World War 2 History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

World War 2 History - Essay Example The biggest obscurity that remains is who should bear the culpability of the Holocaust. Millions of questions fizz out of the World War II brutality, but unfortunately, neither satisfactory answer has ever been reached nor is there any in the near future. The answers to evolving questions still remain oblivious with many wondering about the motives and the driving force behind the Holocaust. However, through their stories, Christopher Browning, Sledge Barrow, and Gerald Linderman try to explore some of the drivers of such brutalities witnessed with â€Å"ordinary men† of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during World War II. Browning attempts to shed light on the outrageous behavior of â€Å"ordinary men† of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in the period of German invasion of Poland. On the other hand, Sledge explores the physical and psychological tortures that the United States marine went through in their bid to survive during offensive action in Peleliu and Okinawa, which wa s also reflected by Linderman. All these men crafted literature on the experiences of ordinary men during the war, which compelled them to execute horrific and baffling actions. The main role of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland was to clear ghetto and to extradite the Jews to rear regions by train. According to Browning, most of the members of this group were neither Nazis nor trained for war (3–4). Interestingly, the men turned out to be one of the most efficient executioners of innocent civilians. Jozefow, Poland, marks the group’s initial murder stage, which became a future plan for successive murder operations. The Battalion commander, Major Wilhelm Trap, came up with a solution for those who could not accomplish the task of killing their victims by relieving them of their duty. However, only a few members bought his idea of the reprieve offer. It beats logic and exposes extreme meanness when ordinary men were matched one-on-one with their victims, which pres ented the murders as more individual. The men felt resentment and depression from the killing when they later retreated into their camps (Barrow 69). The commanders of the men resorted to making alcohol accessible, perhaps, to frozen the feelings and experience and also to help the men to cope. Browning further argues that some of the members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 requested to quit when the executions began, while others seemed to enjoy their role (70). The idea of taking lives is quite a traumatizing experience. Apparently, those who were leaving were so withdrawn to pull the trigger with their weapons, and more so, on a face-to-face execution basis of their victims. As the battalions participated in numerous operations to capture and exterminate the Jews, they became more oriented to killing and would even derive pleasure from killing their victims (Browning 127). In spite of the reluctance to shoot their Jew victims, it did not make any better their callous capture and delivery of the Jew captives to their murder sites. Browning argues that "Spared direct participation in the killing, the men...seemed scarcely to have been disturbed" (Browning 90). Quite a large number of the battalions took part in organized murders in their attempt to â€Å"cleanse† Poland. The successive executions were based on the plan developed in Jozefow, when the very first executions were made efficiently and effectively by the ordinary men. In the later killings, the Jews were led to the forest, ordered to lie down and then gunned on their necks. Because of their involvement in countless shootings of the Jews, the men became so murder-oriented that they even became efficient in dispelling the killings from