Christopher Browning
Christopher Browning | |
---|---|
Born | Christopher Robert Browning May 22, 1944 Durham, North Carolina, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Historian |
Academic background | |
Education |
|
Thesis | "Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland and the Jewish Policy of the German Foreign Office 1940–1943" (1975) |
Academic work | |
Era | The Holocaust |
Notable works | Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) |
Website | Christopher R. Browning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
Christopher Robert Browning (born May 22, 1944) is an American
Browning taught at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974 to 1999 and eventually became a Distinguished Professor. In 1999, he moved to UNC to accept the appointment as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History, and in 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[3] After retiring from UNC in 2014, he became a visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.[4]
Browning has acted as an expert witness at several Holocaust-related trials, including the second trial of Ernst Zündel (1988) and Irving v Penguin Books Ltd (2000).[5]
Early life and education
Born in
Browning married Jennifer Jane Horn on September 19, 1970 and had two children: Kathryn Elizabeth and Anne DeSilvey.[7]
Work
Ordinary Men
Browning is best known for his 1992 book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, a study of German
As presented in the study, the men of Unit 101 were not ardent
Ordinary Men achieved much acclaim but was criticized by Daniel Goldhagen for missing what he called a specifically German political culture, characterized by "eliminationist anti-semitism" in causing the Nazi genocides. In a review in The New Republic in July 1992, Goldhagen called Ordinary Men a book that fails in its central interpretation.[12] Goldhagen's controversial 1996 book Hitler's Willing Executioners was largely written to rebut Browning but ended up being criticized much more.[13]
Irving v. Lipstadt
When
Browning countered Irving's argument that the absence of a written Führer order from Adolf Hitler to carry out the genocide of the European Jews constituted evidence against the standard Holocaust history. Browning maintained that such an order need never have been written since Hitler had almost certainly made statements to his leading subordinates indicating his wishes regarding the Jews, which rendered irrelevant the question of an extant written order.[16] Browning testified that several experts on Nazi Germany believe there was no written Führer order for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" but that no historian doubts the reality of the Nazi genocide.[17] Browning noted that Hitler's secret speech to his Gauleiters on December 12, 1941 alluded to genocide as the "Final Solution."[18]
Browning rejected Irving's claim that there was no reliable statistical information on the size of the prewar Jewish population in Europe or on the killing processes. Browning asserted that the only reason that historians debate whether five or six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust was a lack of access to archives in the
Browning's interpretation of the Holocaust
Browning is a "moderate functionalist" in the debate about the origins of the Holocaust and focuses on the structure and institution of the
Browning divides the officials of the
An attempt to settle the difficulties at a conference between Himmler, Göring, Frank and Greiser at Göring's
Awards
- 1994: National Jewish Book Award for Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland[25]
- 2004: National Jewish Book Award for The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942[25]
- 2010: National Jewish Book Award for Remembering Survival. Inside a Nazi Slave-labor Camp[25]
- 2011: Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research for Remembering Survival.[26]
Selected works
- (1978). The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940–43. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN 978-0841904033
- (1981). "Zur Genesis der "Endlösung" Eine Antwort an Martin Broszat" pages 96–104 from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 29.
- (1985). Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution. New York: Holmes & Meier.
- (1992). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins.
- (1992). The Path to Genocide: Essays on launching the Final Solution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- (2000). Nazi policy, Jewish workers, German killers. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
- (2003). Collected memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony, Madison, Wis. and London: University of Wisconsin Press.
- (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942 (with contributions by OCLC 52838928
- (2007). Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
- (2010). Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. OCLC 317919861. This book earned Browning the 2011 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research.
- (2015), with ISBN 978-1137514189
- (2018). "The Suffocation of Democracy". The New York Review of Books. 65 (16). October 25, 2018.
References
- ^ "Christopher R. Browning". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the original on February 24, 2020.
- ^ a b "Christopher R. Browning Papers, 1967–2015". Archives West.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 21, 2011.
- ^ Johnson, Eric W. (October 28, 2015). "UW Welcomes Visiting Professor Christopher Browning". University of Washington.
- ISBN 978-0-333-80486-5.
- ^ "Christopher R. Browning CV" (PDF). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 24, 2020.
- ^ "Browning, Christopher R. 1944– | Encyclopedia.com".
- ^ The title is a nod to Raul Hilberg to whom the book is dedicated; see Hilberg (2003), The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 992: "Ordinary men were to perform extraordinary tasks."
- ISBN 978-0060995065
- ^ Browning 1998, pp. 44, 58.
- ^ Browning 1992, p. 57.
- ^ Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah (July 13/20, 1992). "The Evil of Banality", Review of Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Police Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. The New Republic, pp. 49–52.
- ^ Shatz, Adam (April 8, 1998). "Goldhagen's willing executioners: the attack on a scholarly superstar, and how he fights back". Slate.
- ISBN 1-85984-417-0.
- ^ Guttenplan, D. D. (2001). The Holocaust on Trial. New York: W. W. Norton, p. 210.
- ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 211.
- ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 212.
- ^ Guttenplan 2001, pp. 212–213.
- ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 213.
- ^ Daniel J. Goldhagen; Christopher R. Browning; Leon Wieseltier (April 8, 1996). "The "Willing Executioners" / "Ordinary Men" Debate" (PDF). Selections from the Symposium. Introduction by Michael Berenbaum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 1/48. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
- ^ Browning, Christopher (1985). "La décision concernant la solution finale", in Colloque de l.Ecole des Hautes Etudes en sciences sociales, L.Allemagne nazie et le génocide juif. Paris: Gallimard-Le Seuil, p. 19.
- ^ a b Rees, Lawrence (1999). The Nazis: A Warning from History, London: The New Press, pp. 148–149.
- ^ Rees 1999, p. 149.
- ^ Rees 1999, p. 150
- ^ a b c "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
- ^ "Recent Recipients". The Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research.
Further reading
- Bauer, Yehuda Rethinking the Holocaust, New Haven [Conn.] ; London : Yale University Press, 2001
- Marrus, Michael The Holocaust in History, Toronto : Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987
- OCLC 317866934
- Kaplan, Thomas Pegelow; Matthäus, Jürgen; Hornburg, Mark W., eds. (2019). Beyond "Ordinary Men": Christopher R. Browning and Holocaust Historiography. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. ISBN 978-3-657-79266-5.
- Ordinary Organizations: Why Normal Men Carried Out the Holocaust(2014)
External links
- Christopher R. Browning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Christopher Browning, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- The Origins of the Final Solution : The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942.
- Browning's review of The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg.
- An interview with Browning, Yad Vashem.