The most interesting book I read for a college class was Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men. Browning uses interviews of men who served in a German police unit to describe their participation in the Holocaust.

Our class discussion centered around how seemingly ordinary people (these guys were mostly middle aged draftee policemen, not SS psychos) could force unarmed and noncombatant civilians, including children, out of their homes, order them to lay in ditches, put a bayonet on their necks for aim, and shoot them in the back of the head. No final consensus was reached.

Most of the men did not seem like rabid antisemites, though an atmosphere of antisemitism obviously colored their actions. They were not “brainwashed,” as it was clear they were still independent actors who usually required large rations of alcohol to drown their consciences. Those who didn’t shoot and instead opted for guard duty were not punished. Of course they probably would have suffered severely if they spoke out or tried to stop the slaughter by any means, but this does not excuse their complicity in such a monstrous crime.

One could make the argument that these men were police officers, and police are trained to think of their suspects and captives as inferior. Though I favor abolishing government and implementing vastly different security measures, I do not believe there is anything inherently genocidal in the mind of the policeman. A license to bully and oppress is a far cry from putting a bayonet on a child’s neck and pulling the trigger.

The excerpt on Amazon contains this passage:

“Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, [Major] Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. This assignment was not to his liking, indeed it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities. If it would make their task any easier, the men should remember that in Germany the bombs were falling on women and children.

“He then turned to the matter at hand. The Jews had instigated the American boycott that had damaged Germany, one policeman remembered Trapp saying. There were Jews in the village of Jozefow who were involved with the partisans, he explained according to two others. The battalion had now been ordered to round up these Jews. The male Jews of working age were to be separated and taken to a work camp. The remaining Jews–the women, children, and elderly–were to be shot on the spot by the battalion. Having explained what awaited his men, Trapp then made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out.”

The best answer I can see is that the prime motivation for these murders was a sense of duty that rested on assigning individuals to collectives. Throughout the book the men seem to feel that this was something that had to be done. Orders had to be carried out by someone and the shooters didn’t want to let their people down.

This demonstrates the harm of letting others determine one’s duty and values. Mass murder is surely an extreme example, but as the logical conclusion of an evil premise it is an instructive one.

The enemy of the people – this means the enemy of your existence if you are one of the people – is a collective whose members have no rights due to their affiliation. Collectivizing the enemy is one linguistic trick the powerful use to obscure facts in their favor. “The Jews” were supposedly harming “Germany” (though Trapp and the men he commanded should have recognized the claim’s ridiculousness), and therefore had to be killed by “Germany.”

Likewise, why should schoolkids in Tokyo, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki be incinerated for the actions of the Japanese Army? Because “The Japs” committed atrocities and everyone who is a “Jap” is therefore culpable. A convenient excuse for murder. Why was Iraq connected to September 11? Because Muslims or “Towelheads” did it, and Iraqis fell under that category and therefore deserved to die. This atrocious collectivism was at the root of all the lies that led to the quagmire.

When pushed to its extreme, or to its logical conclusion, the question of who determines your duty becomes:

Who decides who you would kill?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 11:25 pm and is filed under history. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.