Ordinary Men

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning, Harper Perennial; Revised Edition, 2017. 

German Police Battalion

This book is an objective and careful analysis of a German police reserve battalion-during World War II. Police Battalion 101 was made up of middle-aged men from Hamburg. Most of them were not Nazis, psychopaths or anti-Semites.

Herding Jews

This police battalion herded Polish Jews onto trains destined for slave labor and death camps. Ill, old and frail Jews were killed rather than being sent do work camps. Jews who escaped to the forest were hunted down. Police Battalion 101 deported forty-five thousand Polish Jews to Treblinka during 1942-43. They shot 38 thousand Jews during 1943-43.  Much of the actual killing was done by another tool of the Nazis, the Hiwis, short for Hilfswilliger, who were auxiliary volunteers. 

Submission

Interestingly, no punishment was meted out to the small minority of members of the police battalion who asked to be excused from killing civilians. In fact, in general during World War II, rarely did the  Nazis punish men who refused to kill unarmed civilians.