Ordinary Organisations

Stefan Kühl is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld.

• Introduction1. Beyond “ordinary men” and “ordinary Germans”1.1. The failure of easy answers1.2. From the search for motives to the presentation of motives1.3. The motivation of organization members2. Identification with the goal2.1. The formation of an antisemitic fictional consensus2.2. How ideological indoctrination secured an antisemitic fictional consensus2.3. From “impassive acceptance” to “active participation”3. Coercion3.1. Forced recruitment and barriers to exit3.2. Avoiding the membership issue in coercive organizations3.3. The limits of leeway3.4. The freedom in coercion4. Comradeship4.1. The pressure of comradeship and the formation of informal norms4.2. Levels in the formation of comradeship4.3. How are comradeship norms enforced?4.4. Mobilizing comradeship by granting leeway5. Money5.1. The function of regular remuneration for the battalion members5.2. Legalized enrichment through the dispossession of the Jewish population5.3. Enrichment beyond official forms of remuneration and reward5.4. The functionality of misappropriation6. The attractiveness of activities6.1. Inhibitions against killing and organizational strategies for overcoming them6.2. The production of motives: Dehumanizing the victims6.3. An organizational culture of brutality7. The generalization of motives7.1. The different ways of portraying personal engagement7.2. Managing one’s self-presentation7.3. The separation between goals and motives8. From killers to perpetrators8.1. The legalization of the state’s use of violence8.2. Using violence in the gray zones of legality8.3. The shift in the concept of law under the Nazis8.4. Facilitating killing by legalizing it9. The normality and abnormality of organizations9.1. Beyond the notion of “abnormal organizations”9.2. The expansion of zones of indifference in organizations9.3. Understanding organizations: ConclusionsAppendix: The sociological approach and empirical basisArchivesNotesLiteratureIndex

“In this masterly researched and subtly conceptualized in-depth analysis of the infamous Police Battalion 101, Stefan Kühl shows hauntingly how the ‘normality’ of constraints, enrichment, comradeship, routine, and legality enabled Nazi perpetrators to achieve the ultimate abnormality. Ordinary Organizations will soon be considered as one of the key inquiries into the Holocaust.”Thomas Kühne, Clark University“An extremely interesting book, engaging with theoretical approaches to understanding the Holocaust. Kühl makes a strong case for the explanatory power of organizational sociology in understanding how ‘ordinary men’ could be brought to engage in acts of killing without seeing themselves as perpetrators. A controversial and stimulating read.”Mary Fulbrook, University College London"Kühl’s analysis takes us as step further than Browning’s and Goldhagen’s by emphasizing how state organizations produce results that would be incomprehensible if they were based solely on individual actions and motives."Augustine Brannigan, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies