Study Questions for Browning/Goldhagen Discussion
for History 394
Both historians––Browning and Goldhagen––use exactly the same historical
sources, the records of the German 101
st Police Battalion. Be
prepared to discuss at least one way in which they construct such different
arguments from the same set of historical sources.
Are Germans of the Nazi era best seen as “ordinary men” or “ordinary
Germans”–– that is, should they be seen as fundamentally like ourselves, or
as fundamentally shaped in ways utterly different from us (in particular, by
the culture of “eliminationist anti–Semitism”).
How did “ordinary men” involved in routine police duty in the sleepy
backcountry of Eastern Europe (while
the real action was taking place in the massive battles in the Soviet Union)
end up as mass murderers?
Browning relies heavily on the court testimonies of the men of the 101
st
Police Battalion collected in proceedings in the 1960s. To what degree can
such sources be given credibility, given that (as in the slave narratives)
the interviewees have considerable reason to lie and deceive?
Pick one particular instance recounted by Goldhagen, and then compare how
that same instance is treated in Browning. How does each historian use this
same piece of evidence to mount an argument? For example, look at how each
historian treats the speech of Major Trapp (recounted in the first few pages
of Browning’s book), in which Trapp informs his men of the duty that awaits
them (that is, to execute hundreds of Jews in a village), and offers them a
chance to opt out of this action. Goldhagen criticizes
Browning for not placing enough weight in his interpretation for the
“demonological anti-Semitism,” or “eliminationist anti-Semitism,” that
Goldhagen believes pervaded German culture. Do you find that Browning’s book
is subject to this criticism. In
criticizing Goldhagen, Browning writes that “modern governments that wish to
commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to
induce ‘ordinary men’ to become their ‘willing executioners.’” In short, the
German mass murderers were all too ordinary –– subject to pressures that
could induce many people in many diverse societies to commit horrific crimes
of genocide. Do you find this argument of Browning to be convincing?
Look at the photograph on the cover of Browning’s book, and the photographs
that follow p. 40. Do these photographs support Browning’s thesis, or tend
to cast it into doubt? For example, ask this question of the photographs:
why are the German police battalion reservists on the cover of the book
smiling? Why would they consent to have their photographs taken in the first
place?
In chapter 18, Browning uses the results of famous experiments in psychology
(in particular, the Milgram experiments) to help him interpret the actions
of the men of the 101
st Police Battalion? To what degree can an
historian borrow from an ahistorical experiment such as this?
Choose one or two documents from Lucy
Dawidowicz, ed.,
A
Holocaust Reader
(on reserve in the library). Show how the
document(s) you selected shed light on the major theses put forward by
Browning and Goldhagen. Do the documents tend to support one or the other
position? Do the documents selected suggest alternative hypotheses about the
origins, execution, and meaning of the mass murder perpetrated during the
Holocaust?
Browning writes in a relatively "minimalist
,"
unadorned style; Goldhagen, by contrast, writes in a "maximalist" style. How
would you compare and contrast the effect on their arguments of these
contrasting styles? How would you assess the aesthetic choices of the two
historians?
Ultimately, are the actions of the 101st Police Battalion explainable at
all? What
other alternative means might historians
consider to get at and understand the kind of mass moral evil perpetrated by
these men?