Alexander McRae
If you are familiar with Jordan Peterson then you would have heard of the book Ordinary Men. It is about the 101 Battalion Reserve Police during 1943 in Poland written by Christopher R. Browning. The book has been on my list for a long time but I felt intimidated by the subject. Unfortunately, with the recent events in this country, the rise of what feels very much a totalitarian state. I finally bit the bullet and read it. I recommend all to read this but it is the hardest book I have read except for The Gulag Archipelago.
The Order Police were police in name only. They were military trained and deployed alongside military units. Not too unlike the MIQ facilities. Soldier and cop becoming so blurred a colourblind person could not tell one from the other. The units were made up of older conscripts and volunteers trying to avoid military service. The battalion’s role was to act as an occupation force inside countries Germany had captured during the war. The role of the Order Police ended up being the muscle for the SS. This led to their involvement in the Final Solution. These men were your “where are your papers?” types. Soon it will sound like “where is your covid pass?”. SSDD.
The cross-section of the battalion members’ former lives was not what I would have thought. They were lower middle class, skilled labourers, dockworkers and waiters. They included a few white-collar office or sales workers. They were a general cross-section of society. The only consistency was that many were members of the Party stretching back to its inception.
Himmler didn’t want normal policeman. He wanted ideologically motivated warriors crusading against his racial and political enemies.
The numbers you read are hard to process as people. It is clinical. The ‘Liquidation’ of 407 then 1021. The magnitude of the lives lost becomes clear. I don’t believe I would understand if I had not been to the killing fields in Cambodia. There I saw the mass graves where bone shards and teeth rise to the surface daily. Yes, communists are as bad as National Socialists (Nazis).
The reason this book is important.
The men in the battalion were given the choice to not take part in the executions. But the vast majority did it anyway. I thought this book might provide some kind of answer as to why people could do such acts. But it has left more questions than answers.
The final chapter runs through theories and scientific experiments. Investigating what drives humans to do these evils. An investigation of the personalities of people involved in the final solution.
It showed that anti-democratic individuals “harbour strong underlying aggressive impulses”. The Party gave these people an outlet. The Party developed a radical loyalty so that they accepted that orders were orders regardless of what they were. Are we not seeing this today with signing in to buildings and wearing masks as well as getting the vaccine? Orders are Orders.
Indoctrination was also looked at as to how people can act with such malice. In the police training, there was one month of ideological training. The first week, “Race as the basis of our world view”. This sounds exactly like a course you would find in our own government institutions. The men were updated regularly on current events. They were told the “proper” ideological perspective of how to interpret them. Scroll through Stuff if you want a 21-century example.
If someone refused to take part in the executions. They were “isolated, rejected and ostracised” by the rest of their peers in the battalion.
How many of us have not spoken up or acted to avoid these things? How many times have you heard I didn’t want to get the Vaccine BUT… Or get the vaccine, you will have to anyway? Well, watch out for the “I would have BUTs” of the world as you never know where they may end up.
