sehepunkte 24 (2024), Nr. 9

Jan Hendrik Issinger: Militärische Organisationskultur im Nationalsozialismus

The question of why "ordinary men" turned into ruthless mass murderers has kept historians busy ever since Christopher Browning's seminal study of Reserve Police Battalion 101. [1] Jan Hendrik Issinger deals with this question for Reserve Police Battalion 61. This seems to invite comparison, however, the author chooses what one might call a "parochial" approach. Comparisons with similar units in similar situations would be possible, he tells his readers, but he makes it clear that this is not what is happening in this study (581). This confession comes rather late in the book and does not fit the book's sweeping title, which suggests that the author is writing about a larger structural pattern of violent practices in Nazi Germany.

The "parochial" approach comes with limitations. The reading of the secondary literature is restricted to works dealing with Reserve-Police Battalion 61, or at least, mentioning it. This is very consistent, but also excludes literature that could have been very useful to discuss the author's findings. The problems of the author's approach become palpable in chapters III and IV, which deal with the unit's personnel and operational history. These chapters are written almost exclusively on the basis of primary sources, army files and court records. A lot of what is said there could have been compared with other units and put into the larger context.

One of the few places where the book engages with the wider literature is in chapter IV, when Issinger presents an account of the unit's antipartisan activities. He dismisses Hannes Heer's thesis about "antipartisan-warfare without partisans" referring to the primary sources and the fact that the unit's files mention partisan activity in abundance (340). However, this misses the central point of Heer's argument - that German units active in the Soviet Union justified killings of civilians by dubbing them partisans or people supporting partisans. [2] The author also misses the point that Heer's thesis mainly refers to the beginning of the campaign, not to later stages for which the existence of partisan activity is undisputed. The author's judgement is even more surprising, since he later admonishes his audience that, of course, the unit's documentation could not always be trusted as truthful depictions of reality (168-169, 464). Why we should trust the sources when they talk about partisans but not when they talk about policemen's bravery in combat remains unclear.

There are other inconsistencies, for example when the author takes up Sönke Neitzel's and Harald Welzer's model of "frames of reference." [2] The unit had been the only frame of reference for the policemen, the author claims (405). However, this is not only inconsistent with the model that presupposes the existence and effect of different frames of reference to explain different or even contradictory patterns of the behavior of individuals; it is also inconsistent with the author's own findings. After all, boasting about military combat experience or displaying military decorations to relatives and members of the public at home (529) clearly referred to another frame of reference, and so did ruptures in the unit's community (476-482).

Method and stringency of the argument are certainly not strengths of the study. Chapters III and IV seem to be designed as "mere" descriptions of facts which the author then interprets in chapter V on influences on the practices of the policemen. From a theoretical point of view this is problematic because it suggests that it is possible to have description without interpretation. From a practical point of view, the lack of criteria for relevance produces something which is closer to a summary of primary sources than their analysis. The recruits' bad teeth (148) might have been relevant for the authorities at the time, but knowing about them does not help answer the guiding questions of the study.

The fifth chapter of the book is the strongest. Here the author interprets the policemen's behavior not only implicitly, but explicitly. The concept of "military organizational culture" is not developed in great detail, but it seems to be an umbrella term for Browning's elements of explanation, however, shifting emphasis from pragmatics to institutionalized structures of formal and informal rules. Between these two poles, Issinger seems to see the space of discretion even ordinary members of the battalion found to act according to their personal interests and desires. There is, indeed, evidence that the latter played an important role. Serving in the battalion was voluntary and usually deliberately favored by its members over other possible forms of service on the home front (557). Display of military masculinity brought reputational gains; pilfering and stealing material ones. Having almost unlimited power over helpless people was a source of enjoyment for many policemen (286, 292). Like Browning, the author dismisses the idea that antisemitism explains the policemen's violence. He also dismisses the thesis that there was a need to kill, or "coercion by orders from above." Policemen could kill, they did not have to (417, 423). While there was a certain pressure from individual superiors and "Jew haters", nobody was forced to fall in line (561, 583). Most members of the battalion regarded violence as "currency" in a system of exchange with the NS-regime that bought them a good life in times of war (574).

Since desire for personal gain seems to be the dominant driver of the policemen's actions, the author characterizes the battalion as a "greedy institution" (389, 570-571). While this seems to be an adequate description of the policemen's behavior, it is questionable that the concept adds to our understanding of the atrocious quality of mass murder. After all, the latter seems to be completely dependent on context and opportunities.

There are some interesting thoughts in this study, however, many of them are not new, and they should have been compared and discussed in the framework of the existing secondary literature on police battalions and the warfare behind the front in the Soviet Union during World War II. [4]

Thick books are not necessarily better books. The study under review is an example of this. Given the author's self-parochializing approach, the book justifies its size neither by depth of analysis, nor scope of discussion. It is an example of a missed opportunity. A thinner, but more analytical and better contextualized book based on the substance of chapter V would have better served the reader.

Notes:

[1] Christopher Browning: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland; New York 1992.

[2] Hannes Heer: Die Logik des Vernichtungskrieges: Wehrmacht und Partisanenkampf. In: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, Hamburg 1995, 104-156, here 114.

[3] Sönke Neitzel / Harald Welzer: Soldaten: Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben, Frankfurt am Main 2011, 18-19.

[4] For police battalions, exempli gratia: Edward B. Westermann: Hitler's Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East, Lawrence, KS 2005; Ian Rich: Holocaust Perpetrators of the German Police Battalions: The Mass Murder of Jewish Civilians, 1940-1942, New York 2018. For the larger context of the war behind the front, exempli gratia: Bernhard Chiari: Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrussland 1941-1944, Düsseldorf 1998; Ben Sheperd: War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans, Cambridge, MA 2004.