Breaking ranks

I just recently finished a book - Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. This part was a hard read for me because it made me realise that very few have what it takes to either do the right thing or choose not to do the wrong thing. Lord, I pray that if ever in my life, there were to come a time when I am faced with such a situation, I would be among the dozen who would stand up and break ranks because I choose to preserve my soul.


On July 13, 1942, the men of the German Reserve Police Battalion 101, stationed in Poland, were awakened at the crack of dawn and driven to the outskirts of a small village. Armed with additional ammunition, but with no idea what to expect, the 500 men gathered around their well-liked commander, the fifty-three-year-old major Wilhelm Trapp.

Nervously, Trapp explained that he and his men had been assigned a frightfully unpleasant task and that the orders came from the highest authorities. There were some 1800 Jews in the village who were said to be involved with the partisans.

The order was to take the male Jews of working age to a work camp. The women, children and elderly were to be shot on the spot.

As he spoke, Trapp had tears in his eyes and visibly fought to control himself. Concluding his speech, Trapp made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men did not feel up to the task that lay before them, they could step out.

After a few seconds, a dozen men stepped forward. The others went on to participate in the massacre. Many of them, after they had done their duty once, vomited or had other visceral reactions that made it impossible to continue killing and were then assigned to other tasks. Almost every man was horrified and disgusted by what he was doing.

Yet, why did only a mere dozen men out of 500 declare themselves unwilling to participate in the mass murder?

In his seminal book, Ordinary Men, historian Christopher Browning describes his search for an answer. He points to several causes, such as anti-semitism, conformity with authority, fear of retribution from other officers etc.

He concludes that there is a different explanation, based on how men in uniforms identify with their comrades. Many policemen seemed to follow a social rule of thumb:

Don't break ranks.

In Browning's words, the men felt a strong urge not to separate themselves from the group by stepping out even if conforming meant violating the moral imperative "don't kill innocent people". Stepping out meant losing face by admitting weakness and leaving one's comrades to do more than their share of the ugly task. For most, it was easier to shoot than to break ranks.

Browning ends his book with a disturbing question: "Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behaviour and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?

From a moral point of view, nothing can justify this behaviour. Social rules, however, can help us understand why certain situations promote or inhibit morally significant actions.