For Aida, the experience of Buryatia was powerful in another way. Her parents are war supporters. The past three years have tested her bond with them, though when we spoke recently, over Zoom, she was home for a visit. Spending time with the friendly women sewing camouflage netting for Russian snipers made her think more deeply, she said, about the nature of evil. “I very often see people whose views are horrible, whose views make me want to throw up, and I don’t understand how a person can talk that way or think that way. But they turn out to be absolutely ordinary people,” she said. What to do with this observation is something she’s still pondering.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning examines the same phenomenon. He follows the war record of a police battalion made up of middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg. They murdered men, women and children in occupied Poland. They were not young fanatics who had been raised and brainwashed under Nazism, nor were they forced to take part in the murders. Those who wished to opt out were allowed to do so, and some were even promoted after stepping away. Despite this, only 12 out of ~500 men refused to participate in the mass murders of innocent people. Browning concludes that peer pressure can turn "ordinary" people into a highly efficient killing machine, and that the small number of dissenters can be safely ignored, because they have little impact on the overall outcome.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023

Look whatever Elon Has done, using the title "Ordinary Men" which is a book that is an exploration of how an police battalion in Nazi Germany became accustomed to and learned to enjoy killing Jews is a bit over the top.

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...

Can you imagine Palo Alto HS running this experiment today? Parents and students would be enraged. The teacher would be fired.

The point was to show how easy it is to get caught up in such movements (all of us are susceptible). There’s a good book that shares this story from an ordinary german citizen:

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...

If you haven't read Ordinary Men (https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...) by Christopher Browning I think you would like it, the book is about who follows appalling orders, why they do, and what does (and doesn't) happen to them if they don't.

I think that most of us like to think we would be the moral exception, it offers some mental comfort, but it's far more likely that we won't.

You should read Ordinary Men [1] sometime. All humans have the capacity for evil which is why we must stay vigilant.

From the description:

Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...

I recommend reading book - Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

Well researched (based on testimonials) and well written.

Some men get used to the job, some enjoyed it, some kept refusing.

> Twelve out of 500 soldiers opted out when allowed to leave freely.[34] Those of them who felt unable to continue shooting at point-blank range of prisoners begging for mercy, were asked to wait at the marketplace where the trucks were loaded.[35] The action was finished in seventeen hours. The bodies of the dead carpeting the forest floor at the Winiarczykowa Góra hill (about 2 km from the village, pictured)[36] were left unburied. Watches, jewelry and money were taken.[3]

Unfortunately some of those men who refused were hanged after the war for made up war crimes. History has bitter sense of humor.

> For a battalion of less than 500 men, the ultimate body count was at least 83,000 Jews.[50]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...

[2] http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-Ordinary...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101

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