About the Book

In March 1942, approximately 75 to 80 percent of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive. Eleven months later, 75 to 80 percent were dead — the result, according to Christopher R. Browning, of “a short, intense wave of mass murder” centered in Poland. One German unit of just over 450 men, Reserve Police Battalion 101, was responsible for the shooting of 39,000 Polish Jews and the deportation of 44,000 more to the Treblinka death camp over a period of 16 months.

In this chilling and stunningly powerful work, Browning describes how a group of average men became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews. Drawing on a judicial interrogation of 210 members of the Battalion in the 1960’s, he paints a portrait of the soldiers who took so many lives and comes to a disturbing conclusion about the universality of such barbarity in our world.

Christopher R. Browning is a professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He is a contributor to Yad Vashem’s official twenty-four volume history of the Holocaust and the author of three books on the subject.

“A remarkable — and singularly chilling — glimpse of human behavior ... This meticulously researched book ... represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust.” — Andrew Nagorski, Newsweek

Critical Praise

“A staggering and important book, a book that manages without polemic to communicate at least an intimation of the unthinkable.” — Chicago Tribune

“Helps us understand, better than we did before, not only what they did to make the Holocaust happen but also how they were transformed psychologically from the ordinary men of [the] title into active participants in the most monstrous crime in human history.” — New York Times Book Review

“It is the care with which Browning examines the evidence, as well as the soberness of his conclusions, that gives this work such power and impact.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust." — Newsweek

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780062303028
• ISBN 10: 0062303023
• Imprint: Harper Perennial
• On Sale: 02/28/2017
• Trimsize: 5.310 in (w) x 8.000 in (h) x 0.860 in (d)
• Pages: 384
• List Price: $19.99
• BISAC1 : HISTORY / Europe / Poland
• BISAC2 : HISTORY / Europe / Eastern
• BISAC3 : HISTORY / Europe / Germany
• BISAC4 : HISTORY / Military / World War II
• BISAC5 : HISTORY / Holocaust
• BISAC6 : PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology
• BISAC7 : SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society