Ordinary Men – Reserve Battalion 101

[Cott Tiger]

Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men – Reserve Battalion 101” is often flagged up as a very well written and researched book.

I am just in the process of ordering the book and plan to read it alongside Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”. I am aware that there has been some friction between the two authors and that Goldhagen’s book was quite controversial.

Any comments on either book or could anybody highlight a link to previous discussions on these two works/authors

Thanks in advance.

[Oxford]

I read Ordinary Men some years ago and thought it was one of the most thought-provoking studies on the Holocaust that I had ever read. I have not read anything since that has changed that opinion. It is difficult to say that you enjoy such a book, given the subject material, but as a history-buff it is a very worthwhile effort to read it. Browning is an excellent historian. His recent book, Origins of the Final Solution, is also excellent.

I am not qualified to speak about Goldhagen. I saw him on German TV when his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, first came out. He was talking nonsense. I was stunned to read later on that he teaches history at Harvard. Since then, I have noticed other writings by him have also been panned by historians I respect. So, while I cannot talk to the book you ordered, I personally would not waste any time reading it.

[Howard]

I bought Goldhagen's book when it came out and have to say that I have been unable to read more thana bout 40/50 pages of it, despite periodic attempts.

Basically I find his style unreadable and incoherent. Like Oxford I was shocked to discover he holds an academic post at Harvard as my reading of his book had led me to believe he was just a hack journalist trying to cash in.

Personally, I'd save my money and not buy Goldhagen's work.

[Alex Dekker]

Same here. Just like Howard I tried reading the book of Goldhagen, without any succes. He was several times on Dutch television, talking only nonsens. Some Germans did kill jews, so the whole of Germany is wrong & everybody knew about it. He didn't listen to any argument then, Germany is guilty as hell he kept telling. Awfull guy, terrible book.

[Cott Tiger]

I have heard a bit of criticism of Golghagens book, but it is usually down to his style of writing and also down to the conclusions that his research has brought him to.

I don’t recall anybody criticizing his methods or his actual research.

I will try and read both books (hopefully I will get through Goldhagens as a lot of people seem to give up) and form my own opinion on them.

Its very interesting to hear what everyone has to say though. Browning seems to universally admired!!

[Opa]

That way, you know how being Goldhagened feels. Goldhagen's methods (notably by all the Jewish historians at H-German) were severely criticized-notably egregious generalizations about Germans (one German says...all Germans think), blending out European antisemitism in general, and basically being a racist Schmock. Had he been Black and pissing against Whites (like the Black Goldhagen, Leonard Jeffries), his career would not have been as great, but pissing against Germans is the last racism allowed in the West.
See
http://www.time.com/time/archive/previe ... 21,00.html about Jeffries, where interestingly not just Germans are "devilish folks" but Whites ("Ice-People") in general. But, as African-Americans lack power, he could not keep his job at CUNY. 20th Century history is Politics.

[AAA]

Goldhagen is worth reading, but as Opa IMHO correctly points out the first part of his book is verging on anti-German racism. Indeed, this part of the book could be used as a text on logical fallacies (and indeed faulty generalizations feature most prominently), and needs to be read with care and a critical eye.

The second part concerns Police battalion 101, but here his limitations as a "holocaust" researcher become apparent. He displays little knowedge about either psychology or of the military, the internal workings and relations in units, or the psychology of unit cohesion. He fails to check some absolutely vital statistics about the battalion (for instance, is not prior service in WWI important? Especially when making a case for the general non-military nature of the unit? Especially when that non-militarized nature is one of the pivotal factors in his argument?)

In addition he commits the orthodox sin of explicitly treating the holocaust as unique (he feels the need to make excuses in this respect at one point). He therefore fails to compare Police battalion 101 with military units in other genocide/ethnic cleansing/atrocity situations outside the nazi/holocaust goldfish bowl, which effectively leads him to treat the nazis as also being completely unique (comparing them to others would tend to lead to significantly different conclusions than he has made, since a number of striking similarities between the featured nazis and other atrocity commiters become obvious). One of his criticsims of Browning is not considering the actions of Police battalion 101 in a wider context, and then immediately does the same himself .

The third bit with other nazi atrocities seems positively flimsy and tacked on after part two.

Goldhagen does make some interesting (and thought provoking) conclusions about the nature of those police actions, but then blows it by trying to fit it to his preconcieved nazism-German-antisemiticism theory, his failure to compare it more widely as discussed above, and more than a little too much demagogic polemics is his writing style (in a forum it would be called "ranting").

Its is a hard read, I only read through the first time because of 6hrs trapped in the lounges at Frankfurt airport. So if Goldhagen gets too hard, skip to the part about the police battalion.

But if hard reads are cool, I would say try this in conjunction : Rand Corporation's also somewhat overblown but rather usefull general model for ethnic conflicts : Identifying Potential Ethnic Conflict: Application of a Process Model

[Alex Dekker]

As soon as I'm moved into my new house & got my books unpacked, I'm gonna try to read it again!