“Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland”, by Christopher R. Browning

271 pages, Harper Perennial, ISBN-13: 978-0060995065

How does a group of average men become brutal killers in a short period of time? This issue has been talked about, examined, tested and retested by men of science, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, to say nothing of historians, political scientists and other people in the field of the social sciences, but the answers have always proven rather unsatisfactory. Where these men born this way? Did these men just cave in to peer pressure? Did they really hate the people they killed? In Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Christopher R. Browning disproves the long-held contention that the holocaust of WWII was the work only of a savage Nazi SS which terrified ordinary Germans into watching the destruction of their Jewish neighbors. The truth is most of the killing was done by ordinary men, like those of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from the City of Cologne and made up of men too old to have made careers in the Nazi armed services. It was their way of doing their part for the war effort. Browning has tried to shed some light on this issue in this book, and I have to admit that after having read a great deal of material on this topic, his findings in this book really did not surprise me; nor did I get a lot of new information from it – but if you are relatively new to the topic yourself, then Ordinary Men should open your eyes to Man’s inhumanity to Man.

The strongest sections of Browning’s book are when he is narrating the accounts of the men involved and how they went about their various tasks: it is here that he draws out the frailties of the human condition and exposes the thinness of our social and moral belief systems. Concentrating on the how rather than the why makes these sections starkly real (and difficult to read). The cumulative effect is a growing disbelief and despair in the reader, especially as the numbers of men, women and children killed continues to rise unrelentingly, and the final numbers stand to condemn these men for all time. Browning’s moderate functionalist approach exposes the flaws of the Nazi regime and the way it shifted and changed as it built towards the Final Solution, though the idea that this unstable structure provided the main driving force behind the holocaust is less convincing; less convincing, too, is the reliance on Stanley Milgram and his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale. Yes these men largely reported they were “just doing their jobs” and took their responsibility lightly, but it is a painfully inadequate explanation for the scale and ferocity of the Holocaust or, indeed, the multitude of innocent people the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 killed in Poland.

“Grant”, by Ron Chernow

1,104 pages, Penguin Press, ISBN-13: 978-1594204876

Grant by Ron Chernow is the first biography of the great general that I have ever read, a terrible confession to make for one who cut his historical teeth on the American Civil War (thanks, Dad); while I read his memoirs lo many moons ago (and reviewed them in 2013), this is the first life of Grant that tells his tale from the outside looking in, and man, did I pick a doozy. Chernow’s Grant is meticulously researched and beautifully-written, with an easy style and flow that make this biography feel less like a lecture and more like an intimate conversation. He provides descriptions and details that bring the time period and the people to vivid life: in Chernow’s book we find that Ulysses S. Grant (well, actually Hiram Ulysses Grant) may have had one of the quintessential American lives: he started out with advantages, took a series of serious falls while struggling with alcoholism, then rediscovered himself and operated to the highest capacity. To be sure, he made many mistakes and, due to the corruption of his administration, his record as president is forever tainted. But there is no denying that he was a great military strategist, a pioneer on race relations and a world-class intellect, and Chernow, in this absolutely masterful life and times, covers it all with his usual thoroughness and style.

Grant was a complex man: both brilliant and naive; overly trusting in civilian life while able to perfectly predict what others would do on the battlefield; a man who claimed to have no great political ambitions yet was a rare two term president. Chernow reminds us of the personal connections of the generals of both the North and South – Grant attended West Point and fought in the Mexican War alongside William T. Sherman, Robert E. Lee and a veritable who’s who of future Civil War generals (hell, the best man at his wedding was James Longstreet, who would go on to be become Lee’s warhorse during the Civil War). Chernow also brings front and center Grant’s hard work for African Americans, supporting the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution, with equality and voting rights for all among his lifelong crusades. While President Lincoln is remembered in American history as the one who ended slavery, readers of Grant will see that President Grant should be remembered as a tireless proponent of civil rights and militant enemy of the Ku Klux Klan. This from a man who came from a dysfunctional family: his father, Jesse Root Grant, was a venal, narrow-minded businessman, specializing in leather and self-promotion; meanwhile his mother, Hannah Simpson Grant, was distant and cold, more concerned with her religion than her relationships. As the eldest son, Grant bore a great responsibility and was sent to get a military education at West Point, rather against his will. Marrying for love, his in-laws were no better, but in Julia Dent Grant he a devoted and tireless life partner.

Chernow doesn’t shy away from Grant’s failures in civilian life: his poverty before rejoining the army for the Civil War, his constant struggle with alcoholism or Grant’s repeated mistakes in trusting the wrong people in matters of finance – and often in government. Grant’s personal traits were legion, like pride, stubbornness and loyalty, among others, are shown as what made him the greatest general of his time, but also caused a steep learning curve as President. Though his career began well in the Mexican wars, a reassignment to a California backwater led to a destructive pattern: he grew bored and went on drinking binges when separated from his family, a major theme in the book. In Chernow’s view Grant couldn’t handle alcohol and when absent his support systems (principally his wife but also key aides), he could go on benders for days when idle in isolated locales. Once this was noticed, he was fired and it would dog him for the rest of his life – as an accusation and as a worry in decisive crises. While I believe Chernow is correct in his interpretation, and he makes the case that Grant overcame his problem, the tone is often protective if never quite defensive. He addresses other problematic issues in a similar attitude and tone. Unemployment initiated a terrible slide in Grant’s life. He tried and failed at a number of alternative careers, including business, real estate, farming, and finally as a clerk in his father’s shop, and was infamously reduced to selling wood on the street to make ends meet and was regarded in the local community as a loser and drunk.

Then the war broke out and the Union, desperate for of experienced officers, offered Grant another chance. To put it mildly, Grant completely remade himself: stepping up at a public meeting and expounding on what needed to be done, he was lucky for Elihu B. Washburne, Grant’s congressman, heard him and immediately became a staunch political patron. In spite of his many enemies, this set Grant on an incredible trajectory. Gaining valuable experience as a quartermaster and remembering everything he had learned, he emerged as a formidable fighter and grew into a master strategist. Lincoln soon noticed that this Westerner with the drinking problem was the only one of his generals who could (or would) fight, and he stuck by him through thick and thin. Teaming up with William Tecumseh Sherman, they fought in the western theater of war where they provided some of the most resounding victories for the Union – Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg – whereas Union generals in the east fumbled repeatedly. Once he was appointed general in chief, he worked with Sherman in a pincer motion, converging on Lee in Virginia in an exhausting war of attrition. The war offered clarity and focus to Grant, who concentrated on it with what can be called genius, immersed in detail but also conceiving a grand, yet flexible, design. Chernow argues convincingly that Lee may have been master of the battlefield, but he lacked Grant’s strategic vision; furthermore, Grant was cool under pressure, rarely expressing emotion, and capable of adapting his plans as the need arose. Meanwhile, he found a number of subordinates who were loyal, gifted, and honest, including Sherman and Phil Sheridan. Grant became the conquering hero of the war, which thrust him into contention to become president. First, he came to fight Andrew Johnson as the South appeared to be given a free hand to return its traditional elite to power. Second, he developed a deep understanding of the plight of freedmen and Indians, which led him to attempt to protect them from the depredations of whites. As a result, he was viewed as the best chance of the reformist republican party to stay in power and implement reconstruction.

Unfortunately, without the clarity of war, many of Grant's virtues – a complete lack of guile, naive honesty and little understanding of the murkiness of political goals – became liabilities. The assistants he got were happy to indulge in corrupt practices which continually shocked Grant and undermined his political position. Chernow is at pains to prove that Grant never took part in these imbroglios, but openly acknowledges his failures and blind spots: for example, as was normal at the time, Grant freely accepted gifts from businessmen as compensation for his sacrifices and in thanks for his military service; he also palled around with titans of the Gilded Age which led to many scandals. Throughout, Chernow argues that Grant was hindered by the patronage system and the autonomy of Senators, who acted as feudal barons on behalf of the elites of their states. According to Chernow, two of Grant’s presidential legacies deserve attention: first, he pursued racial justice, in particular smashing the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan, and in order to do so he empowered the Department of Justice – the first federal institution that could pursue justice free of the control of local or state authorities – to investigate and prosecute the Klan. Though many similar organizations sprung up, this had a lasting, if imperfect, impact: if the South remained a place of domestic terrorism, it could have been much worse according to Chernow (Grant also sought to protect Indians from slaughter, though here too his legacy is mixed and contradictory). Second, he sought to professionalize the civil service, an immense task that would partially dismantle the patronage system and diminish power in the Senate. Again, he only partially succeeded.

Once out of power, he traveled the world and broadened his mind. After being swindled and financially ruined (i.e. he lent his name to a Ponzi scheme), he accepted Mark Twain’s offer to write his memoires to provide for his family as he entered his final illness. Now it may be talking shop, but Chernow was impressed by Grant’s ability to write: in about a year’s time, Grant wrote about 330,000 words – sometimes as many as 10,000 per day – with little need for editing, an amazing accomplishment for one who wasn’t thought of as a writer. Fans of history, biography and military history will rejoice in Ron Chernow’s Grant, which will stand unchallenged as his definitive biography for a long time. With an easy, flowing narrative, Chernow has rehabilitated Grant and, while he may often cut Grant too much slack, I definitely see his virtues more clearly now. This is one of those rare books that can be read as an intimate dialogue with a great mind.

“The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome”, by Christopher Kelly

368 pages, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN-13: 978-0393061963

Bear with me here: Desmond Seward is a British popular historian and the author of many books – some 30 or so, give-or-take – several of which I own and which I have enjoyed. Each is relatively brief, easy to read and yet informative as all hell (and could once be found on the publisher overstock area of my Barnes & Noble when I was a kid). I mention this in regards to Christopher Kelly as his book, The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome, reminds me of many of Prof. Seward’s works: namely, it is, er, relatively brief, easy to read and yet informative as all hell; while Kelly’s careful use (and non-use) of certain sources might put off some readers, this work is probably as accurate as possible for a modern researcher, and few other writers have performed anywhere nearly as well, if I may be so bold. In some places the author was forced to explain why he didn’t use certain information a given ancient source, or how he came to certain conclusions based of several contradictory sources, revealing that the typical modern-day historian must also be a modern-day detective, analyzing the evidence, carefully qualifying his conclusions and then writing a narrative that is understandable by all, no easy task when so much has been lost and, it must be said, so many opinions have changed.

Don’t forget, gentle reader, that the Huns left no written accounts of their own, essentially no archaeological evidence and everything written about them came strictly from their enemies: so accounts like Ammianus Marcellinus’ (who never even saw a Hun in the flesh), describing them with flattened skulls, misshapen bodies, evil appearances, etc., etc., must be taken with very large grains of salt (hell, even their horses were supposedly ugly). Kelly strives mightily to present the probable truth, and is probably as successful as a researcher at this distance can be. The real litmus test for me came early with Kelly’s treatment of cranial deformations used to identify the Huns: although this was a practice of certain steppe dwellers and has been associated with the Alans, whether or not the Huns practiced this is questionable. Kelly addresses this issue and in his end notes actually points out that if the process was to beautify, then high ranking Huns like Attila and his wives would have undergone this practice, but eyewitness description of Attila mentions no such obvious deformations. The author therefore mentions this practice as occurring among the Huns, but carefully retreats from using it as a means of identifying them. A small point, perhaps, but important all the same.

All told, The End of Empire is as thorough and complete a work on Attila as can be expected, dependent as it may be on the work of Priscus of Panium (the 5^th Century Roman diplomat and Greek historian and rhetorician), as well as other Roman writers. From that perspective, it doesn’t really offer any new insights on Attila or the Huns and isn’t controversial in perspective of either. Kelly assumes that he is controversial when he mentions that Attila was really quite civilized in his dealings with others – i.e., in the chapters on Priscus’ visit to Attila. However, it stays away from controversy in these concerning the relationship of Attila and Flavius Aetius; although he hints at it, Kelly doesn’t really suggest any connection between their relationship and Aetius letting Attila go after the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. The reason that the book provides may seem appropriate: Aetius needed both the Huns and the Goths in order to keep both in check but, when you think about it (especially within the prism of what happened in 452 in Italy), this doesn’t seem to be a good rationale (and it would seem that Aetius sure should have expected what happened in 452). Also, Aetius leaving Italy to the Huns in 452 makes one wonder whether Aetius had other reasons than what were brought up in the book…say, the hope that maybe Attila would eliminate Valentinian III, allowing Aetius to become emperor in the West? Just sayin’…

Anyway, The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome is the best primer I have read on this misunderstood era and Kelly succeeds in showing Attila as he was: the leader of a civilization that the Romans dismissed out of arrogance, ready to play power politics with Rome, Constantinople and Persia. This is genuine popular history that draws on the latest archaeological research to show us a society with laws, elites, fools, geniuses and, above all, pride. Kelly places the old stories about the Huns in the context of their times, explaining what all that hyperbolic language really meant. He doesn’t glorify the Huns any more or less than the Romans or Byzantines and instead shows them all acting with honor, lying, conniving, breaking treaties, and upholding right as they understood it…in other words, treating them like people.