Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning Read Free Book Online

civilian life. From oldest to youngest, they were:
    Hartwig Gnade, born 1894, a forwarding agent and Nazi Party member since 1937, commander of Second Company;
    Paul Brand,* born 1902;
    Heinz Buchmann,* born 1904, owner of a family lumber business, Party member since 1937;
    Oscar Peters,* born 1905;
    Walter Hoppner,* born 1908, tea importer, Party member briefly in 1930, rejoined in the spring of 1933;
    Hans Scheer,* born 1908, and a Party member since May 1933;
    Kurt Drucker,* born 1909, a salesman and party member since 1939. 25
    Thus, their ages ranged from thirty-three to forty-eight. Five were Party members, but none belonged to the SS.
    Of the thirty-two noncommissioned officers on whom we have information, twenty-two were party members and seven were in the SS. They ranged in age from twenty-seven to forty years old; their average age was thirty-three and a half. They were not reservists but rather prewar recruits to the police.
    Of the rank and file, the vast majority were from the Hamburg area. About 63 percent were of working-class background, but few were skilled laborers. The majority of them held typical Hamburg working-class jobs: dock workers and truck drivers were most numerous, but there were also many warehouse and construction workers, machine operators, seamen, and waiters. About 35 percent were lower-middle-class, virtually all of them white-collar workers. Three-quarters were in sales of some sort; the other one-quarter performed various office jobs, in both the government and private sector. The number of independent artisans and small businessmen was very small. Only a handful (2 percent) were middle-class professionals, and very modest onesat that, such as druggists and teachers. The average age of the men was thirty-nine; over half were between thirty-seven and forty-two, a group considered too old for the army but most heavily conscripted for reserve police duty after September 1939. 26
    Among the rank and file policemen, about 25 percent (43 from a sample of 174) were Party members in 1942. Six were
Alte Kämpfer
who had joined the Party before Hitler came to power; another six joined in 1933. Despite the domestic ban on new Party members from 1933 to 1937, another six men who worked aboard ships were admitted by the Party section for members living overseas. Sixteen joined in 1937, when the ban on new membership was lifted. The remaining nine joined in 1939 or later. The men of lower-middle-class background held Party membership in an only slightly higher proportion (30 percent) than those from the working class (25 percent). 27
    The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were from the lower orders of German society. They had experienced neither social nor geographic mobility. Very few were economically independent. Except for apprenticeship or vocational training, virtually none had any education after leaving
Volksschule
(terminal secondary school) at age fourteen or fifteen. By 1942, a surprisingly high percentage had become Party members. However, because the interrogating officials did not record such information, we do not know how many had been Communists, socialists, and/or labor union members before 1933. Presumably a not insignificant number must have been, given their social origins. By virtue of their age, of course, all went through their formative period in the pre-Nazi era. These were men who had known political standards and moral norms other than those of the Nazis. Most came from Hamburg, by reputation one of the least nazified cities in Germany, and the majority came from a social class that had been anti-Nazi in its political culture. These men would not seem to have been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on behalf of the Nazi vision of a racial utopia free of Jews.
    * Pseudonyms are designated throughout by an asterisk at first occurrence.

APPENDIX: SHOOTINGS AND DEPORTATIONS BY RESERVE POLICE BATTALION 101
    TABLE 1 NUMBER OF JEWS SHOT BY RESERVE POLICE