The True Evil of Adolf Eichmann

Almost twenty years after Nazi Germany had been defeated in World War II, one of its influential bureaucrats was finally arrested and brought to trial for his actions during the Nazi’s reign. Of course, the atrocities of WWII were not limited to its battlefields, and many of its most evil acts were played out far from the front lines. The bureaucrat brought to trial, Adolf Eichmann, was in fact tried primarily for his part in the systematic ethnic killings that the Nazis became so infamous for. Obviously, the most significant of those killings, at least in sheer number, was the murder of millions of Jewish peoples. Eichmann’s role in the holocaust was pivotal, as he was in command of “Jewish emigration” for the Nazis. Mostly, this entailed coordinating the deportation of Jewish peoples, and the confiscation of their property. In 1961, Hannah Arendt, on assignment from the New Yorker, traveled to Israel to report on the Eichmann trial. Arendt’s subsequent book was critical of the trial in many ways, but she agreed that Eichmann was of course guilty and deserving of the death sentence. Arendt, faced with Eichmann in the flesh coined the term “banality of evil” to describe Eichmann’s character.[1] For Arendt, it was not just the atrocities that Eichmann helped to support that made him guilty, it was the sheer thoughtlessness in which he carried them out that truly displays his evil.

Eichmann did not have an abundance of evil instincts, he was not born with, or at least never displayed, a taste for senseless violence, yet the cold and calculated way he went about fulfilling the Nazi regime’s edicts allowed for, and in many cases expedited, a systematic and organized killing of millions of people. That Eichmann was only following orders had little to do with his measure of evil. Rather, his unrepentant insistence that he had acted normal within the framework of the Third Reich, and that he would have felt guilty only if he had not done his duty showed the true evil of Eichmann’s character. In fact, during the trial Eichmann stated “With the killing of Jews I had nothing to do. I never killed a Jew or a non-Jew, […] I never gave an order to kill either a Jew or non-Jew,” but he qualified the statement by adding “It so happened…that I had not once to do it.”[2] This qualifier by Eichmann is essential to understanding not only his defense, but also the evil of his character, at least as Arendt saw it. That he had never given an order to kill, or killed himself, is less important than the fact that he would have done either had he only been ordered to. As Arendt explained, Eichmann believed that “what he had done was a crime only in retrospect, and he had always been a law-abiding citizen.”[3] That rationale comes from Eichmann’s insistence that he was only following Hitler’s orders, and that Hitler orders were legally equivalent to law in the Third Reich. Here is where the evil in Eichmann lies. He did not regret what he had done, and in many ways implied that his conscience was clear. Arendt points out that Eichmann would only have had a bad conscience “if he had not done what he had been ordered to do […] with great zeal and the most meticulous care.”[4] The fact that those orders involved transporting “millions of men, woman and children to their death” had little to do with Eichmann’s own sense of guilt.

It appeared clear through the telling of Eichmann’s past that he was not himself a fanatical hater of the Jewish people, and Arendt even points out that he had significant help from Jewish connections during his early professional career (prior to joining the Nazis). The fact that Eichmann had numerous “private reasons” for not hating Jews makes the banality of his evil character clearer. Arendt attempted to explain that while many wondered how a normal person could be so incapable of telling right from wrong, it is necessary to think of normal in a different way when it comes to the Nazis. Arendt summed it up elegantly when she wrote that “Eichmann was indeed normal insofar as he was no exception within the Nazi regime. However, under the conditions of the Third Reich only exceptions could be expected to react normally.”[5] It was within this environment that Eichmann operated with a calculated efficiency in carrying out his role in the Nazi’s Final Solution of the Jewish problem - not to mention the countless non-Jews that perished at the hands of the Nazis. Numerous examples can be found in Arendt’s work that show Eichmann’s unnerving ruthlessness during his day to day role in the Nazi’s government. Whether it was working with the Jewish councils of elders to document the Jewish population (and of course their valuable property) or arranging the “trade” of Jews for trucks, Eichmann worked diligently to complete his orders as efficiently as possible.[6] There is perhaps one example that best exemplified Eichmann’s understanding of what his role in the murders was, and how he was able to justify it to himself. It occurred at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, which was held to organize the implementation of the Final Solution. In Eichmann’s own words, “during this conference, the most prominent people had spoken, the Popes of the Third Reich.”[7] This was the moment the Eichmann was able to “see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears” that important persons within the Nazi government were fully behind and supportive of the planned killings.[8] If Eichmann ever harbored thoughts about the immorality of what the Nazis were doing they were gone by the time the Wannsee Conference ended.

Adolf Eichmann, if he can ever rightly be cast as a victim, was a victim of the sweeping ideology of nationalism. It was the spread of nationalism that had the greatest contribution towards the blind and fanatical obedience of ethnic peoples in rallying behind the “cause” of their country. It is nationalism that allowed Adolf Hitler to take advantage of a Germany that had been brought to her knees by the fallacies of the Versailles treaty. Surely, it was a tragic combination of humiliation and pride that allowed for such a hateful figure as Hitler to ascend to the head of the German people. Hitler’s control over Germany was complete and unrelenting. His powerful propaganda machine created a sense of unity among Germans, and also conditioned them to accept Hitler’s words as if they were law. Clearly, there were Germans who understood that the extermination of the Jewish peoples in Europe would be seen as an atrocity to the rest of the world. Evidence of this is prevalent. For example, the Nazis used strict “language rules” whenever corresponding about the Final Solution.[9] But, it was a testament to the fervor of German nationalism, and their connection of that with Hitler, that allowed the Nazis to efficiently orchestrate the “secret” murder of millions while waging a world war.

There is of course an apparent danger with the type of blind allegiance that the German people displayed during the Nazi’s reign. Having unwavering faith in the actions and ideology of any authority allows the individual to ignore their conscience. Without the burden of a conscience the individual is able to carry out any order given by the authority figure without question. Eichmann is said to have boasted during the war that he would jump into his grave laughing, “because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction.” But, Eichmann insisted during his trial that he did not say Jews specifically, but enemies of the Reich in general.[10] This makes much more sense given Arendt’s insights into Eichmann’s evil character, and the atmosphere within the Third Reich. The German people had been devout believers of Hitler and his Nazi government, even to the point that they were able to die happy knowing they had done their part. Because of their faith that they were doing right by Germany there was a casualness in the evils perpetrated by Nazis, and it was within this casualness that their true evil can be seen clearly.

Keegan F. Labrador

April 25, 2015


 

Works Cited:

 

  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 118.
  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 15.
  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 16.
  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 16.
  •  Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 17.
  •  Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 56.
  •  Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 56.
  •  Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 56.
  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 43.
  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963, pg 26.