Ordinary Men

This book explores how a group of ordinary middle-aged Germans became cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews during WWII. Christopher R. Browning argues that most of the men in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were not fanatical Nazis but committed atrocities due to group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. While discussing a specific Reserve Unit, Browning's general argument is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do alone. Ordinary Men is a powerful and important work with themes and arguments still relevant today.