I have to say that the articles we read over the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 got me thinking. Both Browning and Goldhagen provide varying theories over just who was responsible for the mass murders that occurred during the Third Reich. I do not know just with which side I would side. Browning makes a compelling argument with his empathetic approach. He writes that the men themselves, the ordinary men of Germany, though ordered to kill, were not happy with the orders themselves. The commanding officer, Trapp, is one example Browning seems to favor. He points out that Trapp offered the men a chance to be reassigned to other duties and protected the first one who took the offered. Browning also offers evidence pointing to the internal conflict that Trapp seemed to find himself in.
Goldhagen, meanwhile, seems to want to "hang" the men of Police Battalion 101. Though he does provide some evidence supporting Trapp's conflict over his orders, he goes further with Trapp. He writes that Trapp provided an excuse that the Jews were "partisans" and what they were doing was helping the war effort. Goldhagen argues that this excuse was transparent and proves Trapps guilt. Lt. Buchman, the only officer who flat out stated that he wouldn't have any part in this atrocity, is the source of a theory of Goldhagen's. He believes that the reason Buchman would not take part was, quite simply, that he knew Jews from his professional life.
I have to say that though Goldhagen does provide more info, he seems to be more on a witch hunt than anything else. Browning, on the other hand, seems to want to provide a more complete view of the atrocity. He provides the facts and theories on why the men did what they did and lets the reader decide for himself just what went on and why?
It does bring me one last thought. I just wanted to comment on the seeming circle that the history of the Holocaust seems to be going on. At first it was viewed that the people of Germany, all of them, were perpetrators of the Holocaust. Later, it was put forth that it was the Nazi Party and the SS that carried out the killings. Now it seems that with the opening up of more sources the first theory is brought back to the forefront.
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ReplyDeletei like your analysis of the two articles. i especially agree that Goldhagen is on a witch hunt of sorts and ignores much of the evidence that we had read in Brownings article. bad move, since these articles will likely be always read concurrently. i also disliked Goldhagen's extreme exaggerations - painting unsubstantiated portraits of the atrocity just so he can affect the mood of his article, evident when he tells the reader that it wouldn't be hard to imagine the police men dangling a baby by the legs in front of his mother and shooting his brains out, and then dropping the baby on the floor. Instances of pure speculation like this only show that Goldhagen's own evidence is scanty. he also exaggerates the small evidence he has, making the taunts and bullying from those doing their work directed at those who refused to work originate solely in a place of hate and anti-semitism. in reality, those men were likely taunting from their own insecurities and their own discomfiture in their actions, as has been proven is the origin of most acts of bullying and taunting.
ReplyDeleteI can certainly see how it appears that Goldhagen is on a "witch hunt." He uses vivid imagery to demonstrate his point, but I would not call it exageration. The acts that these men had to commit in Jozefow intially was off-putting to them almost just because of the gore. How else can you explain their actions in later search-and-destroy missions where they seemed to enjoy it? The imagery is used to give the reader some sense of what these men actually saw. Now think about yourself actually committing those acts. Now think about doing it over and over again in subsequent missions and they way in which they acted. There is not just Nazi racism tied to the backgrounds of the 101, in fact Goldhagen goes out of his way to demonstrate that they were the furthest thing from Nazis and were the last rescources available to the Party to accomplish its goals. There is a century of recorded racism before Hitler in Germany and by separating the 101 from direct Nazi influence, Goldhagen shows that racism is an ordinary German thing and thus these men readily committed these acts against Jews once the opportunity was made available to them via the Nazis.
ReplyDeleteI think you correctly identify authorial intent in this articles. Browning seeks to explain how 'any man' could have responded as did the men in PB 101 while Goldhagen intends to be inflammatory. He wants to argue that only anti-Semitic Germans could have carried out the Holocaust. However, he brings out evidence that poses tough questions and certainly seems damning. I wish that I had an answer but it often seems that the more I read about and study the Holocaust, the hard it is to explain, even to myself.
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