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In the preface to his book, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062303023/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062303023&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=4b4bce855a1498173d8214535c46adca Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland]'', Christopher R. Browning makes it abundantly clear that “Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving.”<ref>Christopher R. Browning, ''Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland'' (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), xx.</ref>

By utilizing the timeframe noticeably provided by Browning, it can be extrapolated that Buchmann witnessed a great amount of violence and carnage that was incompatible with his moral composition. It is illogical to conclude that Buchmann wanted to be discharged if he was innately inclined to kill. His discharge was summarily denied, thereby placing him in a situation where he had to become either a killer or one courageous enough to adhere to his humanity as the Order Police, Einsatzgruppen, or any other killing squad was not an environment conducive to stagnation. Men such as Buchmann were the exceptions, whereas 80-90 percent of the battalion committed murder. Without employing their own forms of psychological tools, they may not have possessed the ability to kill. One method utilized as a form of rationalization was to deflect the act of execution onto a higher authority.

In contrast to Buchmann, First Company commander Captain Julius Wohlauf, having spent his pre-war years joining Hitler's National Socialist Party, SA, and SS, was an established soldier prior to the onset of the Final Solution. The inculcation of Hitler's ideology combined with the SS doctrine of strength and obedience determined Wohlauf’s existence as a soldier and fostered a sense of loathing toward weakness. He refused to entertain the idea of excusing his subordinates from the duty to which they were assigned; killing Jews. He responded to any such request by indicating that those who wished to be excused, “could lie down alongside the victims.”<ref>Browning, 62.</ref>

==== Jozefow Massacre====

Reserve Police Battalion 101 executed 1500 Jewish civilians in the woods outside of Jozefow, Poland in July 1942.<ref>Browning, 225.</ref> It was not until the night before the shootings were to begin that Major Trapp reluctantly conveyed the orders to his policemen. A veteran of the Great War and recipient of the Iron Cross First Class, Trapp was nonetheless not considered to be an appropriate SS candidate. Customarily, SS men were career oriented, professional soldiers who accepted authority without question and held an unwavering belief in Hitler's ideology and the wisdom of their führer. Participating in the First World War provided Trapp with experience in killing: however, the lives he took during military operations were those of enemy soldiers. Jozefow was an event for which an ordinary soldier could not prepare.

For seventeen hours the Reserve Police Battalion 101 participated in mass murder in July 1942. The inexperienced marksmen, performing under surreal circumstances, turned what was expected to be a “routine” execution into a gruesome nightmare. One account provided by Browning is from policeman August Zorn* who remembered shooting “‘too high,’” with his first victim so that the “entire back of the skull of [this] Jew was torn off and the brain exposed.”<ref>Browning, 67.</ref> This was not the only such case as the novice shooters were given improper instruction, thus mutilating their victims and causing the men to emerge from the woods “gruesomely besmirched with blood, brains, and bone splinters.”<ref>Browning, 65.</ref>

==== Psychological Effects ====

The horrors of July, along with a steady stream of alcohol, desensitized the men of the 101st for future tasks. Whereas Major Trapp gave his men an opportunity to avoid killing Jews at Jozefow, subsequent participation in the Final Solution was mandatory, thus removing the factor of choice. Once the onus of making a decision was removed, the policemen were then able to utilize deflection and become obedient participants in the genocide of the European Jewish population. Murder became more palatable for some after Jozefow as they no longer were forced to confront their victims in a face-to-face manner, which afforded the reservists the opportunity to dehumanize the Jews and distance themselves through fragmentation. Working as part of the deportation process, the men of the 101st no longer had a direct hand in the killings thereby providing these civilian reservists a chance to depersonalize their involvement and detach themselves from the children they killed. Without the employment of these psychological tools, these people may not have been able to carry out such atrocities; what they had done at Jozefow provided the desensitization.

For most, Jozefow was the first occasion wherein these men had to kill and the procedure devolved into such a gruesome catastrophe that it forever altered the perpetrators. After such an indoctrination it is easy to understand that future endeavors of the like seemed easier to perform, both in method and conscience. After murdering for almost a full calendar day, the men retired to the barracks without speaking a word of what had just transpired and plunged quickly into the act of psychological repression. After successfully hiding the magnitude of their participation at Jozefow, subsequent killings in and around Serokomla became routine. In stark contrast to the somber mood after their first killings, the event in Serokomla was treated by most as just another day of work. Regardless of the fact that “bodies of dead Jews were simply left lying in the gravel pits,” the men seemed unfazed as they “stopped in Kock, where they had an afternoon meal.”<ref>Browning, 100.</ref>

==== Conclusion ====

Reservists in Police Battalion 101 were ordinary citizens before they became killers for the Reich. They were initiated into the world of murder via the most horrific means imaginable, resulting in a stoic resolution for most to continue with their duties. The primary subgroup of killers was comprised of men who “did whatever they were asked to do, without ever risking the onus of confronting authority.”<ref>Browning, 215.</ref> Nor did these men wish to suffer the detrimental judgment of their peers who confused courage with conformity. Men such as Buchmann, who refused to kill without sound justification, became courageous, whereas men akin to Gnade became sadistic and unfortunately were used as models of stereotypical Germans during World War II.

The men of the 101st who were killers, on any level, had to become killers through self-enacted psychological manipulation and other numbing agents such as alcohol, as “such a life was intolerable sober.”<ref>Browning, 82.</ref> Conversely, those who did not kill became something contrary to the Reich's ideology; they became courageous, as it takes some modicum of valor to adhere to one’s innate humanity and fundamental moral code under such inhumane and immoral circumstances.

====References====