Ordinary Men and Women Or Natural Born Killers Essay

ORDINARY MEN AND WOMEN, OR NATURAL BORN KILLERS? 

When  thinking about the the people who actually did the killing during the  Holocaust, there is a tendency to regard them as monsters, sadists,  psychotics, or natural-born killers. Yet in the three books that you are  reading for this section of the course, there appear to be a variety of  murderers who may not conform to the common stereotype of killers. In  Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning argues that most of the perpetrators  who did the actual killing during the Holocaust were not monsters or  inherently evil; nor were they particularly anti-semitic.The  perpetrators in Police Battalion 101 were “ordinary men” just following  orders. In other words, murderous personalities and anti-semitism among  these men were not necessary in order to commit genocide. Browning cites  the Obedience and Stanford Prison experiments to support his position. 

What  about the murderers in Neighbors and Hitler’s Furies? To what extent  were they “ordinary”? To what extent were the perpetrators in Jedwabne  and the German women on the Eastern front similar to and different from  the perpetrators in Ordinary Men? To what extent were they anti-semitic?  To what extent were they just following orders? To what extent was  there peer pressure? To what extent did they have choices? Did they act  voluntarily or were they forced to kill? What other factors may have  motivated the people in Jedwabne, the women on the Eastern front, and  the men in Police Battalion 101 to kill? Use three specific individuals  from each book to support your more general argument. 

Finally, to  what extent are the Obedience and Stanford Prison experiments useful in  explaining what happened the people in Jedwabne, and the German women  on the Eastern front, as well as in Police Battalion 101?