d ferocious passions that are usually tamed and curbed by civilization”. Goldhagen uses the testimonies from the Reserve Battalion 101 as evidence to assert his claims on the anti-Semitic nature of the Germans. He tends to use much of the same evidence that Browning used but he, in trying to prove his point, neglected to use some the vital information that Browning used to assert his own claims, thus selecting only the relevant information. Goldhagen uses numbers to give an idea of the make-up of the men, there age, status, and participation in the Nazi regime. While pointing out the ages of these men serving in the Reserve Battalion 101, he makes a significant claim that these men were mostly over the age of 30 and thus are “not the wide-eyed youngsters ready to believe whatever they were told.” “These were mature men who had life experience, who had families and children. The overwhelming majority of them had reached adulthood before the Nazis ascended to power. They had known other political dispensation, had lived in other ideological climates.” This argument deems relevant to Goldhagen’s claims and quite frightening but what about the status of these men. Mostly from the lower middle class and that of the lower class these men were not from the good universities, if one at all and they were probably very concerned with making sure that their families were taken care of. If you look at the fact that most of these men were of the lower middle and lower class, they were most likely used to succumbing to someone else’s orders of a higher status. If they did not obey and work then what would happen to their families. Goldhagen’s argument based on the Reserve Battalion 101 is that these men were ordinary Germans, had no problems doing their duty for the Nazi Regime, and were proud of it. Browning on the other hand tends to argue, by using the testimonies of the men of Reserve Battal...
