Could I Have Become One of Them? What Ordinary Men Taught Me About Human Behavior
One of the most unsettling lessons I have learned in the Trauma and Crisis Intervention course is that acts of pure evil and malice are not always committed by malevolent people. Before reading Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, I found it easy to believe that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were fundamentally different from others, that they were uniquely cruel or inherently evil. Browning’s historical analysis challenged that assumption by presenting Reserve Police Battalion 101 as a group of ordinary, middle-aged German men who gradually became active participants in mass murder. Rather than leaving me with simple answers, the book forced me to ask an uncomfortable question: could ordinary people –including myself– be influenced by similar social pressures under different circumstances?
The social psychology research we explored in Module 5 helps explain why Browning’s conclusions are unsettling. Stanley Milgram demonstrated that many people are willing to obey authority figures, even when those orders conflict with their own morality. Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment further demonstrates how quickly typical people can internalize social roles and adapt their behavior to fit the expectations of a situation. Browning argues that Zimbardo’s findings are especially relevant because the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were not simply following direct orders. Many individuals gradually adapted to their roles as they became desensitized to violence, even volunteering for more violent tasks. The transformation was not immediate; it occurred through conformity, peer influence, and the normalization of cruelty rather than just unquestioned obedience.
While reading these works, I had found myself thinking about Marina Abramovic’s 1974 performance, Rhythm 0. During the performance, Abramovic stood motionless for six hours while audience members were told they could use any of seventy-two objects on her however they wished with no consequence. What started with harmless interactions gradually escalated into physical violence, as participants observed others crossing the line of morality. By the end of the performance, audience members had cut her clothing, damaged her skin, and even held a loaded gun to her head. Although Rhythm 0 is not comparable to the Holocaust in scale, intent, historical context, or severity it demonstrates a similar psychological phenomenon: when accountability is diminished and harmful behavior becomes normalized within a group, ordinary people may begin acting in ways they never imagined possible.
What connects Browning, Milgram, Zimbardo, and Abramovic is not the claim that people are intrinsically evil. Instead, they collectively suggest that human behavior is profoundly influenced by social environments, authority, group norms, and perceived responsibility. This realization is unnerving because it shifts the conversation away from identifying “bad people” and toward recognizing the conditions that allow harmful behavior to emerge. At the same time, these works also remind us that some individuals resisted. A small number of Battalion 101 members refused to participate in the Jozefow massacre despite the social pressure surrounding them. Their actions indicate that situational influences are powerful but not absolute.
As someone pursuing a career in psychology and criminal justice, I believe this may be one of the most important lessons of the course. Understanding how ordinary people became capable of devastating harm is not about excusing these perpetrators, but about recognizing warning signs before they escalate into violence. It also highlights the important of cultivating moral courage. The willingness to question authority, resist harmful group norms, and recognize the humanity in others even when doing so is difficult. If we continue believing that atrocities are committed only be people fundamentally different from ourselves, we risk overlooking the social conditions that make such atrocities possible. In that sense, Browning’s Ordinary Men is not only a history of the Holocaust but a warning about the potential that exists within every society and within every one of us.
References:
Abramović, M. (1974). Rhythm 0 [Performance].
Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperCollins.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525
Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. Random House
2 comments
The part of your post that I keep thinking about is the fact that some men in Battalion 101 did refuse. That makes the question even more uncomfortable, because it suggests the issue was not simply whether resistance was possible, but why so few people chose it when an exit existed. Browning’s account seems to point toward something more ordinary than fear of punishment: not wanting to appear weak, not wanting to abandon one’s peers, and gradually adjusting to what the group had normalized. In some ways, that is more disturbing than straightforward coercion because it shows how moral boundaries can erode without anyone ever explicitly deciding, “I am going to become this kind of person.”
Your connection to Rhythm 0 also made me think about the role of the first person who crosses a boundary. Once someone else has done it and nothing happens, the next violation becomes easier to rationalize. That suggests prevention cannot depend only on hoping individuals will suddenly find moral courage in the worst possible moment. Institutions may need to make dissent structurally easier before a crisis occurs—for example, by protecting refusal, encouraging people to challenge questionable orders, and creating clear channels for intervention when group norms start moving in a dangerous direction.
To me, that slightly changes the lesson from “any of us could become perpetrators” to “any group can create conditions that make harmful behavior easier and resistance harder.” Moral courage still matters, but maybe we should also be asking how organizations can make doing the right thing less socially costly.
While reading Ordinary Men, I kept coming to the same realization as you. My entire life, I viewed those who committed terrible acts as a baseline of horrible people. Through this course and these readings, I have realized they probably did not see themselves as horrible people but as normal people doing what was necessary. It is such a scary thought that ordinary people can be capable of such evil. It is easy and somewhat lazy to consider them bad people when so much more is at play. As you mentioned, this is exactly how the holocaust happened and how other terrible acts are committed. Great post.
Comments are closed.