Christopher Browning Worth Revisiting

Every now and then, my own memory recalls when I was first assigned Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (Harper Collins, 1998, 1992). I would have been assigned it during an undergraduate class I took between 1999-2002 while at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, with the late professor Eric D. Weitz, and his squad of graduate teaching assistants. Attendance of the class was of the movie theatre scale. I got to thinking a bit more of Browning’s work (a solid 2025 letter is here, as he counters some specifics with another scholarly criticizer), especially in the context of what’s been playing out approximately 440 miles away (or 6.5 hours if you step on it), in Minneapolis, from where I’m at on the Northern Plains. I wanted to just simply blog a short on these thoughts. And note that it’s not okay for a population to send tax money to a system that uses that money to oppress its people. So there you go. Anyhow, my next morning meeting is on deck. So that’ll have to end this post.