This is such a difficult review to write. Browning’s grasp &, reading for any who want to consider the possibilities for and results of man’s ability to dehumanize man. My objections arise out of the last 2 hours. Aside from turning into a Doctorial Dissertation in psychosocial psycho-babble that only those who have a willingness to wade thru pages of BS to get to a few cogent points will willingly tolerate, I find his equating a handful of disturbed individuals who lost it in My Lai to the tens of thousands of Germans who, at the final point, willingly destroyed an entire culture face to face repugnant, Ditto his perpetuating the wretched myth that Americans were glad to “take no prisoners” in the Pacific, men who were fighting an enemy who almost to a man preferred tp die for the glory of the Emperor and refused to be captured so there was no opportunity to take prisoners, is the same as filling a pit with dead women and children.
These Ordinary Men did what they did for any number of reasons, as many reasons as there were men who did it. There was an opinion by one researcher the author named, as part of his justification in his rant against a college who dared disagree with him, that caught my attention. In a lifetime spent as a voracious reader pf history in all areas I have a number of times run across an idea that the conclusion of the researcher mentioned above has, in the context of this book, helped reinforce. As far fetched as it may seem, the fact that the Germans were never conquered by the Romans has had an effect on the culture of Germany even until WWII. Historically they were never Latinized, and so have a completely different fundamental cultural view that in some fundamental way made it easier to justify their actions. It’s out there, but the attitude toward killing innocents was tapped in some evil way by Hitler.