JANUARY 2014

    Browning focuses on the role of Reserve Police Battalion 101 using the postwar judicial interrogations of its members. Most of these men were from Hamburg, and many had held ordinary working-class jobs such as dock workers, truck drivers, construction workers, machine operators, salesmen, and civil workers (47, 192). They were not professional assassins, and in many cases, they had no previous military experience. In the early stages of the Final Solution, the Nazi leadership initially faced difficulty transporting Jews in all of these regions to concentration camps. Thus, they decided it would be preferable to exterminate Jews in certain areas through local mass executions. The Reserve Police Battalion 101 was utilized in the region of Lublin in Poland, to begin the systematic slaughter of the Jews.

    The first major involvement of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 in the Final Solution was in the city of Józefów, Poland. The Germans in the Battalion flushed Jewish Poles out of their ghetto areas, methodically corralled them outside of the city and shot them. The leadership of the Battalion did not fail to note the atrocity of this mass murder. Major Wilhelm Trapp, for instance, was tormented mentally because of the pressure placed on him and his conscience to execute the Führer’s lethal intentions. One Commissioner commented on similar orders against the Jews that were to be carried out in Slusk: “What else concerns this action, I must to my greatest regret emphasize, is last of all that it bordered on sadism” (21).

    The men in the Battalion responded to the murderous activity that they were compelled to accomplish with disgust, anger, regret, and physical sickness. “The resentment and bitterness in the battalion over what they had been asked to do in Józefów was shared by virtually everyone, even those who had shot the entire day” (76). Many shirked their duties and evaded superior officers so they didn’t have to participate in the systematic slaughters. Some shooters intentionally missed the precise point on the back of the neck where they were instructed to shoot. This however, sometimes resulted in simply creating greater mess and gore than there otherwise would have been. For the most part, these ordinary men were tremendously embittered and distraught and here, as well as in later such situations, their ailing souls were only slightly alleviated with additional rations of alcohol. In order to quell their conscious, the men police developed several kinds of justification for the shooting murders they committed. One figured that if they shot the mother, they should shoot the child, too, because it would be difficult for the child to survive without the mother (73).

    Despite their initial revulsion by the slaughter at Józefów, the men in Reserve Police Batallion 101 became increasingly desensitized to the horror that they were accomplishing. In the village of Łomazy the local Trawniki unit provided additional shooters, “thus alleviating the chief psychological burden the German policemen [of Batallion 101] had experienced at Józefów” (79). The men of Batallion 101 even began to joke about the killings (128). Some participated in the mass Jew hunts, chasing fleeing Jews across the countryside, which was “an important and statistically significant phase of the Final Solution” (132). It was also psychologically significant in terms of making the soldiers perceive the Jews more as prey to be hunted than as fellow human beings, and thus, relieving the psychological stress of their deeds. Browning summarizes: “The horrors of the initial encounter eventually became routine, and the killing became progressively easier” (161). All told, the Reserve Police Battalion 101 participated in the shooting deaths of 38,000 Jews and sent at least 45,000 to the death camp in Treblinka (142).

    Under no circumstance should we attempt to justify the murderous deeds of those who participated in the holocaust. Yet, Browning does attempt to determine why these ordinary individuals could participate in such horrific massacres. He starts with generalities: “War, and especially race war, leads to brutalization, which leads to atrocity” (160). He also differentiates those who carry out “atrocity by frenzy” as opposed to “atrocity by policy,” and how the latter are by necessity in a different, and sometimes more inhuman, mentality. He also notes how the Police Order distanced themselves from their subjects by blending the typical factors of war against an enemy with the additional dehumanizing overlay of racial stereotyping. Germans were immersed in these racial attitudes under the Nazi regime through ceaseless propaganda that proclaimed of the alleged superiority of the German Volk and the inferiority of the Jews. The Jewish race was blamed for a variety of ideologies that competed with German superiority, ranging from Christianity to Marxism (180). And, whether they recognized it or not, the men in the Battalion were under enormous pressure to conform with their comrades. While some begged not to participate directly in the shootings, most recognized that “refusing to shoot constituted in refusing one’s share of an unpleasant collective obligation” (184-185). Browning explores other studies and circumstances in which sadistic behavior slithers out of ordinary men (169).

    Ordinary Men is reminiscent of Isabel Hull’s book Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Browning demonstrates the continuing trajectory into the Nazi regime of the institutional extremism described by Hull from 1870 through the end of the World War I. Hull asserts that the vicious and at times genocidal results of the German military were not merely the product of intentional moral evil but resulted from military policies and institutional assumptions and often, from administrative ineptitude and neglect. “The terrible violence, immense destruction, and mass death caused by the operation of military culture were indeed large-scale disasters, but they had small, literally routine beginnings” (Hull, 4). The same routines and assumptions bolstered with increasingly pervasive racial stereotypes transformed average middle-class men into murderers under the Nazi regime. Also, as Hull points out, whereas other nations typically had other extramilitary checks to the military, such as public outcry, media, or political avenues of dissent, there were no such effective vehicles in Germany to thwart military extremism. Browning concurs that “Orders were orders, and no one in such a political climate could be expected to disobey them” (170). The orders of the German War machine must be followed, and complaint against it would be futile, and perhaps even fatal. 

    The interplay of indoctrination regarding racial stereotypes, the pressure of conformity, and the inability to meaningfully defy appalling orders turned ordinary men into agents of genocide. As an evangelical, however, one can recognize that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 did not become murderers just because of their unique military-oriented culture or merely as a result of Nazi propaganda. Scripture is clear that all people are inherently evil (Jer 17:9; Eccl 9:3; Mark 7:21-22; Rom 3:10-18). In fact, in Chapter 18 Browning explores other studies and circumstances that make ordinary people act in extraordinarily evil ways. Thus to turn average people into monsters sometimes takes merely a cultural nudge. While he did not seem willing to conceded that point explicitly, Christopher Browning leaves the reader with this haunting, anthropological question, the answer to which unendingly eludes the historian: “If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?” (189).

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT: Fight for the Faith, Jude 1:3

Dear friends, while I was making every effort to write to you concerning our common salvation, I had a compulsion to write to urge you to contend for the faith that was once handed down to the saints (my translation).

    A contest implies contenders. A fight implies an adversarial force.

    There is always someone who wants to combat godly people. Believers always have opponents, and there will always be a need to struggle for the sake of the faith. Sometimes those adversaries are outside; sometimes they come from within.

    Jude encourages the recipients of his short letter to fight for the faith. He summons them to give their faith immediate attention in light of the strains of error that were slithering in. Don’t be fooled by the brevity of Jude’s epistle; the book of Jude provides a powerful and relevant message for American Christianity today.

    In Jude 1:3, the author gives us some background information concerning the purpose of his writing. He says that “while I was making every effort to write to you concerning our common salvation, I had a compulsion to write to urge you to contend for the faith.” That is, the purpose of the letter changed. He originally desired to write a general instructional letter concerning salvation; however, God made him aware of the need to urge his audience to fight for the faith.

    When Jude says contend for the “faith” he is talking about the Christian message or those doctrines and practices of our faith which distinguish Biblical Christianity from other faiths or errant branches of Christianity. These are the essential beliefs about Christ’s suffering, substitutionary death and miraculous resurrection which form the heart of the Gospel message of grace and life. They are “common” (from the Greek word koinos) to all believers; that is, someone who does not hold to these fundamental doctrines is simply not a Christian. Commentator Michael Green states, “God, he implies, has handed over to His people a recognizable body of teaching about His Son, in feeding on which they are nourished, and in rejecting which they fall” (The Second Epistle General of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude: An Introduction and Commentary, p. 159.). It is the message concerning Christ that no other religion has, but it is the only true faith and Christ is the only Savior that truly bestows eternal life: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

    We know that Jude is referring not merely to belief, but specifically to the body of distinct Christian belief because he describes it as the faith “that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” It is the Biblically-rooted doctrines and practices that have been preserved throughout church history from the very beginning of the apostolic era. The church has frequently strayed from some of the fundamental tenants of Christianity, but inevitably God raises up a believer, such as St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, or Martin Luther, to redirect the church and help her to refocus on the essentials of the faith which unite us rather than on the peripheral issues of the faith which divide believers.

    Now, with such heroes of the faith in mind, let’s revisit that word “contend.” This word in the original Greek is epagonizomai. You can probably discern the word “agonize” in epagonizomai. The similar word agonizomai is a favorite of Paul’s, who uses it six times of his own or someone else’s struggle for the continuance of the Gospel (1 Cor 9:25; Col 1:29; 4:12; 1 Tim 4:10; 6:12; 2 Tim 4:7). However, the word here in Jude 3, is intensified with the prefix epi- (shortened to ep-) and means “to continue to struggle” or to “follow up” on previous contests (Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 31). One writer says that the word “should not . . . suggest primarily the negative task of opposing the false teachers. He appeals to his readers to continue the positive exertions of Christian life in the service of the gospel” (Bauckham, 32). In this fight of faith, we confront those who are in evident error, and we also fight against erroneous thinking in our own minds and the subtle encroachment of error in our churches as well. In addition to this defensive posture, however, we also employ a positive strategy based on the frequent and firm proclamation of Biblical truth no matter what the cost. As our own word “agonize” suggests, epagonizomai, requires effort, and fighting for the faith entails action and urgency. It demands the tremendous effort that it takes to reserve personal time and attention to Bible study and prayer, both individually and corporately.

    Fighting for our faith necessitates the courage it takes to admonish those who are struggling in the faith and to reach out to those who are lost with the truth of the Gospel.  Continuing the fight for our faith requires the self‑control to deny our fallen flesh its lustful desires and to strive for purity in words, actions and attitudes. Does your life reflect that kind of urgency and effort in regard to the faith? Do you just cruise through life hoping to avoid another opportunity to witness to your faith? Do you “agonize” for the preservation of the faith by being being more deeply grounded in Christianity and by helping other believers to grow in their faith, as well?

SOMETHING TO PROMOTE: Cryo Designs & Photography 

    Are you interested in stunning photography, cutting edge graphics design, or high-resolution desktop wallpapers? Come check out Josh Kasper’s Facebook page, Cryo Designs and Photography. Here you will find his original graphics designs, photo manipulations, and striking up-close nature photography. Some graphics have musical or athletic themse, and some are abstract designs flowing with creativity.

    The first picture that we’re highlighting on first glance just says 2014.  However, each of these numbers is made up entirely of different words.  This is an example of “word art,” also known as Typography.  This piece was created using Adobe Photoshop CS6.  It took approximately four hours to complete.

     Even the most mundane scenes in nature are astounding when captured in full HD (high definition). Shot with a Cannon digital camera, this vibrant image of a bee on a flower (left) is a must-see.