This Book Left Me Questioning Everything
I wasn’t ready for it…
I read a lot of books.
Most books I read are excellent, and I usually learn something from each one.
Some books, though… oh my word.
Some books change, challenge, and revolutionise everything you’ve thought about yourself and others.
I finished reading such a book a couple of weeks ago.
While reading this book, I had to do something I’ve never done before.
I had to put it down for a few days because it was horrifying.
It was too shocking and brutal.
After a couple of days of resting the book, I mustered the courage to finish it.
I’ve been thinking and reeling over it ever since, and probably will continue to do so for quite some time.
It was appalling yet incredibly eye-opening at the same time.
The chances are, you’ve probably never this book or even heard about it.
I didn’t either until around 8 weeks ago.
So, what’s this book called?
The book in description is called Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.
In Ordinary Men, Browning documents and follows Reserve Police Battalion 101, a unit of ordinary German men, who were ordered to destroy and kill thousands upon thousands of Polish Jews during the Holocaust.
Most of the men had never fired a shot at a human being before.
And even though almost all of the men in Battalion 101 were initially disgusted by what they were doing, they carried on with the massacre of untold numbers of innocent people.
Here is the most mortifying thing about it all:
They didn’t have to do it.
They were given the option to opt out of the operation.
Yet hardly anyone did.
And as time went on, many of the men started to enjoy their work.
I couldn’t help but repeatedly ask:
How can someone take pride in killing innocent people?
Who would do such a thing, and enjoy it?
Why wouldn’t hardly anybody say no to the task?
Here's why:
Nobody wanted to let down their peers.
Nobody wanted to go against the grain.
Nobody wanted to be an outsider.
Nobody wanted to be seen as a coward.
It was easier to massacre thousands of innocent, helpless, desperate people than it was to say no to an order that they were allowed to say no to.
Throughout the book, I couldn’t help but relate to what Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning.
Frankl said:
“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
Would I have done the same as the ‘ordinary men’ of Battalion 101 and kill thousands of innocent people?
Maybe I would.
Maybe I wouldn’t.
If ordinary people, with ordinary jobs, who live ordinary lives, just like myself, are capable of such brutal, heartless destruction, maybe I am too.
And maybe you are as well.
Who knows?
Everyone has a dark side to them.
If you don’t think you do, you don’t know yourself very well.
Ordinary Men left me questioning everything.
I guarantee that if you read it as well, you’ll question everything about your capabilities as a human being, too.
Here are a couple of standout quotes from Ordinary Men:
“Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.”
“The behavior of any human being is, of course, a very complex phenomenon, and the historian who attempts to “explain” it is indulging in a certain arrogance.”
“Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”
