ORDINARY MEN: RESERVE POLICE BATTALION 101 REVIEW

After watching a portion of a documentary on German Reserve Police Battalion 101 I’m left with concerns.

As the story is told on Netflix, ordinary men were recruited into police work.

The idea of joining a police staff was better than going to the front.

The guys selected got some extra training, then loaded up and headed out.

The day before their first joint act, they learned the job:

Like the National Guard in the United States, these German battalions were organized regionally.

Most of the men in Battalion 101 came from working- and lower-middle-class neighborhoods in Hamburg, Germany.

Major Wilhelm Trapp, a 53-year-old career police officer who had come up through the ranks, headed the battalion.

With choking voice and tears in his eyes, he visibly fought to control himself as he informed his men that they had received orders to perform a very unpleasant task. These orders were not to his liking either, but they came from above.

Trapp then explained to the men that the Jews in Jozefow would have to be rounded up, whereupon the young males were to be selected out for labor and the others shot.

 

After their part in the Holocaust they all went home and lived happily ever after?

 

. . . the service of these men in Poland did not transform them into bloodthirsty killers for the rest of their lives; once they had returned to civilian life in Hamburg, none exhibited any violent tendencies or inability to fit back into society.

Missing is the opinion of these men’s family, friends, and neighbors both during and after the war. Was Hamburg proud of their service?

 

Family, Friends, and Neighbors Of Ordinary Men?

What’s the opposite of ‘stolen valor?’

If you’re taking credit for what you didn’t do, it’s hiding what you did do?

The ordinary men of Battalion 101 were following orders the same as everyone else.

Once people get used to following orders, no matter how wrong or illegal, it’s easier to keep following.

Here are a few pages of the Browning book.

The last sentence is chilling:

 

“If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”

 

 

Are we all just following orders? Is that it?

‘Grandpa, what did you do in The War?’

‘I followed orders. Then I got hung.”

If ordinary men follow the worst orders, where’s any hope for anyone else?

‘Dad, what did you during the Jan 6 insurrection?’

 

 

‘I followed orders and went to prison. Then I got pardoned and got a job.’

 

Doing The Work Of The People?

I’m disappointed to know so many have not benefited from history.

If ordinary men can stand on the edge of an open pit firing bullets into the groups gathered below, and go home like it never happened, in some cases, it’s not because they aren’t guilty of war crimes.

Like the men learned to cope with their work in the field of mass killing, they learned to cope with the aftermath.

How? I don’t know.

The men who stood back and fired ten bullets into the prone body of Alex Pretti will cope with the aftermath of following orders, even if they weren’t given specific orders for their act.

Are the men in masks all cut from the same cloth, the same window smashing, pile on, fabric?

I’d say no. They are our friends and neighbors, our fellow citizens, with the same ambitions and goals as all true Americans.

If there’s an instance of proof, it comes with the ordinary men from Hamburg, Germany, the men of the police battalions in the 1940’s following the most God awful orders imaginable.

In our nation, in our America, we don’t have the will, or the stomach, for harboring murderers.

Instead, we have procedures like due process.

 

 

PS: Daddy, what did you do when ICE people killed protesters in Minnesota?

I wrote a blog post.

 

PSS: Couldn’t you do more?

I’ll write a poem:

 

I’ve been a helper with a steady hand for people fading away

I tell them you’ve been a good man, you’ve done well in your day

Now I’m with them, hand in hand, in the gutter where I bleed

But they can’t help me in my time of need

Please tell my mother and father their boy did no wrong

And if I leave here now you could learn to sing my song

Sing in the mountains, sing in the valley, sing it high, sing it low

Sing on the highway, sing it on your street, remember my song when you go

You may be leaving before you plan to, I knew I’d be back when I left home

Now I’m gone forever unless you keep singing my song

I’m a helper giving a hand for folks fading away, who seek peace on their way down

So tell me why I have to die on the streets of my own town

Why did I die on the streets of my own town