Some of the men came out of the woods covered head to toe in blood and bone fragments. Their uniforms were soaked. Their hands were shaking. And the day was not even close to being over.
A fifty-three-year-old career policeman stands before five hundred men at dawn, tears running down his face, and tells them their job today is to murder fifteen hundred people. Then he says something no one expects: if you cannot do it, you can step out. No punishment. No consequences. Just walk away.
Before the middle-aged policemen of Battalion 101 ever set foot in Poland, the machinery of mass murder was already grinding at full speed. Chapter 6 is not really about the battalion yet. It is about the nightmare they were walking into.
These were dock workers, truck drivers, and salesmen. Guys pushing forty with bad knees and families back home. And they were about to be sent to Poland to do things none of them could have imagined a few years earlier.
Imagine filing a report about transporting a thousand people to a death camp, and your biggest complaint is that the butter went rancid.
Before the killing fields of Poland, there was Russia. And what happened there in the summer of 1941 set the template for everything that followed.
How does a police force built to keep order end up carrying out one of history’s worst crimes? That is the story of Chapter 2.
Imagine getting woken up before dawn, loaded onto a truck, and driven for two hours down a bumpy gravel road with no idea where you are going or what you are about to do. Now imagine being told, once you arrive, that your job today is to murder 1,500 people.
What happens when normal, everyday people are put into extraordinary circumstances? Not soldiers. Not fanatics. Just regular middle-aged guys from Hamburg with families and day jobs.