Browning's explanation is moving, however, it is unconvincing. Browning offers that "wartime brutalization, racism, segmentation, and routinization of the task obedience to orders, deference to authority, ideological indoctrination, and conformity" have been used in the past as explanation for the behavior of Germans during the Holocaust. He argues instead "these factors are applicable in varying degrees, but none without qualification." (Browning, 159) None of these factors alone motivated the men in Battalion 101 to participate in the Holocaust. He argues that it was ultimately peer-pressure and obedience to authority that made these "ordinary men" participate in the murder of unarmed civilians, men, women, and children. The men were afraid of being ostracized if they refused to participate, and they felt a duty to obey their superior officers, as they had been trained. .
To argue his point, Browning references two famous psychological studies. The first experiment that Browning cites in his explanation of the behavior of the men in Battalion 101 was the "Milgram studies." The experiment asked students to role-play a teacher and student. The experiment is rigged so that the subject will always be the teacher. The subject is instructed to shock the student with increasing voltage for each incorrect answer. Most of the subjects obeyed the authority without any threats, even as their subjects screamed in "pain."(Browning 172) While many of the "teachers" obeyed the experimenter's orders that the study must commence, even after the students cried for mercy, this situation is still not similar to the reality of the actions of the men in Reserve Battalion 101. In the Milgram experiments, the "teachers" who shocked their students did not see what happened, since the "victims" were in a separate room. The soldiers in Battalion 101, however, were "gruesomely besmirched with blood, brains, and bone splinters.