Christopher Browning
Encyclopedia
Christopher Robert Browning (born May 22, 1944) is an American historian
of the Holocaust
.
in 1968 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
in 1975. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University
from 1974 to 1999, eventually becoming a Distinguished Professor. In 1999, he moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
to accept an appointment as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History. Browning was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 2006.
(Order Police) Reserve Unit 101, used to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to the Nazi death camps in German occupied Poland
in 1942. The conclusion of the book, which was much influenced by the experiments of Stanley Milgram
, was that the men of Unit 101 were not demons or Nazi
fanatics but ordinary middle-aged men of working-class background from Hamburg
, who had been drafted but found unfit for military duty. In some cases, these men were ordered to round up Jews and if there was not enough room for them on the trains, to shoot them. In other, more chilling cases, they were ordered to merely kill a specified number of Jews in a given town or area. The commander of the unit gave his men the choice of opting out of this duty if they found it too unpleasant; the majority chose not to exercise that option, resulting in fewer than 15 men out of a battalion of 500 opting out of their grisly duties. Browning argued that the men of Unit 101 killed out of a basic obedience to authority and peer pressure, not blood-lust or primal hatred. While the specifics of this book deal with killings performed by otherwise average men, the general implication of the book is that when placed in a coherent group setting, most people will adhere to the commands given, even if they find the actions morally reprehensible. Additionally the book demonstrates that ordinary people will more than likely follow orders, even those they might personally question, when they perceive these orders as originating from an authority, a hypothesis also studied in the Milgram Experiment
.
Ordinary Men achieved much acclaim but was denounced by Daniel Goldhagen
for missing what Goldhagen considered the importance of German culture for causing the Holocaust. In an extremely hostile book review in the July 1992 edition of The New Republic
, Goldhagen called Ordinary Men a book of no scholarly value and accused Browning of manufacturing his evidence. Goldhagen's controversial 1996 book Hitler's Willing Executioners
was largely written to rebut Browning's book.
When David Irving
sued Deborah Lipstadt
for libel in 2000, Browning was one of the leading witnesses for the defense. Another historian, Robert Jan Van Pelt
, wrote a report on the gassing facilities at Auschwitz
, and Browning wrote a report on the evidence for the extermination of the Jews on a wider scale. During his testimony and a cross-examination by Irving, Browning countered Irving’s suggestion that the last chapter of the Holocaust has yet to be written (implying there were grounds for doubting the reality of the Shoah) by replying: "We are still discovering things about the Roman Empire
. There is no last chapter in history."
Browning countered Irving’s argument that the lack of a written Führer order disproved the Holocaust, maintaining that no such order need ever have been written down, given that Hitler had almost certainly made statements to his leading subordinates indicating his wishes in regards to the Jews of Europe during the war, thus rendering the question of an extant, written order irrelevant. Browning went on to testify that several leading experts on Nazi Germany believe that there was no written Führer order for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, but no historian doubts the reality of the Holocaust. Browning noted that Hitler’s secret speech to his Gauleiters on December 12, 1941, strongly alluded to genocide as the “Final Solution”.
Browning categorically rejected Irving’s claim that there was no reliable statistical information on the size of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe, or on the killing processes; he asserted that the only reason why historians debate whether five or six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust is a lack of access to archives in the former Soviet Union. Likewise, Browning argued that it was possible to become soaked in human blood after shooting people at close-range, and dismissed Irving’s argument that accounts of German personnel being soaked in blood were improbable because it is not possible to have a blood-splattered uniform after shooting people at close range. The American journalist D.D. Guttenplan, who covered the trial, considered Browning to be the most effective of the witnesses for Lipstadt.
in the origins of the Holocaust debate, following the principles of the "moderate functionalist" school of thought, which focuses on the structure and institution of the Third Reich, moving the focus away from Hitler. Functionalism sees the extermination of the Jews as the improvisation and radicalization of a polycratic regime. Functionalists do not vindicate Adolf Hitler
yet they recognize that many other factors were involved in the Final Solution
.
Browning has argued that the Final Solution was the result of the "cumulative radicalization" (to use Hans Mommsen
's phrase) of the German state, especially when faced with the self-imposed "problem" of 3 million Jews (mostly Polish), whom the Nazis had forced into ghettos between 1939 and 1941. The intention was to have these and other Jews resident in the Third Reich expelled eastward once a destination was selected. For a time in 1940, the Madagascar Plan
, in which after Germany
defeated Britain
, France
was to cede Madagascar
to Germany, and then all of the Jews of Europe were to be expelled to that island, was considered as an option. Germany's inability to defeat Britain prevented the execution of the Madagascar Plan. Browning has been able to establish that the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", first used in 1939, meant until 1941 a "territorial solution". Owing to the military developments of World War II
and to turf wars within the German bureaucracy, expulsion lost its viability such that, by 1941, members of the bureaucracy were willing to countenance committing mass murder against the Jews.
In a speech given in Paris in 1982, Browning summarized the state of the historiography as follows:
Browning divides the officials of the Government-General
of occupied Poland into two factions. One, the "Productionists", favored using Jews of the ghettos as a source of slave labor to help with the war effort. The other, the "Attritionists", favored letting the Jews of the ghettos starve and die of disease. At the same time, there were struggles between the SS
and Hans Frank
, the Governor-General of Poland. The SS favored "The Nisko/Lublin Plan" of creating a "Jewish Reservation" in Lublin
, Poland, into which all the Jews of Greater Germany, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia were to be expelled. Frank was opposed to the "Lublin Plan" on the ground that the SS were "dumping" Jews into his territory. Frank together with Hermann Göring
wished for Government-General of Poland to become the "granary" of the Reich, and opposed the ethnic cleansing schemes of Heinrich Himmler
and Arthur Greiser
as disruptive of economic conditions.
An attempt to settle these difficulties at conference between Himmler, Göring, Frank and Greiser at Göring's Karinhall estate on February 12, 1940 was scuttled in May 1940, when Himmler was able to show Hitler a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East" on May 15, 1940, which Hitler called "good and correct". Himmler's memo, which called for expelling all of the Jews of German-ruled Europe into Africa and reducing Poles to a "leaderless laboring class", and Hitler's approval of the memo led, as Browning noted, to a major change in German policy in Poland along the lines suggested by Himmler. Browning called the Göring/Frank-Himmler/Greiser dispute a perfect example of how Hitler encouraged his followers to engage in turf battles with one another without deciding for one policy option or other, but clearly hinting at the direction he preferred policy to go.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
Education
Browning received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin CollegeOberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
in 1968 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
in 1975. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University
Pacific Lutheran University
Pacific Lutheran University is located in Parkland, a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. In September 2009, PLU had a student population of 3,582 and approximately 280 full-time faculty...
from 1974 to 1999, eventually becoming a Distinguished Professor. In 1999, he moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
to accept an appointment as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History. Browning was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 2006.
Work
He is best known for his 1992 book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, a study of German OrdnungspolizeiOrdnungspolizei
The Ordnungspolizei or Orpo were the uniformed regular police force in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1945. It was increasingly absorbed into the Nazi police system. Owing to their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Grüne Polizei...
(Order Police) Reserve Unit 101, used to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to the Nazi death camps in German occupied Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
in 1942. The conclusion of the book, which was much influenced by the experiments of Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
, was that the men of Unit 101 were not demons or Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
fanatics but ordinary middle-aged men of working-class background from Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, who had been drafted but found unfit for military duty. In some cases, these men were ordered to round up Jews and if there was not enough room for them on the trains, to shoot them. In other, more chilling cases, they were ordered to merely kill a specified number of Jews in a given town or area. The commander of the unit gave his men the choice of opting out of this duty if they found it too unpleasant; the majority chose not to exercise that option, resulting in fewer than 15 men out of a battalion of 500 opting out of their grisly duties. Browning argued that the men of Unit 101 killed out of a basic obedience to authority and peer pressure, not blood-lust or primal hatred. While the specifics of this book deal with killings performed by otherwise average men, the general implication of the book is that when placed in a coherent group setting, most people will adhere to the commands given, even if they find the actions morally reprehensible. Additionally the book demonstrates that ordinary people will more than likely follow orders, even those they might personally question, when they perceive these orders as originating from an authority, a hypothesis also studied in the Milgram Experiment
Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
.
Ordinary Men achieved much acclaim but was denounced by Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author and former Associate Professor of Political Science and Social Studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controversial books about the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners and...
for missing what Goldhagen considered the importance of German culture for causing the Holocaust. In an extremely hostile book review in the July 1992 edition of The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, Goldhagen called Ordinary Men a book of no scholarly value and accused Browning of manufacturing his evidence. Goldhagen's controversial 1996 book Hitler's Willing Executioners
Hitler's Willing Executioners
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen that argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were as the title indicates "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism"...
was largely written to rebut Browning's book.
When David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
sued Deborah Lipstadt
Deborah Lipstadt
Deborah Esther Lipstadt, Ph.D. is an American historian and author of the book Denying the Holocaust and The Eichmann Trial. She is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University...
for libel in 2000, Browning was one of the leading witnesses for the defense. Another historian, Robert Jan Van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt is an author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto in Ontario and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topics, through which he has come to address...
, wrote a report on the gassing facilities at Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
, and Browning wrote a report on the evidence for the extermination of the Jews on a wider scale. During his testimony and a cross-examination by Irving, Browning countered Irving’s suggestion that the last chapter of the Holocaust has yet to be written (implying there were grounds for doubting the reality of the Shoah) by replying: "We are still discovering things about the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. There is no last chapter in history."
Browning countered Irving’s argument that the lack of a written Führer order disproved the Holocaust, maintaining that no such order need ever have been written down, given that Hitler had almost certainly made statements to his leading subordinates indicating his wishes in regards to the Jews of Europe during the war, thus rendering the question of an extant, written order irrelevant. Browning went on to testify that several leading experts on Nazi Germany believe that there was no written Führer order for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, but no historian doubts the reality of the Holocaust. Browning noted that Hitler’s secret speech to his Gauleiters on December 12, 1941, strongly alluded to genocide as the “Final Solution”.
Browning categorically rejected Irving’s claim that there was no reliable statistical information on the size of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe, or on the killing processes; he asserted that the only reason why historians debate whether five or six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust is a lack of access to archives in the former Soviet Union. Likewise, Browning argued that it was possible to become soaked in human blood after shooting people at close-range, and dismissed Irving’s argument that accounts of German personnel being soaked in blood were improbable because it is not possible to have a blood-splattered uniform after shooting people at close range. The American journalist D.D. Guttenplan, who covered the trial, considered Browning to be the most effective of the witnesses for Lipstadt.
Browning's interpretation of the Holocaust
Browning is a functionalistFunctionalism versus intentionalism
Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy...
in the origins of the Holocaust debate, following the principles of the "moderate functionalist" school of thought, which focuses on the structure and institution of the Third Reich, moving the focus away from Hitler. Functionalism sees the extermination of the Jews as the improvisation and radicalization of a polycratic regime. Functionalists do not vindicate Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
yet they recognize that many other factors were involved in the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
.
Browning has argued that the Final Solution was the result of the "cumulative radicalization" (to use Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen is a left-wing German historian. He is the twin brother of the late Wolfgang Mommsen.-Biography:He was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen and great-grandson of the Roman historian Theodor Mommsen. He studied German, history and philosophy at the University of...
's phrase) of the German state, especially when faced with the self-imposed "problem" of 3 million Jews (mostly Polish), whom the Nazis had forced into ghettos between 1939 and 1941. The intention was to have these and other Jews resident in the Third Reich expelled eastward once a destination was selected. For a time in 1940, the Madagascar Plan
Madagascar Plan
The Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government of Germany to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.-Origins:The evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept...
, in which after Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
defeated Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
was to cede Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
to Germany, and then all of the Jews of Europe were to be expelled to that island, was considered as an option. Germany's inability to defeat Britain prevented the execution of the Madagascar Plan. Browning has been able to establish that the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", first used in 1939, meant until 1941 a "territorial solution". Owing to the military developments of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and to turf wars within the German bureaucracy, expulsion lost its viability such that, by 1941, members of the bureaucracy were willing to countenance committing mass murder against the Jews.
In a speech given in Paris in 1982, Browning summarized the state of the historiography as follows:
In recent years the interpretations of National Socialism have polarized more and more into two groups that Tim Mason has aptly called Intentionalists and Functionalists. The former explain the development of Nazi Germany as a result of Hitler's intentions, which came out of a coherent and logical ideology and were realized due to an all-powerful totalitarian dictatorship. The Functionalists point out the anarchistic character of the Nazi state, its internal rivalries and the chaotic process of decision-making, which constantly led to improvisation and radicalization...These two modes of exposition of history are useful for the analysis of the strongly divergent meanings that people attribute to the Jewish policy of the Nazis in general and to the Final Solution in particular. On the one hand, Lucy DawidowiczLucy DawidowiczLucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
, a radical Intentionalist, upholds the viewpoint that already in 1919 Hitler had decided to exterminate European Jews. And not only that: He knew at what point in time his murderous plan would be realized. The Second World War was at the same time the means and opportunity to put his war against the Jews into effect. While he waited for the anticipated moment for the realization of his great plan, naturally he tolerated a senseless and meaningless pluralism in the Jewish policies of the subordinate ranks of state and party.
Against the radical Intentionalism of Lucy Dawidowicz, which emphasizes the intentions and great plan of Hitler, the Ultrafunctionalism of Martin BroszatMartin BroszatMartin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich. Broszat was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied history at the University of Leipzig and...
constitutes a diametrically opposed view of the role of the Führer, especially with respect to the decision on the Final Solution. It is Broszat's position that Hitler never took a definitive decision nor issued a general order for the Final SolutionFinal SolutionThe Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
. The annihilation program developed in stages in conjunction with a series of isolated massacres at the end of 1941 and in 1942. These locally limited mass murders were improvised answers to an impossible situation that had developed as a result of two factors:
First the ideological and political pressure for the creation of a Jew-free Europe that stemmed from Hitler and then the military reverses on the eastern front that led to stoppages in railway traffic and caused the buffer zones into which the Jews were to be removed to disappear. Once the annihilation program was in progress, it gradually institutionalized itself until it was noticed that it offered the simplest solution logistically and became a program universally applied and single-mindedly pursued. From this standpoint, Hitler was a catalyst but not a decision-maker. For Lucy Dawidowicz, the Final Solution was thought out twenty years before it was put into practice; For Martin Broszat, the idea developed from the practice of sporadic murders of groups of Jews, which produced the idea of killing all Jews systematically.
Browning divides the officials of the Government-General
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
of occupied Poland into two factions. One, the "Productionists", favored using Jews of the ghettos as a source of slave labor to help with the war effort. The other, the "Attritionists", favored letting the Jews of the ghettos starve and die of disease. At the same time, there were struggles between the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
and Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
, the Governor-General of Poland. The SS favored "The Nisko/Lublin Plan" of creating a "Jewish Reservation" in Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
, Poland, into which all the Jews of Greater Germany, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia were to be expelled. Frank was opposed to the "Lublin Plan" on the ground that the SS were "dumping" Jews into his territory. Frank together with Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
wished for Government-General of Poland to become the "granary" of the Reich, and opposed the ethnic cleansing schemes of Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser was a Nazi German politician and SS Obergruppenfuhrer. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in Poland and numerous other war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which he was tried, convicted and executed by hanging after World War...
as disruptive of economic conditions.
An attempt to settle these difficulties at conference between Himmler, Göring, Frank and Greiser at Göring's Karinhall estate on February 12, 1940 was scuttled in May 1940, when Himmler was able to show Hitler a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East" on May 15, 1940, which Hitler called "good and correct". Himmler's memo, which called for expelling all of the Jews of German-ruled Europe into Africa and reducing Poles to a "leaderless laboring class", and Hitler's approval of the memo led, as Browning noted, to a major change in German policy in Poland along the lines suggested by Himmler. Browning called the Göring/Frank-Himmler/Greiser dispute a perfect example of how Hitler encouraged his followers to engage in turf battles with one another without deciding for one policy option or other, but clearly hinting at the direction he preferred policy to go.
Publications
- The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office : a study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940–43, New York : Holmes & Meier, 1978.
- “Zur Genesis der "Endlösung" Eine Antwort an Martin Broszat” pages 96–104 from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 29, 1981.
- Fateful Months : Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, New York : Holmes & Meier, 1985.
- Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York : HarperCollins, 1992.
- The Path to Genocide : Essays on launching the Final Solution, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998, 1992.
- Nazi policy, Jewish workers, German killers, Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Collected memories : Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony, Madison, Wis. ; London : University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
- The Origins of the Final Solution : The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942 (With contributions by Jürgen Matthäus), Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
- Everyday Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.
External links
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Christopher Browning from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Review of The Origins of the Final Solution
- Review of Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers
- A Brief Description of Dr. Browning
- Origins of the Final Solution : The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942