Second Short Quiz – Preface + Chapters 1-11

[johnkarls]

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1. Despite the name “Christopher,” is there any evidence that Christopher Browning, despite being raised in a Protestant Christian family, has since been actively involved with any specific religious organization?

2. After nearly 20 years of research of Holocaust records, did Browning encounter the records of the post-war German investigation in the 1960’s of Reserve Police Battalion 101 including extensive interrogations of 210 of its nearly 500 members?

3. Did he focus most of his research for “Ordinary Men” on these records because (Preface p, xviii) “survivor testimony can tell us little about an itinerant unit like Reserve Police Battalion 101…Seldom, in fact, can the survivors even remember the peculiar green uniforms …to remember what kind of unit was involved”?

4. Due to privacy laws, did Browning have to agree before gaining access to the records not to use real names? However, did this not apply to Battalion Commander, Major Wilhelm Trapp and the three Company Commanders (Captain Wolfgang Hoffmann, Captain Julius Wohlauf and Lieutenant Hartwig Gnade) because of documentation outside Germany?

5. Does Browning lament that (Preface p. xviii) “Not only repression and distortion but conscious mendacity shaped the accounts of the witnesses?

6. Is Browning trying to kid us???

(A) Wouldn’t trained lawyers or trained interrogators start with the Battalion’s orders and the Battalions reports???

(B) Vis-à-vis their orders and reports, doesn’t Table 1 of the Appendix (p. 293) show the number of Jews shot by location and month/year – totaling 38,000 from July 1942 - November 1943???

(C) And vis-à-vis their orders and reports, doesn’t Table 2 of the Appendix (p. 294) show the number of Jews deported to Treblinka by location and month/year – totaling 45,200 from August 1942 - May 1943???

(D) And wouldn’t trained lawyers or trained investigators start with the aforementioned (Q-4) Battalion Commander and 3 Company Commanders who wrote the reports???

(E) Is Germany like much of the rest of the world with no right to remain silent???

7. Were the men of Reserve Polic Battalion 101 middle-aged family men of working- and lower-middle-class background from the city of Hamburg who had been considered too old to be of use to the German army and, therefore, drafted into the Order Police?

8. For their first assignment in July 1942 (sending male Jews of working age in a small Polish village to a work camp and shooting the women, children and elderly), did Battalion Commander Trapp offer -- “any of the older men among them who didn’t feel up to the task before him, he could step out”?

9. Does Chapter 2 (The Order Police) provide useful information about how it was formed in the wake of World War I to provide order in the wake of the Versailles Treaty ending the war?

10. Does Chapter 2 fail to mention that despite France and its allies starting World War I (the Archduke Ferdinand, Heir Apparent to the Holy Roman Empire, aka Habsburg Empire, aka Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb for whom Russian Czar Nicholas II decided to support a fellow Serb by declaring war on The Holy Roman Empire which obligated Russian allies FRANCE and Britain to enter the war) – France demanded reparations from Germany pursuant to which --

(A) The Rhineland (Germany’s industrialized heartland) had to be left undefended under the Versailles Treaty – presumably even undefended by the Order Police that Browning is describing???

(B) So that France would be free to invade the Rhineland periodically where railroad rolling stock and anything else of value were seized by the French army and taken back to France???

(C) Which made Hitler a national hero when he re-militarized the Rhineland 3/7/1936 to bring the French pillaging 1918-1936 to a halt???

(D) Did it take a war (World War I) to teach America that instead of permitting pillaging for decades of the losers, that the losers of World War II (Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) must be put back on their feet ASAP (vs. pillaged for decades) in order to prevent World War III??? While, of course, closely controlling German/Japanese education & media??? Didn’t Douglas MacArthur even permit Japanese Emperor Hirohito to escape execution because Hirohito, who was worshipped as a national deity descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, agreed to serve as a puppet of MacArthur???

11. Does Chapter 3 record how other Order Police Battalions began to implement “The Final Solution” (i.e., extermination of the Jews) in Russia in 1939 – long before Reserve Police Battalion 101 got started (1942 in Poland, in their case)???

12. Is Chapter 4 (The Order Police and the Final Solution: Deportation (sic – deportation was NOT the “final solution”!!!)) still straying from the focus on Reserve Police Battalion 101 and how its members first became mass murderers???

13. Does Chapter 5 talk about a German INVASION of Poland in 9/29/1939???

14. Don’t most History Textbooks talk about Hitler and Stalin PARTITIONING or divvying up Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – demonstrating what a fool British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was to proclaim “Peace In Our Time” less than a year earlier 9/30/1938 when he “sprinkled Holy Water” on Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland??? After all, wasn’t there NOTHING Poland could do to defend itself, so it didn’t even try???

15. Did Reserve Police Battalion 101 enter Poland with the German Army in 1939???

16. Does Browning record that In May 1940, Reserve Police Battalion 101 shipped Jews and Gypsies to “Central Poland” (i.e., Stalin’s portion of Poland) pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which Browning does NOT name but which also provided for Stalin to ship ethnic Germans from his area of Poland to occupy the farms and apartments just vacated by the Jews and Gypsies???

17. Did Reserve Police Battalion 101 later in 1940 before returning to Hamburg, serve guard duty outside the barbed wire of Łódź Poland’s Jewish ghetto, apparently without any problems unlike Battalion 61 guarding the Warsaw ghetto? Was Battalion 101 then virtually dissolved?

18. As previously mentioned (Q-8) was July 1942 when Battalion 101, now re-constituted and back in Poland, first involved in killing Jews???

19. Does Chapter 6 (Arrival in Poland) say that the killing of Russian Jews begun in 1941 was by firing squad??? And that when the decision was made to proceed with the extermination of the rest of Europe’s Jews, the Nazis invented “extermination camps” (aka “death camps”) as more efficient and less burdensome psychologically for the killers???

20. Did the scarcity of trains available to transport Jews to “death camps” lead to the resumption of killing Jews by firing squad??? In July 1942, was Battalion 101 the first Battalion assigned to this duty??? Is their assignment previously described in Q-8???

21. Does Chapter 7 (Initiation to Mass Murder: The Józefów Massacre) record in excruciating detail Battalion 101’s murder of 1,500 Jewish women, children and elderly and how many of its members tried to avoid pulling the triggers???

22. Does Chapter 8 (Reflections on a Massacre) record that only a dozen of Battalion 101’s nearly 500 members had accepted Battalion Commander Trapp’s offer to exempt from the killing anyone who wanted to excuse themselves from the impending mass murder???

(A) Doesn’t Browning fail to explain what such an exemption meant – merely not pulling the triggers or having nothing to do with the Battalion during this period???

(B) BTW, as recorded in Q-8, Browning said elsewhere that the offer was only extended to “any of the older men among them who didn’t feel up to the task before him” -- so shouldn’t Browning be comparing the dozen who accepted to the presumably far-fewer-than-500 to whom it was extended???

(C) And shouldn’t Harper Collins have provided an editor who did more than spell-checking???

23. Interesting questions NOT raised by Browning but by Yours Truly who was a U.S. Navy unrestricted line officer 1967-1970 (Ensign > Lieutenant (j.g.) > Lieutenant) who had a Top Secret Security Clearance with Cryptographic Access which was standard for standing OOD watches for commands with nuclear weapons because it is NOT practical to awake your Commanding Officer in the few minutes or seconds to launch if an order is received –

(A) Should it weigh less on your conscience if you can’t see the millions of people you are nuking than the few you are shooting as part of a firing squad???

(B) Though not my situation, should a soldier feel less guilty about killing other soldiers (vs. their wives and children – or, in the case of Battalion 101, wives and children of non-combatants)???

24. Does Chapter 9 (Łomazy: The Descent of Second Company) record how Battalion 101’s Second Company became “hardened killers” – “killing was something one could get used to"???!!!

25. Though does Browning record that Battalion 101’s Second Company Commander, Lieutenant Hartwig Gnade, was a fervent and sadistic Nazi???

26. Does Chapter 10 (The August Deportations to Treblinka) explain that Łomazy had not been near a rail connection while the four towns from which the nearly-contemporaneous deportations to Treblinka occurred, indeed were???

27. Now be honest – just like “killing was something one could get used to,” aren’t all of the atrocities described in Chapter 10 starting to make you “feel numb because although such atrocities might have seemed unimaginable before you started reading ‘Ordinary Men,’ now they seem merely ‘par for the course’”???

28. Did Browning even devote most of pp. 91-93 to recording how Battalion 101’s Company Commander, Captain Julius Wohlauf, married his four-month pregnant fiancé and brought her to Poland to witness the proceedings and what an important man her new husband was???

29. Does Chapter 11 (Late-September Shootings) record that deportations had been too great for the killing capacity of Treblinka, so while awaiting expansion of Treblinka capacity, shootings by Battalion 101 resumed??? With beaucoup-more atrocities???