Christopher R. Browning

The Decision-Making Process

For more than two decades I have been a participant in the debates among historians over the decision-making process that shaped Nazi Jewish policy and culminated in the ‘Final Solution’. In my analysis of the historiography of this issue, therefore, I have decided openly to use the first person rather than third person to avoid both stylistic infelicity and any pretence that I am transcending my own involvement and offering an unengaged view. I have tried, of course, to be fair in summarizing and evaluating the contributions of others, but what follows, none the less, is an inextricable mix of analysis, academic memoir and advocacy.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution

The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

Neighborhood factors affecting rates of sexually transmitted diseases in Chicago.

High rates of gonorrhea have been shown to be associated with high rates of incarceration in the prior year. One hypothesized chain of events is that there is a negative effect of incarceration on neighborhood social characteristics, which in turn affect behaviors facilitating transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). This study examined whether neighborhood characteristics were associated with the incidence of STDs and homicide rates as a proxy for incarceration rates. Data were from the 1995 Program on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the Chicago Health Department, and the Chicago Police Department. Neighborhood gonorrhea rates increased by 192.2 (95% confidence interval (CI) 131.6, 252.9) cases per 100,000 population with a change from the 25th to the 75th percentile of social disorder. This rate difference was a value greater than the median neighborhood gonorrhea rate. Similar increases were observed for other neighborhood measures and for Chlamydia infection. We hypothesize that high rates of incarceration may play a role in undermining neighborhood social cohesion and control. Using homicide rates as a proxy for incarceration, a change from the 25th to the 75th percentile of 1995 neighborhood homicide rates yielded a gonorrhea rate increase of 164.6 (95% CI 124.4, 204.7) cases per 100,000. Factors that undermine the social fabric of a community can become manifest in health outcomes such as STDs. The effects of high rates of incarceration on neighborhoods merit further exploration.

Nazi Ghettoization Policy in Poland: 1939–41

Nazi ghettoization policy in Poland from 1939 to 1941, like so many other aspects of Nazi Jewish policy, has been the subject of conflicting interpretations that can be characterized as “intentionalist” on the one hand and “functionalist” on the other. The “intentionalist” approach views ghettoization as a conscious preparatory step for total annihilation. For instance, Andreas Hillgruber has described the ghettoization of the Polish Jews as a step parallel to Hitlers conquest of France; in both cases Hitler was securing himself for the simultaneous war for Lebensraum in the east and Final Solution to the Jewish question through mass murder. Together these steps constituted the nucleus of his long-held “program.”

Every day lasts a year : a Jewish family's correspondence from Poland

Part I. Josephs Story: Joseph Richard S. Hollander Part II. Cracow: The fate of the Jews of Cracow under Nazi occupation Christopher R. Browning Through the eyes of the oppressed Nechama Tec Part III. The Letters: 1. Letters without reply: November 1939-May 1940 2. Separation anxiety: May-August 1940 3. Exit strategy: September-December 1940 4. Familial love, penned: January-December 1941 Index.

The Personal Contexts of a Holocaust Historian: War, Politics, Trials and Professional Rivalry

The single most predictable and consistently repeated question that I face when giving public presentations is quite simple: why and how did I become a Holocaust historian? The answer to that question is fundamentally autobiographical, but it is not the only point in my career when my personal experiences have provided an important context for understanding my professional development. Looking back, I think four particular factors — the Vietnam War, Watergate politics, serving as an expert witness in various trials, as well as the usual professional debates and rivalries — have provided crucial context for understanding key points in the development of my career as a Holocaust historian. I would like to explore some of the major developments in Holocaust historiography through the lens of my own personal experience.

Historians and Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom

Historians of the Holocaust have faced the unusual task of not only writing for one another, their students and the general public but also bringing their research and knowledge into the courtroom. Most often this has taken the form of giving expert witness testimony in the trials of accused Holocaust perpetrators, such as the recent Sawoniuk trial in London. But on occasion they have also been involved in so-called ‘Holocaust denial trials’. When the legal bases of these trials have been ‘anti-hate’ laws (such as in the Keegstra case in Canada) or laws explicitly banning such denial (such as the ‘Auschwitz Lie’ law in Germany), testimony by historians was not crucial. But on three occasions — the two trials of Ernst Zundel in Toronto in 1985 and 1988 and the libel suit of David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt in London in 2000 — historical expert witnesses have played a central role. As I was the historical expert witness for the Crown Prosecution in the second Zundel trial as well as a member of the team of historical experts in the Irving-Lipstadt trial, I should make clear that the following comments are those of an engaged participant, not a detached and neutral observer.

Messages of Murder: A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security Service, 1941-1943.@@@Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

This book is a study of the reports of the Einsatzgruppen, the four SS extermination squads that followed in the wake of the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. It was the Einsatzgruppen that began the systematic massacre of Jews and other undesirables. These killings are the principal focus of this book and are analyzed in central chapters from several perspectives. These reports provide a virtually complete and self-contained body of documents and are a fertile source for historians of Third Reich and the Holocaust.