Reserve Polizeibataillon

Reserve Police battalions were initially formed for local duties in Germany. Prewar recruits were volunteers, but wartime recruits were conscripts, older than army recruits. Their training was minimal, and they were not trained at all for mass murder. Police battalion 101 has been analyzed by Browning (1993) and Goldhagen (1996). They say that most of the rank-and-file were Hamburg conscripts, with an average age of 36. Of the 100 whose marital status is known, 99 were married and 72 had children. The most common previous occupation had been policeman, and most of the others had been workers. Browning believes these ordinary men murdered, primarily because they were fearful and conformist killers, Goldhagen believes there ordinary Germans killed because they were anti-Semitic bigots.