Christopher Browning

pChristopher Browning – Moderate Structuralist

Key arguments…

* His book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, comes to the conclusion that the men of Unit 101 were not demons or Nazi fanatics but ordinary middle-aged men of working-class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found unfit for military duty

* He believes the men of Unit 101 killed out of a basic obedience to authority and peer pressure, not blood-lust or primal hatred

* When placed in a coherent group setting, most people will adhere to the commands given, even if they find the actions morally reprehensible

* Ordinary people will more than likely follow orders, even though they might personally question, when they perceive these orders as originating from an authority

* Browning argues that the Final Solution was the result of the “cumulative radicalization” of the German state – the ever increasing radical beliefs and actions of the German people

* They were encouraged to follow command and instruction and tribal loyalty takes over

* Browning argues the group mentality was that the Battalion had to kill as it was their duty and if they refused to carry out their tasks, then other colleagues would have to do it for them

Support from…

Martin Broszat

* He believes that Hitler never took a definitive decision nor issued a general order for the Final Solution.

* The annihilation program developed in stages in conjunction with a series of isolated massacres at the end of 1941 and in 1942

* These locally limited mass murders were improvised answers to an impossible situation

* For Broszat, the idea developed from the practice of sporadic murders of groups of Jews, which produced the idea of killing all Jews systematically

Criticisms from…

Lucy Dawidowicz

* Lucy was a radical intentionalist, who upheld the view point that in 1919 Hitler had already decided to exterminate European Jews...