Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“It is one thing to ferret out criminals and murderers from their hiding places, and it is another thing to find them prominent and flourishing in the public realm—to encounter innumerable men in the federal and state administrations and, generally, in public office whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime.”

Years after the end of World War II, when the world is well-versed in the atrocities of the Holocaust, many of the members of the Nazi Party who perpetrated these atrocities are not in hiding and are not living under a false identity. They are in plain sight, some even voted into office with the full knowledge of their participation in the events of the war. Arendt illustrates the fact that former Nazi leaders feel no need to live in shame or anonymity, and for them to hold such positions, they would have to be supported by many people, all whom would be incriminated through their support of these men.

“Only among themselves could the ‘bearers of secrets’ talk in uncoded language, and it is very unlikely that they did so in the ordinary pursuit of their murderous duties—certainly not in the presence of their stenographers and other office personnel. For whatever other reasons the language rules may have been devised, they proved of enormous help in the maintenance of order and sanity in the various widely diversified services whose cooperation was essential in this matter. Moreover, the very term ‘language rule’ (Sprachregelung) was itself a code name; it meant what in ordinary language would be called a lie.”

Those in the Nazi Party who were privy to Hitler’s ultimate plan for the Jews were issued a set of language codes to use when speaking about the Final Solution so that secretaries, stenographers, or any lower-ranking official would be excluded from knowing the details. What this language of codes does as well is to ease these Party members into accepting their orders. They feel removed from it yet a part of it all at the same time. The secrets feel powerful even if some object to killing all the Jews; the fact that they are saved from uttering those specific words allows them to keep their objections, if any, at arm’s length.

“Although Eichmann had forgotten all about it, this was clearly the only instance in which he actually had tried to save Jews […] Thus, we are perhaps in a position to answer Judge Landau’s question—the question uppermost in the minds of nearly everyone who followed the trial—of whether the accused had a conscience: yes, he had a conscience, and his conscience functioned in the expected way for about four weeks, whereupon it began to function the other way around.”

For Eichmann’s organizations of his first mass deportation, he contradicted his orders, which were to send 20,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies to Russian territory, where he knew they would have been shot immediately. Instead, he sends them to Lódz, where he knows preparations for extermination have not yet been made. Eichmann did not, however, remember this experience during the trial. It is perhaps, according to Arendt, the only time Eichmann behaved as one might expect a person with morals and humanity to behave.

“Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler—who apparently was rather strongly afflicted with these instinctive reactions himself—was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”

Arendt offers insights into how it could have been possible to create a political and military party full of people who believe killing millions is justified. So much of Arendt’s analysis focuses on the psychological degradation of members of the Nazi regime. Using a language code is one tool, as if not saying the word “murder” somehow absolves them of the crime, or at least obfuscates it so that they may commit it wholeheartedly. And another tool is this readjustment of basic human instincts: a rewiring of the brain so that it reacts to monumental mass murder as a civic and moral duty, rather than a dark mark on the whole of humanity.

“The main point, as Eichmann rightly noted, was that the members of the various branches of the Civil Service did not merely express opinions but made concrete propositions. The meeting lasted no more than an hour or an hour and a half, after which drinks were served and everybody had lunch— ‘a cozy little social gathering,’ designed to strengthen the necessary personal contacts.”

In order for Hitler’s Final Solution to work, the Nazis needed the support of the Reich’s State, meaning the cooperation of all Ministries and Civil Service members. Heydrich gathers such members at the Wannsee Conference, expecting Hitler’s plan to prove a very difficult sell. He could not have been more wrong. Over lunch, in less than an hour and a half, the guests of the conference not only agree to the details of the Final Solution but offer actionable suggestions to ensure it runs smoothly. Arendt presents multiple opportunities for readers to see how pervasive the Nazi’s belief system is, how often it was readily accepted, to highlight the normalcy of these moments. Any idea that the events of the Holocaust were perpetrated by one group of Germans alone is repeatedly disbanded by Arendt’s evidence in the ordinary everyday lives of people who approve of killing millions of Jews while sipping an afternoon cocktail.

“As Eichmann told it, the most potent factor in the soothing of his own conscience was the simple fact that he could see no one, no one at all, who actually was against the Final Solution.”

Eichmann is very much isolated in a sea of people who all believe the same thing: that Hitler’s word is law and that the Final Solution must be executed to the best of their abilities. It is difficult to grasp any situation where a human being would agree to such measures, but as Arendt details, there are several steps taken in order to prepare a person to organize the transportation of millions of Jews to their deaths, steps that include language codes, collective thought, and isolation. Arendt does not provide this analysis to create any sympathy for Eichmann, or leniency for that matter, but rather as a psychological basis for what is possible for Eichmann or anyone else.

“I have dwelt on this chapter of the story, which the Jerusalem trial failed to put before the eyes of the world in its true dimensions, because it offers the most striking insight into the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused in respectable European society—not only in Germany but in almost all countries, not only among the persecutors but also among the victims.”

Arendt explains why she covers the participation and cooperation of the Jewish leaders during the implementation of the Final Solution. So pervasive is the psychological and moral degradation bestowed on the masses by the Nazi regime that it extends, as Arendt states, to the Jews as well. It is certainly not an easy aspect to look at or analyze, but Arendt presents it in order to present the whole picture, as if looking at and discussing every act of the war might somehow weave together a tangible reasoning, or at the very least, a clearly-detailed warning, so that if and when it might happen again, people might know more about how to resist.

“That there were no voices from the outside to arouse his conscience was one of Eichmann’s points, and it was the task of the prosecution to prove that this was not so, that there were voices he could have listened to, and that, anyhow, he had done the work with a zeal far beyond the call of duty.”

That one of Eichmann’s central defenses is that no one around him told him what he was doing was wrong in any way places the duty of disproving that on the prosecution. Not only will they have to provide evidence of dissent by someone near Eichmann, they also will have to prove that Eichmann went above and beyond his orders. Arendt presents the difficulties the prosecution face in convicting Eichmann on the grounds that both his conscience and his orders will be difficult to prove.

“We need mention here only in passing the so-called ‘inner emigration’ in Germany—those people who frequently had held positions, even high ones, in the Third Reich and who, after the end of the war, told themselves and the world at large that they had always been ‘inwardly opposed’ to the regime. The question here is not whether or not they are telling the truth; the point is, rather, that no secret in the secret-ridden atmosphere of the Hitler regime was better kept than such ‘inward opposition.’”

Arendt’s sarcasm is displayed here while debunking one of the reasonings used by Nazis after the war who were tried for their crimes as well as any supporters of the regime in Germany. Many claimed, after the fact, to have always been opposed to the actions of the Nazis, even Nazis themselves. But no one having acted upon this guilt or having discussed this guilt or objections until after millions of people died makes this opposition the best kept secret in the war.

“Eichmann never joined this ‘moderate wing,’ and it is questionable whether he would have been admitted if he had tried to. Not only was he too deeply compromised and, because of his constant contact with Jewish functionaries, too well known; he was too primitive for these well-educated upper-middle-class ‘gentlemen,’ against whom he harbored the most violent resentment up to the very end. He was quite capable of sending millions of people to their death, but he was not capable of talking about it in the appropriate manner without being given his ‘language rule.’ In Jerusalem, without any rules, he spoke freely of ‘killing’ and of ‘murder,’ of ‘crimes legalized by the state’; he called a spade a spade…”

In the midst of the Final Solution, several Party members decided to contradict orders and find a way to put an end to the massacres. Eichmann was not among these members. This excerpt again speaks to Eichmann’s conscience. As some members seemed to develop one once the killings begin, Eichmann forges on, and in court, disarms his coded language to speak freely about his actions, suggesting no conscience has developed even eighteen years later.

“It would be idle to try to figure out which was stronger in him, [Eichmann’s] admiration for Hitler or his determination to remain a law-abiding citizen of the Third Reich when Germany was already in ruins. Both motives came into play once more during the last days of the war, when he was in Berlin and saw with violent indignation how everybody around him was sensibly enough getting himself fixed up with forged papers before the arrival of the Russians or the Americans. A few weeks later, Eichmann, too, began to travel under an assumed name, but by then Hitler was dead, and the ‘law of the land’ was no longer in existence, and he, as he pointed out, was no longer bound by his oath. For the oath taken by the members of the S.S. differed from the military oath sworn by the soldiers in that it bound them only to Hitler, not to Germany.”

It is only after Hitler dies that Eichmann disengages from his duties. He so steadfastly adheres to his oath that having participated in the deaths of millions seems to bother him less than the abandonment of his fellow Party members of their own oaths to the Reich. Arendt repeatedly reports on Eichmann’s commitment to duty and as his criminal actions mount, that duty appears more and more ridiculous.

“What for Hitler, the sole, lonely plotter of the Final Solution [...] was among the war’s main objectives, with its implementation given top priority, regardless of economic and military considerations, and what for Eichmann was a job, with its daily routine, its ups and downs, was for the Jews quite literally the end of the world. For hundreds of years, they had been used to understanding their own history, rightly or wrongly, as a long story of suffering, much as the prosecutor described it in his opening speech at the trial; but behind this attitude there had been, for a long time, the triumphant conviction of ‘Am Yisrael Chai,’ the people of Israel shall live; individual Jews, whole Jewish families might die in pogroms, whole communities might be wiped out, but the people would survive. They had never been confronted with genocide.”

As Arendt begins to detail the deportations, she takes a moment to remind readers of the inconceivability of the Holocaust. There is much testimony about Eichmann’s job and his duties and his commitment and organizational abilities. But Arendt takes this moment to “call a spade a spade” and refocus on the fact that these plans Eichmann carries out are genocide.

“Politically and psychologically, the most interesting aspect of this incident is perhaps the role played by the German authorities in Denmark, their obvious sabotage of orders from Berlin. It is the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native resistance, and the result seems to have been that those exposed to it changed their minds.”

One of the first steps taken by the Nazis to isolate the Jews is to make them stateless. This action grants Nazis access to deportations of Jews from any foreign country who will comply. Denmark, however, did not comply. They use the statelessness of the Jews against the Nazis, stating that since the Jews were living in Denmark at the time of their declared statelessness, the Germans have no jurisdiction over them without Denmark’s assent. This political move staves off the Nazis for a time. Then, when the Nazis try again to deport the Jews in Denmark, Dr. Werner Best, the Reich plenipotentiary, goes to Berlin to ask for leniency and have the Jews sent to Theresienstadt, where they will be concentrated but most likely not killed. While he awaits approval, Dr. Best signals the Danes, who somehow have enough time to tip off the Jews before the Germans arrive to deport them. This open resistance on the part of the Danes and the Germans stationed in Denmark supplies a modicum of hope that people can retain or regain their consciences and that the Nazi regime is defeatable.

“Eichmann claimed more than once that his organizational gifts, the coordination of evacuations and deportations achieved by his office, had in fact helped his victims; it had made their fate easier. If this thing had to be done at all, he argued, it was better that it be done in good order. During the trial no one, not even counsel for the defense, paid any attention to this claim, which was obviously in the same category as his foolish and stubborn contention that he had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews through ‘forced emigration.’”

Arendt’s description of Eichmann’s reasoning here paints him as delusional, yes, but not crazy. According to the rationale that Eichmann establishes for himself, his actions make sense to him. To a viewer, they are horrific, but to Eichmann, they are logical.

“Then came Eichmann’s last statement: His hopes for justice were disappointed; the court had not believed him, though he had always done his best to tell the truth. The court did not understand him: he had never been a Jew-hater, and he had never willed the murder of human beings. His guilt came from his obedience, and obedience is praised as a virtue. His virtue had been abused by the Nazi leaders.”

Arendt suggests that somewhere beneath this final statement of Eichmann’s is his complete and ineffectual understanding that he murdered millions of human beings. Even at the end, Eichmann holds claim to the belief that his intent is on trial more so than his actions, actions he never denies he made. But what his statement reveals about Eichmann’s mindset is that he believes he could only be guilty, could only inhabit a bad conscience, if his intent was malicious. Had his obedience been directed elsewhere, perhaps Eichmann would have had a successful career as a traveling salesman, rather than a member of Hitler’s regime.

“The purpose of a trial is to render justice, and nothing else; even the noblest of ulterior purposes [...] can only detract from the law’s main business: to weigh the charges brought against the accused, to render judgment, and to mete out due punishment.”

Arendt zeroes in on the basic duties of the court in an effort to establish their failures and successes in terms of how they tried, judged, and punished Eichmann. To get lost in answering the unanswerable questions of why and how would bring no justice to the Jewish people and would allow Eichmann to avoid facing his responsibilities for the Holocaust.

“Neither the nationalized crime of discrimination, which amounted to persecution by law, nor the international crime of expulsion was unprecedented, even in modern age.”

The German persecution of the Jewish people did not begin when the war began. Arendt illustrates that calculated steps are taken prior to the outbreak of war, and that these steps are not new or even uniquely German. First, their rights are taken away, then they are expelled to other nations, equally unwilling to house them, until the only solution left for the Nazis is to “make the entire Jewish people disappear from the face of the earth” (268).

“[F]or Israel the only unprecedented feature of the trial was that, for the first time […] Jews were able to sit in judgment on crimes committed against their own people, that, for the first time, they did not need to appeal to others for protection and justice, or fall back upon the compromised phraseology of the rights of man…”

Arendt discusses several precedents set from the Nuremberg Trials as well as the opinions of the public as to what precedents they hoped the Eichmann trial would set. But one of the most important precedents set, Arendt suggests, is not within the context of the trial itself; rather, it is where and by whom the trial takes place. 

“It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past. No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been. The particular reasons that speak for the possibility of a repetition of the crimes committed by the Nazis are even more plausible. The frightening coincidence of the modern population explosion with the discovery of technical devices that, through automation, will make large sections of the population ‘superfluous’ even in terms of labor, and that, through nuclear energy, make it possible to deal with this twofold threat by the use of instruments beside which Hitler’s gassing installations look like an evil child’s fumbling toys, should be enough to make us tremble. It is essentially for this reason: that the unprecedented, once it has appeared, may become a precedent for the future, that all trials touching upon ‘crimes against humanity’ must be judged according to a standard that is today still an ‘ideal.’”

That the terror of Eichmann lies in his normalcy, according to Arendt, leads her to construct this warning: something like the Holocaust will happen again. She wrote these words in 1961 and there have been countless atrocities performed upon humankind since that time, thus proving her point.

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

People wanted and even needed for the Nazis tried post-World War II to be monsters. Demons among us, once they were executed, their behaviors and unique brand of evil would be absent from this world. Arendt argues this is simply not true. Eichmann and many like him willingly participated in the Final Solution, not necessarily out of malice, hate, or even evil, but because they were obedient and wanted nothing more than to complete their duties well.

“Foremost among the larger issues at stake in the Eichmann trial was the assumption current in all modern legal systems that intent to do wrong is necessary for the commission of a crime. On nothing, perhaps, has civilized jurisprudence prided itself more than on this taking into account of the subjective factor.”

Arendt grapples with Eichmann’s conscience and intent throughout the book but here she critiques the legal system that relies upon it. Having witnessed the entirety of Eichmann’s trial, Arendt finds it difficult to think that so much of the “modern legal systems” rely on an unprovable factor, which seems ridiculous. Regardless of whether or not Eichmann questioned his morals or had hate in his heart for the Jews, neither changes the fact that he sends millions to their deaths. Regardless of intent, Arendt suggests, Eichmann committed the crime.

“For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.”

At the end of the Epilogue, Arendt breaks from the style of her reportage to insert dialogue for the judges’ ruling that was never said. It is dialogue created by her which stems from her own imagination and her own need to hear a specific kind of impassioned judgment rendered on Eichmann. In creating this text, Arendt also speaks to those who made Eichmann possible, others who were also obedient and therefore supportive of the Nazi regime.

“The controversy began by calling attention to the conduct of the Jewish people during the years of the Final Solution, thus following up the questions, first raised by the Israeli prosecutor, of whether the Jews could or should have defended themselves. I had dismissed that question as silly and cruel, since it testified to a fatal ignorance of the conditions at the time. It had now been discussed to exhaustion, and the most amazing conclusions have been drawn. The well-known historico-sociological construct of a ‘ghetto mentality’ [...] has been repeatedly dragged in to explain behavior which was not at all confined to the Jewish people and which therefore cannot be explained by specifically Jewish factors.”

In her postscript, Arendt addresses the controversy inspired by her writing about the cooperation of Jewish leaders during the Holocaust and why they did not defend themselves. She reminds readers that the events that led up to the Holocaust—legal discrimination, forced expulsion, cultural isolation—are not unique to mankind and therefore cannot be solely adhered to the Jewish population. To fully explain these events, we must look beyond this specific experience and into the annals of human history.