Browning, Christopher R. 1944–

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Browning, Christopher R. 1944–

PERSONAL: Born May 22, 1944, in Durham, NC; son of Robert Willard (a professor) and Eleanor (a public health nurse) Browning; married Jennifer Jane Horn, September 19, 1970; children: Kathryn Elizabeth, Anne DeSilvey. Education: Oberlin College, A.B., 1967; University of Wisconsin (now University of Wisconsin—Madison), M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1975.

ADDRESSES: Home—Chapel Hill, NC. Office—CB #3195, Hamilton Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, instructor in history, 1969–71; Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA, assistant professor, 1974–79, associate professor, 1979–84, professor, 1984–97, distinguished university professor, 1997–99; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, Frank Porter Graham professor of history, 1999–. Fellow at Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984–85; visiting professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1988, and Northwestern University, 1992; fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, NJ, 1995; Andrea and Charles Bronfman visiting professor of Judaic studies, College of William and Mary, 1996; J.B. and Maurice Shapiro senior visiting scholar, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996; George Macaulay Trevelyan Lecturer at Cambridge University, 1999.

MEMBER: American Historical Association, German Studies Association (executive committee, 1991–94), Western Association for German Studies, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Woodrow Wilson fellow, 1967–68; Comfort Starr Prize in History, Oberlin College, 1967; German Academic Exchange Service grant, 1972–73; fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 1980–81; Burlington-Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award, Pacific Lutheran University, 1988; best article award, German Studies Association, 1988; Fulbright senior research grant (Israel), 1989; faculty excellence award, Pacific Lutheran University, 1992; National Jewish Book Award in Holocaust category, 1993, for Ordinary Men; honorary doctorate, Hebrew Union College, 2000.

WRITINGS:

The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, Holmes & Meier (New York, NY), 1978.

Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, 1941–42, Holmes & Meier (New York, NY), 1985, revised paperback edition, 1991.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992, reprinted with new afterword, 1998.

The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Der Weg zur "Englösung: Entscheidungen und Täter, Verlag J.H.W. Dietz (Bonn, Germany), 1998.

Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Jurgen Matthaus) The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2004.

(With others) Ghettos, 1939–1945: New Research and Perspectives on Definition, Daily Life, and Survival: Symposium Presentations, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (Washington, DC), 2005.

Contributor to books, including The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide; The San Jose Papers, by Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, Kraus Interna-tional, 1980; Critical Issues of the Holocaust, edited by Alex Goodman, David Lanes, and Sybil Milton, Rossel Books, 1983; and Remember for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, 2001. Contributor to encyclopedias, including The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, Macmillan; and The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, edited by Israel Gutman, Sifriat Poalim/Macmillan, 1990. Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, International History Review, Journal of Contemporary History, American History Review, German Studies Review, Yad Vashem Studies, and Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London. Editorial board member for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Jewish Social Studies; advisory board member, Holocaust Education Foundation. Browning's books have been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, French, and Swedish.

SIDELIGHTS: Christopher R. Browning is an expert on the Holocaust. He has written several books on the subject that "have firmly established for him a reputation as a scholar of enormous distinction," according to English Historical Review contributor Neil Gregor. Browning has also been called to serve as a witness at the trials of Nazis who were brought to justice very late in life. In his best-known book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, he debunks the common claim that individual German soldiers would be severely punished if they refused orders to participate in massacres. By studying records, correspondence, and other materials from the Reserve Police Battalion 101, which served in Poland, Browning shows that between ten and twenty percent of the nearly five hundred men in the battalion excused themselves from actually taking part in executions at some point, and that none were reprimanded for doing so. In fact, searching through larger archives, Browning could not find a single instance of such punishments occurring. Although some critics thought Browning's reliance on possibly self-serving denials of guilt by participants in these crimes weakened his argument in favor of the ten to twenty percent abstention rate, the book was still praised by many. Writing in Commentary, Edward Alexander called it"luminously intelligent and finely written,"while New Republic contributor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen noted how"the perpetrators' voices and accounts resonate through this book and give the narrative its power."

Browning's other books include The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution and Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. His "knowledge of the array of highly complex and scattered sources which cast light on the emergence of Germany's genocide against the Jews is impressive, and his ability to construct from them a clear, detailed, and compelling account of how the 'Final Solution' came about admirable," English Historical Review contributor Ian Kershaw noted in his review of The Path to Genocide. This work, which began as a series of lectures Browning presented at Cambridge University, "succinctly provides … an excellent guide through much of the most important recent scholarship on the decisions surrounding and implementation of the Nazis' plans to murder the Jews of Europe," explained Canadian Journal of History contributor Eric A. Johnson.

In his most ambitious book about the Holocaust up to that time, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, Browning compiled a lengthy work based on extensive research that is still a "highly readable work," according to William D. Rubinstein in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life. Here, Browning attempts to track down the path that led the Germans from their original policies of simply expelling and ostracizing the Jews to the outright mass extermination of the Jews and many other ethnic and minority groups. Although Adolf Hitler had been in power since 1933, serious violence against the Jews did not really begin until 1938's Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust began taking its full, heinous form in 1941, after Germany invaded Russia and began killing the Jews there. Browning attempts to show how complicated this path to the Holocaust really was, noting that it is difficult to demonstrate with any precision just how much Hitler himself knew about the Holocaust, how much of it was a result of his direct orders, and how much came about because of henchmen such as Heinrich Himmler. "Browning wrestles with these and many other related questions in a consistently persuasive and cogent way," concluded Rubinstein. Although Midstream critic Arnold Ages noted that the work is necessarily problematic because of the nature of the subject, the reviewer concluded that it "is arguably the best book to appear yet on the Holocaust." Frederic Krome, writing in Library Journal, deemed The Origins of the Final Solution "essential reading."

Browning once told CA: "In my work on the 'final solution' I have attempted to go beyond a predominantly Hitlerocentric focus and to concentrate on the middle and lower echelon perpetrators of the mass murder. I have been interested in what kinds of people became involved, what motivated them, and how the decision-making process functioned. I have been particularly interested in how a mass-murder program begins, how the first steps to organize and implement such a program are taken. Through such an approach I have sought to analyze the 'final solution' not only in terms of the anti-Semitic impulses emanating from Hitler and the decisions being made in the highest ranks of the Nazi power structure but also in terms of the reactions and initiatives of the 'little men' whose participation was essential in turning Nazi fantasy into reality."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

A.B. Bookman's Weekly, May 4, 1992, review of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, p. 1849.

American Historical Review, October, 1988, Alvin H. Rosenfeld, review of Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, 1941–42, p. 1076; December, 1993, Richard Breitman, review of Ordinary Men, pp. 1637-1639.

Booklist, February 1, 1992, Steve Weingartner, review of Ordinary Men, p. 1005; February 15, 2000, George Cohen, review of Nazi Policy, Jewish Labor, German Killers, p. 1075.

Canadian Journal of History, August, 2001, Eric A. Johnson, review of Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, p. 367.

Central European History, March, 1993, review of The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution, p. 361; summer, 1994, Lawrence D. Stokes, review of The Path to Genocide, pp. 361-363.

Choice, July, 1992, review of Fateful Months, p. 1641; October, 1992, D.J. Deitrich, review of Ordinary Men, p. 362.

Commentary, February, 1993, Edward Alexander, review of Ordinary Men, p. 33.

English Historical Review, April, 1990, Anthony Glees, review of Fateful Months, p. 538; February, 1996, Ian Kershaw, review of The Path to Genocide, p. 271; April, 2001, Neil Gregor, review of Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, p. 525.

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, June-July, 2004, William D. Rubinstein, "How Murder Became Policy," review of The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, p. 52.

Foreign Affairs, Volume 65, number 4, 1987, review of Fateful Months, p. 905; April 4, 1992, review of Ordinary Men, p. 209.

Historical Journal, December, 1994, Martyn Housden, review of Ordinary Men, pp. 981-994.

History: Reviews of New Books, spring, 1994, review of The Path to Genocide, p. 126; spring, 2000, Johan Ahr, review of Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, p. 120.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, February, 1994, Peter D. Stachura, review of The Path to Genocide, pp. 180-181.

Journal of Modern History, March, 1987, review of Fateful Months, p. 127, review of The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, p. 138; March, 1995, review of The Path to Genocide, p. 55, review of Ordinary Men, p. 238.

Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, summer-fall, 2004, Jeremy D. Popkin, "The Changing Lessons of the Holocaust," review of The Final Solution, p. 267.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1992, review of Ordinary Men, p. 152.

Library Journal, February 15, 1992, Dennis L. Noble, review of Ordinary Men, p. 180; March 15, 2004, Frederic Krome, review of The Origins of the Final Solution, p. 87.

Marine Corps Gazette, January, 1994, review of Ordinary Men, p. 72.

Midstream, March-April, 2005, Arnold Ages, "C.R. Browning on 'The Final Solution,'" review of The Origins of the Final Solution, p. 46.

National Catholic Reporter, May 29, 1992, Michael J. Farrell, review of Ordinary Men, p. 18.

New Republic, July 13, 1992, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, review of Ordinary Men, pp. 49-52; April 10, 2000, Omer Bartov, "Inside, Outside," p. 41.

New York Review of Books, November 4, 1999, review of Ordinary Men, p. 57.

New York Times Book Review, April 12, 1992, Walter Reich, review of Ordinary Men, p. 1; March 21, 1993, review of Ordinary Men, p. 32; April 18, 1993, V.R. Berghahn, review of The Path to Genocide, pp. 3-4; June 6, 1993, review of The Path to Genocide, p. 40.

Observer (London, England), August 15, 1993, review of Ordinary Men, p. 49.

Political Quarterly, January-March, 1994, Richard Overy, review of The Path to Genocide, pp. 109-111.

Publishers Weekly, January 27, 1992, review of Ordinary Men, p. 83; April 12, 1992, review of Ordinary Men, p. 1; February 22, 1993, review of Ordinary Men, p. 90.

Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health, September, 1992, review of Ordinary Men, p. 8.

Slavonic and Eastern European Review, January, 1995, John P. Fox, review of Ordinary Men, pp. 154-155.

Spectator, November 27, 1993, review of Ordinary Men, p. 35.

Times Literary Supplement, November 7, 1986, review of Fateful Months, p. 1242; February 5, 1993, Alan Bullock, review of Ordinary Men and The Path to Genocide, p. 3; July 6, 2001, Michael Burleigh, review of Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, p. 28.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 12, 1992, review of Ordinary Men, p. 28; April 11, 1993, review of Ordinary Men, p. 8.

Washington Post Book World, March 24, 1996, review of Ordinary Men, p. 8.