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" Insanity is the exception in individuals. In groups,

parties, people and times it is the rule. "

-Nietzsche



The book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is an important work which helps to fill in and tries to explain an historiographical gap in the record about the genocide of the Jewish population of Europe during World War II. Most of the research on this topic has tended to focus on the concentration camps themselves with relatively little being devoted to how the Jews got sent there in the first place. The book also differs in the fact that it is told, not from the surviving victims point of view with the Germans portrayed as faceless characterized SS black uniformed guards, but instead it is from the German viewpoint. This personalization of the perpetrators is what gives the text its impact. The faceless view is easier to read of course as it involves less questioning of self.

Browning tries to explain how a unit of less then 500 men could, over an eleven ...