What "Ordinary Men" teaches about conditioning for mass murder

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland is a book about a Hamburg-based police force's involvement in the mass killing of Jews during WWII. It is, in part, a historian's effort to understand how relatively "ordinary men" (conscripted into the war effort relatively late in the overall timeline) became willing participants in execution. "Willing" is perhaps not the right word, and in fact many did not participate on account of deep ideological values -- but the interviews on which the book is based do point to the variety of justifications and manipulations that made it possible for these ordinary men to become killers.

Here's what I've learned so far:

  • Collapse the distance between "police" and "military." Make killing legal.
  • Create conditions of economic uncertainty.
  • Create promotion ladders (or, alternately, threats against career promotion for non-participants)
  • Make opportunities for "conscientious objection" public; make objectors step away from their community members.
  • Create conditions for most conscripts to experience the most traumatic role (ie, direct killing); then provide opportunities for people to step back from that most involved role to various supporting roles.
  • Provide alcohol.



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