” induce “war crimes.”
161 – Once the killing began, however, the men became increasingly brutalized.
162 – …a struggle between “our people” and “the enemy,” creates a polarized world in which “the enemy” is easily objectified and removed from the community of human obligation.
163 – After the sheer horror of Jósefów, the policemen’s detachment, their sense of not really participating in or being responsible for their subsequent actions in ghetto clearing and cordon duty, is stark testimony to the desensitizing effects of division of labor. Even at the death camps, labor and therefore responsibility was divided and distributed.
167 – Staub … “Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.”
170 – Disobedience surely meant the concentration camp if not immediate execution, possibly for their families as well. Although this claim was not supportable by the weight of evidence, quite the contrary in fact, it is in line with the general sense of fear of reprisals that controlled the masses. The Gestapo was never as powerful and omnipresent as it was feared to be. The fear, irrational and essentially unsupported, is at least credible, especially for BBF purposes.
172 – There is an allusion in the second paragraph to the essence of Himmler’s ‘decent men’ speech. To me, it suggests a tension between the desire to conform and the desire to be a decent human being, with the end result being a sacrifice of both to some degree. There is no moral equivalence between the two, however. This is also alluded to in the “agentic state” referred to on p. 173 with the dissociation of the self and actions from moral judgement being the result of the modification of the desire to be a decent human being resulting in a new standard where personal responsibility is no longer a factor.
178 – Here Mr. Browning reports ideological training that resembles Sergeants’ Time Training in the modern US Army. He regards the training issued to the policemen as ineffective, however, but the notion is a valid one from a BBF perspective.
184 – Since the battalion had to shoot even if individuals did not, refusing to shoot constituted refusing one’s share of an unpleasant collective obligation. … Those who did not shoot risked isolation, rejection, and ostracism – a very uncomfortable prospect within the framework of a tight-knit unit stationed abroad among a hostile population…
189 – It is worth ending these notes with the final line of the original published book. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot? These were, after all, as the title suggests, “Ordinary Men.”