Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

The matter of choice is perhaps the most important theme in the book. Like others accused of wartime atrocities, the men of Battalion 101 will later suggest that they had no choice but to obey their orders or risk terrible punishment. However, this excuse is undermined by the fact that “no defense attorney or defendant […] has been able to document a single case in which refusal to obey an order to kill unarmed civilians resulted in the allegedly inevitable dire punishment” (170).

From the very beginning, a clearly emotional and disapproving Trapp makes the “extraordinary offer” that anyone who “did not feel up to the task that lay before him […] could step out” (2), explicitly offering the men a choice about their participation, which few men actually accept. Interestingly, Trapp actually seems to believe that he himself does not have a choice because “orders are orders” (58). However, he makes it abundantly clear that his men do have a choice and consistently protects those like Buchmann, who refuse to participate. Men who ask for other duties are assigned them or are “advised to ‘slink away’” (68) by their superior officers and they all suffer “no consequences” (66) on any official level.