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Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt,

Amos Elon (Introduction)

4.23 · Rating details · 17,881 ratings · 1,458 reviews

Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account ...more

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Paperback, 312 pages

Published December 7th 2006 by Penguin Classics (first published May 17th 1963)

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May 08, 2009 Lobstergirl rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: I and Thou

Shelves: european-history

In order to pronounce judgment on this book, on Arendt, on the idea of "the banality of evil," you can't simply read reviews, summaries, excerpts, chunks, sentences. You have to read the entire book. You have to. Only by reading the entire book will you acclimate yourself to Arendt's tone, her idiosyncratic writing style, the way a word on p. 252 seems like an odd choice until you recall how she used the same word on p. 53.

In the wake of the book came a flood of criticism (in both senses) that c ...more

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Mar 31, 2016 Trevor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, philosophy, race, psychology, religion, biography

It is hard to know what to say about this book. The subtitle is pretty well right: the banality of evil. Eichmann comes across as a complete fool, utterly lacking in any ability to see things from the perspective of the other. As Arendt says at one point, the idea that he could sit chatting to a German Jew about how unfair it was that he never received a promotion for his work in exterminating the Jews pretty much sums up the man.

It seems Eichmann felt he was doing his best not only for his mas It is hard to know what to say about this book. The subtitle is pretty well right: the banality of evil. Eichmann comes across as a complete fool, utterly lacking in any ability to see things from the perspective of the other. As Arendt says at one point, the idea that he could sit chatting to a German Jew about how unfair it was that he never received a promotion for his work in exterminating the Jews pretty much sums up the man.

It seems Eichmann felt he was doing his best not only for his masters, but also for the Jews too. This was the part I found most surprising. He knew the Jews were being exterminated, that this was more or less inevitable, and so given this inevitability the ‘moral’ thing to do was to make the whole process as clean and ‘painless’ as possible. I kept thinking of Bauman talking about the holocaust as a huge exercise in ‘hygiene’. There really is no part of this that doesn’t quickly sink into a horrible kind of absurdity.

The problem with the holocaust is the sheer scale of it makes trying to hold it in your head comparable to trying to understand the universe, you can feel yourself sinking into insanity. And it is not just the whole ‘so many!’ problem, although, obviously, it is that as well, but mingled with that is the remarkable level of planning involved, to which Eichmann was clearly dedicated and hardworking to a fault. The problem this book raises isn’t the reassuring ‘you would need to be a monster’ – because how much better the world would be if that were true. It isn’t even the ‘we would all be Eichmann if placed in similar circumstances’. That, in fact, simply and demonstrably isn’t the case. We have endless examples of people who actively chose not to be Eichmann, people who knowingly paid for not being Eichmann with their lives, and did so as an active choice. The thing that this book makes terribly clear is that simple bureaucratic processes can be used to remarkable effect in normalising the unthinkable – in fact, you can commit genocide on an unprecedented scale if you have people worrying about train timetables and the supply of gas rather than where the trains will go and what the gas is for. There was an insanely horrible part of this where she says that many Germans would have preferred suicide to defeat, and that some may well have felt those damn Jews had used up all of the gas. The world really can be endlessly perverse in the most unspeakable of ways.

A particularly interesting part of the book was the discussion of why the Nazis dealt with the Zionists. All Jews were bad, but at least the Zionists had some sense of national feeling. I’d never thought of the monstrous consistency that might lie at the heart of nationalism.

And yet, this book left me feeling terribly uneasy. Once Eichmann was in Israel it was clear he was going to die – for as much as Israel may not have wanted this to be seen as a show trial, clearly this was a story with only one possible ending. The concern I had was that this guy really couldn’t be called a ‘mastermind’ in any sense that doesn’t inspire the bitterest of ironic laughs. He was, in some ways, proof that the Nazis recognising that to promote him beyond where he was would only result in an exemplar case of the Peter Principle. He was highly effective at organising logistics, but his motivation was not genocide or hatred of the Jews – I dread to say it, but that would at least make sense. Instead he was just some guy pitifully obsessed with following orders in the hope of getting a promotion, seeking to impress his superiors and completely obsessed with efficiency. I certainly cannot bring myself to be sorry for his fate, but then neither can I feel the world is all that much better without him. He was a fool, a terrifying fool doing his job.

And that fact is the most terrifying of all about this book, I fear.
...more

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May 04, 2011 Matt rated it liked it

Shelves: holocaust, nazis, journalism

“[T]hese defendants now ask this Tribunal to say they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Tribunal as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: ‘Say I slew them not.’ And the Queen replied: “Then say they are not slain. But dead they are…’”
-- from Robert Jackson’s closing argument at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

In my opinion, one of the c ...more

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Jan 01, 2015 Garima rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-2-cents, non-fic, taking-title, war-with-peace, wehmut, no-kidding, world-next-door, pol-rev

The horror and enigma surrounding the Holocaust trials is probably best exhibited in Peter Weiss’s play The Investigation. Based on the actual testimonies given during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials- reading it is an experience that is cold, brutal and almost physical in ways unexpected. Witnesses try to communicate the incommunicable suffering of victims and survivors; Defendants try to deny or extenuate their respective roles in the heinous crimes and Judges try to measure up an appropriate se The horror and enigma surrounding the Holocaust trials is probably best exhibited in Peter Weiss’s play The Investigation. Based on the actual testimonies given during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials- reading it is an experience that is cold, brutal and almost physical in ways unexpected. Witnesses try to communicate the incommunicable suffering of victims and survivors; Defendants try to deny or extenuate their respective roles in the heinous crimes and Judges try to measure up an appropriate sentence against the evil involved that keeps on getting bigger, hideous and unbearable. In the course of brief dialogues, Weiss deftly manages to raise some inconvenient questions and leaves the tough task of contemplation for the readers. In that sense, where this play ends, Eichmann in Jerusalem begins.

One last question, the most disturbing of all, was asked by the judges, and especially by the presiding judge, over and over again: Had the killing of Jews gone against his conscience? But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.

I am tempted to say that Hannah Arendt followed Eichmann’s trial as an impartial third party whose aim was to view things in the light of a relevant objectivity but it would be too bold a claim given my superficial knowledge about the concerned subject matter. Still I can say that she definitely strives to penetrate the colossal intricacy of Nazi machinery along with the challenges faced by a wary legal system. It’s not a coin we are talking about but a demonic labyrinth of ‘crimes against humanity’ and the difficulty in analyzing its structure must have been enormous. From the outset only, Arendt’s lucid and assured writing conveys the much needed message that whatever shall follow will not complicate the already complicated events but rather deconstruct the methods and consequences of venomous indoctrination.

What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique, which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did.

And in the centre of all this is a man sitting in the bullet proof glass cage, recounting the whys and hows and wheres of the gross injustice he perpetrated while Arendt carefully observes his various stances actuated by a thorough research and presents a ‘report’ that is worth reading for the sheer amount of information and new perspectives it offers for our perusal. Although all her arguments bear a force that warrants some sort of reaction even from the unaffected, there are instances where things appears to be stretched a little too far on her part especially when it comes to pass judgments on Eichmann’s character. And no, I’m not referring to the ‘banality’ which is most likely a foregone conclusion (and Arendt herself regretted the use of that word) but certain extraneous assumptions. The ‘banality’ however, whether that of a person or some invisible evil force can’t be dismissed in its entirety when one reads the following words:

Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody “Thou shalt not kill,” even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: “Thou shalt kill,” although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it- the quality of temptation.

Maybe there are many philosophies at play here that I didn’t able to differentiate or even recognize but one thing that is apparent against the tragic backdrop of wars is the dwelling place of truth that usually gets blurred or wiped out under the layers of black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. Arendt has explored those very places in a manner that is admirable and brave.
...more

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Jan 20, 2021 Ruby Granger rated it it was amazing

Highly philosophically enlightening and important -- if not a disturbing truth to reckon with. Ardent proposes the idea of "the banality of evil" in this text, recognising that "normal" people can do truly horrific and evil things in the modern world.
Offers a detailed history of the Nazi Genocide (in part, this text reads like a history book) and, more interestingly, the circumstances of Eichmann himself. ...more

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Oct 12, 2013 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reality-check, books-are-the-best-invention, 5-star, r-2014, person-of-reality, reviewed, antidote-think-twice-all, non-fiction, reason-for-history-class, r-goodreads

What has come to light is neither nihilism nor cynicism, as one might have expected, but a quite extraordinary confusion over elementary questions of morality—as if an instinct in such matters were truly the last thing to be taken for granted in our time.

I've been entertained by my fair share of WWII/Nazi/Holocaust media, a glut in the marketable masses of reality's intersection with fiction the never fails to rear its head every year. Of course, that's the US for you, with its isolation and capitalism and pride. It's no use saying that I wish I had never sought out such things to fill my time, for reasons of a complete undermining of reception of this book if nothing else. But oh, how I would like to.

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

What I have faith in these days is a future of ever increasing alignment between morality and legality. In the present I only supplicate in front of a reassurance that there indeed exists a concept of progress between my modern day and the ones before. A progress more aligned with my personal sensibility of ethics and individual level of comfort, at any rate.

...and if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer.

What we have here, in this book, is a collusion of time, place, and people. Hannah Arendt went to Jerusalem to report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, doing so through means of fact, analysis, and the lines of legal and politic that governments trundle along their way on. As a result of my reading, my thinking has undergone a paradigm shift on the level that it did upon encountering The Second Sex. The subject material differs, but my interpretation is the same: I can never afford to become cynical, for that implies I've learned enough to be so. Fear, anger, and a burning desire to know more? That's acceptable.

And if he did not always like what he had to do...he never forgot what the alternative would have been. Not only in Argentina, leading the unhappy existence of a refugee, but also in the courtroom in Jerusalem, with his life as good as forfeited, he might have still preferred—if anybody had asked him—to be hanged as Obersturmbannführer a.D. (in retirement) rather than living out his life quietly and normally as a traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company.

According to the primary evidence Arendt utilized, Eichmann was deemed both sane and normal by six psychologists. He suffered from neither guilt nor anger, but from at most the frustration of one who has always been down on their luck, someone who joined a movement in history in hopes of a promising potential and never quite fulfilled it. His memory consisted not of the timeline of the war, but of the timeline of this potential: his study of Jewish texts, his interaction with fellow members of the S.S., the hows and wherefores of his coming to be and the end all question of his reasons for staying on.

The net effect of this language system was not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their old, "normal" knowledge of murder and lies. Eichmann's great susceptibility to catch words and stock phrases, combined with his incapacity for ordinary speech, made him, of course, an ideal subject for "language rules."

Eichmann was banal in the least sense of the word. His lack of intelligence not only spelled his doom due to little caution and less attention paid to his bragging tongue, it also made him perfectly happy to appropriate the words the far more discreet Nazi Party told him and construct his thinking with such. In view of the Jewish Question, he termed himself both "expert" and "idealist", the former a lie and the latter a peculiar trait that led to largely respectful collaborations with Jewish Elders all over Europe regarding evacuations/deportations and related matters. Using these phrases, working towards a higher rank in the S.S., claiming responsibility for millions of deaths with both complete lack of guilt and oddly lofty sense of history; all of that, each and every time, made him "elated."

In [Eichmann's] mind, there was no contradiction between "I will jump into my grave laughing," appropriate for the end of the war, and "I shall gladly hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth," which now, under vastly different circumstances, fulfilled exactly the same function of giving him a lift.

The facts here are ugly, awkward, and fucking sadistic. Eichmann's trial by sheer happenstance touches on, amidst so much more, the defining of "crimes against humanity", genocide versus "administrative massacres", the history of anti-Semitism and subsequent conflict between the Jewish understanding of pogroms and the world's views of crime and punishment, and the limits of current laws of warfare, and indeed the very terms of "justice", in the face of World War Two. Here, the trial in Jerusalem faltered in the face of a completely legal indictment and subsequent explanation of such, as did every other trial of WWII war criminals and lesser collaborators. Here, history will repeated, not because we do not know it but because we now know the punishment and, as such, can act accordingly. Here, the world took action, and one wonders whether that result was worth the trigger, and whether worse things could have happened had not the final push occurred.

Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.

A banality of evil is the necessity of mid-civilization crises of morality like this when it comes to eliciting a legal, political, worldwide recognition of what humanity cries for, religion aspires to, and human instinct, well. I don't have much faith in that last bit anymore.

But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.

...more

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Aug 24, 2013 Manny marked it as to-read

We just saw the movie Hannah Arendt , and it is extremely good - possibly the best thing I've seen this year. Margarethe von Trotta's direction and script are excellent, and Barbara Sukowa is terrific in the title role.

...more

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Jun 29, 2011 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: aere-perennius, 2013

This book is amazing. In it, Arendt struggles with three major issues: 1) the guilt and evil of the ordinary, bureaucratic, obedient German people (like Eichmann) who contributed to the attempted genocide of the Jewish people, 2) the complicity of some jews in the genocide (through organization, mobilization, passive obedience, and negotiations with the Nazis, 3) the logical absurdity the Eichmann and Nuremberg Trials, etc.

In this book (and the original 'New Yorker' essays it came from) Hannah ...more

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Aug 20, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nazi-germany, philosophy

A truly disturbing look at what motivates individuals to follow orders. While there are some who may disagree with some of the conclusions that Hannah Arendt draws I still think this is a groundbreaking study in the connection betweeen conformity and criminal compliance.

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May 01, 2012 Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont rated it did not like it

Hannah (sometimes) in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of a Book

A new group of deportees has arrived at Auschwitz. There they are, men, women and children, all fearful, all apprehensive. A truck drives by, piled high with corpses. The arms of the dead are hanging loose over the sides, waving as if in grim farewell. The people scream. But no sooner has the vehicle turned a corner than the horror has been edited out of their minds. Even on the brink of death there are some things too fantastic ...more

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Dec 08, 2019 robin friedman rated it it was amazing

Hannah Arendt's Study Of The Eichmann Trial

I had long wanted to read Hannah Arendt's (1906 -- 1975) study of the Eichmann trial, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" and was prompted at last to do so when I found the book on sale at my local library. As I read, the controversial nature of Arendt's book was brought home to me. I decided I needed to read Arendt in tandem with a recent study of the trial, "The Eichmann Trial" (2011) by historian Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt devot Hannah Arendt's Study Of The Eichmann Trial

I had long wanted to read Hannah Arendt's (1906 -- 1975) study of the Eichmann trial, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" and was prompted at last to do so when I found the book on sale at my local library. As I read, the controversial nature of Arendt's book was brought home to me. I decided I needed to read Arendt in tandem with a recent study of the trial, "The Eichmann Trial" (2011) by historian Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt devotes a lengthy chapter to analyzing Arendt's book. Lipstadt, perhaps with the passage of time, sees the trial and its significance differently than does Arendt. Her treatment of Arendt is critical but balanced. She offers many of the criticisms of Arendt's book that were made when the book was published but finds a good deal to praise in Arendt's account. Although Arendt's and Lipstadt's book take opposing positions in many respects, this is not at all unusual in serious historical study. There is much to be learned from both books. They are better read, I believe, as complementary, rather than as opposed. For all its flaws and datedness, Arendt's book remains tough minded, provocative, and deeply thoughtful. Even for readers who disagree with Arendt or who become angry with her, the book is worth reading and pondering.

Arendt was a political philosopher who received an extraordinary education in pre WW II Germany. Her teachers included the philosophers Martin Heidegger (with whom she had an affair) and Karl Jaspers. Arendt immigrated to the United States in 1941 and soon became a famous public intellectual.

On May 11,1960, Adolph Eichmann was captured by Israeli operatives in Argentina and brought back to Israel to stand trial for his activities in the Holocaust. The capture and kidnapping of Eichmann resulted in substantial international controversy as did the trial. Eichmann's trial began in April, 1961, with the accused sitting in a bullet-proof glass booth which became famous in itself. The trial was held before three distinguished Israeli Judges, each of whom had received his legal training in Germany. The chief prosecutor was Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner. Eichmann was defended by counsel of his choice, Robert Servatius, who had also been a lawyer for Nuremberg defendants. After a lengthy trial, in which Eichmann testified and was cross-examined in great detail, the court found Eichmann guilty and sentenced him to death in December, 1961. The Israeli Supreme Court rejected Eichmann's appeal on May 29, 1962; and Eichmann was hanged two days later on May 31, 1962. Arendt covered the trial for "The New Yorker". Critics point out that she was not present for the entire trial. Her book is based not only on observation of the trial but upon Arendt's reading of the transcripts, affidavits and other materials, including Eichmann's extensive pretrial statements, that Israel's government made available to the media at the time as well as upon additional sources.

With all the criticism the book received at the time, Arendt's account of the trial was careful. The book is difficult to read and, in spite of her protestations to the contrary, is as much a work of political philosophy as it is a journalistic account of a trial. Arendt criticized the kidnapping of Eichmann and the manner in which prosecutor Hausner conducted the trial. She praised the Israeli judges and their approach to the case. It is sometimes overlooked that Arendt found that the Israelis were in the right in kidnapping Eichmann and in trying him before an Israeli court. Arendt found that Eichmann amply deserved the sentence of death, and she approved of the Israelis carrying the sentence out expeditiously in the face of widespread arguments for commutation.

Among other things, Arendt is criticized for applying the term "banal" to Eichmann. He appeared to her and to others as a mediocrity interested in his own career and in carrying out his orders rather than as a rabid Nazi and anti-Semite. She emphasized as do many modern writers the pervasive character of evil in WW II Germany and the lack of resistance. Documents that were not available to Arendt suggest to some historians that she overstated Eichmann's "banality", and that he was a far more committed Nazi and vicious anti-Semite than she realized. Arendt was also criticized for emphasizing the lack of resistance of the Jewish victims and the alleged cooperation of the Jewish leaders with Eichmann in carrying out the transports to the camps. Her manner of presentation was thought to be insensitive and ahistorical. Arendt attempted, with some plausibility, to respond to these criticisms. I don't think Arendt was as insensitive or as mistaken as her strongest critics suggest. There is still, as Lipstadt acknowledges, a great deal of historical discussion about the means in which the Holocaust was carried out. Arendt's tone, however, was that of a detached academic, and it sometimes became provocative and unduly combative.

The main issues raised with Arendt's book seem to me her understanding of the purpose of the trial and her view of the nature of the Holocaust and of Eichmann's crimes. The prosecutor, Hausner, wanted to use the trial to educate the world further about the nature of the Holocaust. He put on the stand 100 witnesses, most of whom were Holocaust survivors. Many of these witnesses offered testimony that had little to do with Eichmann or that was unreliable. The Israeli court frequently grew impatient with Hausner and criticized his conduct of the trial, describing it as "picture painting." For Arendt, the trial was a legal proceeding that should have been focused on a single question, the actions of the accused and his guilt or innocence of the charges. She found overwhelming evidence to convict Eichmann. In this, the Israeli court at the time agreed with her. Many more recent scholars, including Lipstadt praise Hausner's approach to the trial.

Arendt saw Eichmann's guilt as a "crime against humanity" directed against the Jewish people against the background of a long history of anti-Semitism. Her approach tended towards universalism. Lipstadt and Hausner, in contrast, see the Holocaust as the final and direct result of centuries of anti-Semitism and violence. She, of course, does not deny the universal character of the Holocaust. The different approaches are important but matters of emphasis. It is here that I think that Arendt and Lipstadt may both be right.

Arendt's book remains worth reading as a historical document and for the views, sometimes ingraciously expressed, about the nature of law, government, evil, and personal responsibility.

Robin Friedman ...more

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Jan 20, 2012 Jafar rated it it was amazing

This book is a great mix of investigative journalism and historical analysis. If you don’t have a detailed knowledge of the history of the Holocaust, this is a good place to start. Even though Arendt didn’t want to make it a philosophical or legal treatise, it makes a few bold philosophical and legal claims, the most controversial of which is the banality of evil.

Eichmann was in charge of transporting the Jews, first for forced emigration, and after the implementation of the Final Solution, to t This book is a great mix of investigative journalism and historical analysis. If you don’t have a detailed knowledge of the history of the Holocaust, this is a good place to start. Even though Arendt didn’t want to make it a philosophical or legal treatise, it makes a few bold philosophical and legal claims, the most controversial of which is the banality of evil.

Eichmann was in charge of transporting the Jews, first for forced emigration, and after the implementation of the Final Solution, to the death camps. He didn’t run the death camps, or command firing squads, or operate the gas chambers. He wasn’t in charge of finding and rounding up the Jews either. He was a mid-level S.S. officer who was just good enough to arrange for trains and take care of the logistics of the transportation. He put millions on those trains, knowing fully well where they were heading and what fate was awaiting them.

Without trying to lessen the magnitude of his crimes – and this is a very important point – what Arendt wants to add to our understanding of Eichmann (and our understanding of the nature of evil) is how utterly banal he was. Here’s a guy who couldn’t even finish high school. He’s a bit dim even though he tries to quote Kant during his trial. He has a limited vocabulary and can’t help using clichés. He’s constantly complaining about how he didn’t get promoted as high as he wanted. He’s adamant that he didn’t hate the Jews. He was just doing a job – nothing personal. He admits that the Nazis were committing genocide, and he theatrically (and obviously disingenuously) offers to hang himself in public to “teach a lesson to all the anti-Semites.” But when it comes to the question of his own personal guilt, he insists that he was just unlucky to be at the wrong time and place and working a particular job for a state that had its apparatus set upon genocide. “Anybody else would have done the same.” That’s the really scary part. Many others would have done the same.

People who refuse to believe how banal evil can be, who think that murderous evil can only come from a monstrous and sadistic psychopath who’s a freak of nature in the worst imaginable way, should look at any civil war. Pick your choice of the recent ones: Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Syria. Look at all the good, normal people who were living happily with one another, but one day decide that it’s a good idea to hack their neighbors to death because ideology and a totalitarian state can cause what Arendt calls "a total moral collapse." Is banality of evil hard to accept because it makes us uncomfortable about ourselves, because it means that, if by the twist of fate, we’re put in a similar position, we’ll also be the one killing our neighbors or being an accessory to it or simply looking the other way?
...more

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Mar 28, 2016 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, journalism, germany, poland, hungary, world-war-2, austria, holocaust, genocide

A good one for shaking me out of a complacency in judgments and lazy simplifications in thought. The Holocaust was many circles of hell and Purgatory involving many victims and perpetrators, and so it makes sense that acts to effect justice for it can be hard to lay the right level of accountability. When Israel in 1960 kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina and put him on trial, the hope of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and the prosecutors was to apply justice for the Holocaust to a key Nazi leader behi A good one for shaking me out of a complacency in judgments and lazy simplifications in thought. The Holocaust was many circles of hell and Purgatory involving many victims and perpetrators, and so it makes sense that acts to effect justice for it can be hard to lay the right level of accountability. When Israel in 1960 kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina and put him on trial, the hope of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and the prosecutors was to apply justice for the Holocaust to a key Nazi leader behind the Final Solution. What they got for a show trial to educate the public and satisfy needs for justice was instead a bit of a hollow victory in pinning blame on a bureaucrat (chief of Jewish Affairs in RSHA Department IV B 4) who claimed he only followed orders from in the chain from Hitler and Himmler to Heydrich to organize the transportation of Jews to the death camps and was not a Nazi ideologue or even anti-Semitic.

He was charged with murder, crimes against humanity applied as war crime, and crimes against the Jewish people. The precedent for a war crime charge under international law passed after the commission of the crimes had a precedent from the Nuremberg Trials. The venue of Israel for adjudicating a crime against the Jews was argued to be parallel to the prosecution of war criminals carried out by each occupied nation after the war. After many months of the trial, with two months of witnesses to Jewish oppression and slaughter in German and the various occupied counties and a token defense featuring mainly Eichmann’s testimony, he was found guilty on all counts and hanged.

I didn’t think there would be much of a story here beyond a judicial process of turning Nazi evil into documented human crimes and resolution with unremarkable human punishment. But the delving of Arendt’s book into the judgments of this man and her framing of truths gleaned about the causes of the genocide brought up many disturbing aspects of the Holocaust I needed to ponder. Such as how significant a role cooperation by Jewish leaders played in the magnitude of the slaughter and how pervasive the support of non-fascist elements of the population was for the success of the Final Solution. The book forced me to either agree with her affirmative answers on both of these counts or with the many people, including former Zionist friends, who were outraged with her conclusions. I have long struggled over seeing this genocide (and others) either as an aggregate crime of a few powerful leaders or as some kind of madness of a people attributable to certain flaws of group behavior wired into human nature. There is fuel here for a combination of both outlooks.

Arendt was pretty shocked at how “average” Eichmann seemed. He was kind to his employees and probably good with kids and dogs. His participation in the machinery of genocide as a matter of course and with little sense of guilt is the core of her tagging her book title as the “banality of evil.” His thinking in aphorisms, overall motivation in careerism, mental juggling of self-justification, and sincere belief that he was a friend to the Jews all lead Arendt to conclude that this man was almost incapable of true thinking or moral judgment. This a novel face for evil, one that aligns with the efficient bureaucracy of oppression as she had already explored in her most famous work, “The Totalitarian State.”

For the first years of the war, Eichmann’s job was to promote emigration of the Jews and to work with the Zionists on the establishment of an alternative Jewish homeland to the British protectorate of Palestine, which was not ready to take more than 10 million Jews of Europe. His planning seriously explored Madagascar and eastern Poland. However, voluntary emigration was a different kettle of fish from forced removals, a process that begins with disenfranchising people under the Nuremberg Laws, stripping away assets, making them stateless to dispense with any legal recourse, and then to concentrate them in ghettoes prior to mass evacuations. For the ramping of this approach, he learned that the first step was to engage the Zionist leaders to help with every step in the process. After the famous Wansee Conference of January 1942, in which the entire civilian government was engaged for the mission of the Final Solution with no complaint, the system set up for emigration was readily converted to mass extermination. Both Eichmann and the Jewish leaders who knowingly facilitated the process could somehow reframe their efforts as minimizing the suffering of the victims. The method of gassing was adopted from innovations in a euthanasia program, and I suppose the cruel deception .

My most significant education from this book came from her examination of the variations in implementation and completion of the Final Solution in the various occupied countries. How Italy, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Finland ended up with relatively smaller fractions of Jews killed compared to Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, and Holland. In some cases, the divergent outcomes seemed related to whether the Jewish population had been established for centuries versus being composed mostly of recent immigrants and whether or not anti-Semitism was already rampant among the government leaders. Cases of modest compliance with the genocide reveal how vulnerable the Nazis were to widespread resistance in the population and courageous defiance by political leaders. Even within the Nazi bureaucracy, Arendt argues that refusal to participate in the Final Solution was not subject to severe punishment. Eichmann could have transferred to another department, but obviously he couldn’t handle the loss of power and esteem.

While reading this book (by audiobook), I had the pleasure of seeing a German movie about Arendt and her struggles with the controversy of her New Yorker pieces on the trial, which were the foundation for this book. She cold intellectual analyses and ironic tone added to the negative reactions to her shining a light on the cooperation of many Jewish leaders. The movie portrays the self-doubts and anguish in her personal life which are not evident in her book. Her courage and the impact of her thinking were moving to me. It’s a tough subject to wrap your head around. At my stage I am more in a collective guilt phase, one where I don’t ask who is responsible but take Weisel and Levi to heart on the value of bearing witness to what the human species has done.
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Jan 19, 2017 The Nerdwriter rated it really liked it

This is a heavy book. Not literally, it's only about 250 pages, but the subject matter is dark and the reporting is meticulous. Hannah Arendt catalogues the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi regime tasked with organizing mass deportations of Jews to extermination camps. Though Wikipedia refers to Eichmann as "one of the major organizers of the Holocaust," Arendt aims to show that the true terror of this man is in his normalcy, his blandness. It's from this book that we ge ...more

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Apr 15, 2017 Leo Walsh rated it really liked it

Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt is a thought-provoking, if dense, history of the Adolf Eichmann, the major organizer of Hitler's "Final Solution" -- the extermination of every living European Jew. Coupled with some meditations of a first-rate thinker and author on politics, morality, and the gray line that exists between law and justice. Whereby legal means often impede justice, and just causes often illegal.

First off, a few mentions of the text. Arendt was a German-born Jew living in Ame ...more

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Feb 20, 2021 Oblomov rated it really liked it

Shelves: politics

'A Biography of a Nobody: A Rather Long, Rambling, Miserable Review of A Report on the Banality of Evil' by Oblomov McTwonk III

Amos Emil's introduction to this book is called 'The Excommunication of Hannah Arendt', just to give you some idea of how poorly this report was received on its first publication, with past critics believing Arendt was in some way sympathetic or defending Eichmann. Though her questioning of Israel's legal ability and motives in bringing the aged Nazi to trial would certa ...more

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Nov 24, 2014 Trish rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, true-crime, europe, nonfiction, psychology, religion, war, horror, foreign-affairs, politics

"That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem."

This book is positively lucid in comparison to the one other book I read by Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, since this is a journalistic piece, first published in The New Yorker magazine in 1963. Basically the book is merely a report on the trial, which would have to exclude ...more

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Jun 03, 2013 Roy Lotz rated it really liked it

Shelves: art-of-compromise

During my time in East Africa, one of the most memorable things I did was to visit the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) building in Tanzania. The Rwandan genocide was one that, I must admit, I knew almost nothing about, other than that it happened. So going into the vast research library, hearing from a lawyer who was involved in the case, and simply walking around a high-security building dedicated to prosecuting mass-murders—all this produced a great impression on me.

What wa ...more

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Mar 26, 2009 Jimmy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: western-philosophy, european-history

Objective analysis of ethically devastating periods in history often seems less popular than it should be. Surely this applies to the Holocaust more than any other commonly mentioned, or generally well known genocide. As if there were some sort of a priori understanding that these events were undoubtedly exercised by the minds and wills of evil men. There is much truth to that; people rarely argue that it's possible that these people are anything but evil, or at least devoid of any sort of moral Objective analysis of ethically devastating periods in history often seems less popular than it should be. Surely this applies to the Holocaust more than any other commonly mentioned, or generally well known genocide. As if there were some sort of a priori understanding that these events were undoubtedly exercised by the minds and wills of evil men. There is much truth to that; people rarely argue that it's possible that these people are anything but evil, or at least devoid of any sort of moral restraint. Of course, this is really too general an assessment of bad things happening to really help anyone understand the various circumstances which seem to influence the existence of certain historical tragedies such as the Holocaust. In other words, genocide, or various other crimes against humanity are caused by several different factors. This is part of Arendt's central thesis, or at least applicable to it. She wants not only to understand the psychological motivations for Eichman's actions, but what circumstances lead him to do the things that he did. Which makes Eichman in Jerusalem one of the most controversial statements made on the nature and motivating force behind evil men and their violent actions in the history of writings on the philosophy of ethics. Adolf Eichman, a meek salesman who eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the Schutzstaffel truly was a perfect subject through which Arendt could examine the nature of evil. Turns out it's actually pretty boring, as we learn that in the end, he was just being a "good soldier", and basically just desired a high-paying job.

Eichman in Jerusalem is in so many ways, a difficult book to analyze. On the whole it's an historical account of the holocaust, particularly the bureaucratic complications that Jewish deportation entailed. She also runs through the trial itself. And at times it's a philosophical treatise on the extent to which the law is truly capable of trying someone for war crimes (especially in the case of the Eichman trial since it was in Israel). Many controversial questions arise. Was this man simply following orders? Why did the Jewish people not rebel in the concentration camps? Was the Holocaust itself, merely the bureaucratic, logical conclusion that came after realizing that deportation of the jews was financially, as well as logistically, impossible?

The Jewish intelligentsia polemically raped Arendt, decrying her as a "self-hating Jewess" and the "Rosa Luxemburg of Nothingness". Several groups of Jewish scholars scrutinized the text for tiny mistakes; the result being a few misspelled names and incorrect dates. The great American novelist Saul Bellow wrote Mr. Sammler's Planet as a direct criticism of Arendt as an example of the gall that certain intellectuals have when analyzing such morally taboo subjects. She lost many of her good friends. And the fact that she once had an affair with Martin Heidegger, a Nazi, and the supreme jackass of continental philosophy, didn't really help her intellectual reputation The question is; is it really necessary to excoriate a woman's moral character simple because she investigated some of the less desirably defined aspects of evil, even going as far as to coin the term the "Banality of Evil". This is all very problematic.

Furthermore, in reading it, it's often difficult to gauge how sympathetic Arendt truly is to a tragedy such as the Holocaust. The tone of her writing is extremely wry and sarcastic. And there is rarely a passage in the book that suggests a deep ethical concern about the plight of the Jews. Still it's ultimately impossible to actually believe that Arendt truly thinks that the Jewish people were meek, willfully walking directly into mass slaughter. She asks questions that, as I've mentioned, are so of off limits when talking about the Holocaust.

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Dec 10, 2014 Justin Evans rated it liked it

Shelves: history-etc, philosophy

It's very hard to see, at this point, what on earth in this book made everyone so angry, and, apparently, still does make everyone so angry. Arendt's argument here (though note that in other places she insists, disingenuously, that she made no argument and just presented the facts) is that ordinary people do evil things ('banality of evil'), that this is best understood in the context of modern bureaucracy, and that the Eichmann trials bear more than a little resemblance to Soviet show trials--w It's very hard to see, at this point, what on earth in this book made everyone so angry, and, apparently, still does make everyone so angry. Arendt's argument here (though note that in other places she insists, disingenuously, that she made no argument and just presented the facts) is that ordinary people do evil things ('banality of evil'), that this is best understood in the context of modern bureaucracy, and that the Eichmann trials bear more than a little resemblance to Soviet show trials--with the key difference being that Eichmann deserved to be put on show.

Perhaps what angers people is Arendt's general slipperiness. She extols the impersonality of justice over the personal nature of power, but never seems to worry that bureaucratic impersonality and judicial impersonality are uncomfortably similar. She criticizes the Eichmann court for admitting so much irrelevant 'evidence,' in the form of holocaust survivor's testimony--the court, she says, can only judge the moral guilt of a person for their actions, the court is not the place for social theory or wider considerations. And she's right... but her book is not a court, and she uses the "in court we can only judge one person, not a society" argument to avoid dealing with larger historical and social questions (*why* in Germany?)

She has a good reason for this: claiming that 'all are guilty' erases important distinctions between, e.g., Eichmann, and a Hausfrau just trying not to get imprisoned by the SS. Analyzing societies tends to suggest that everyone in the society is guilty to some degree. Therefore analyzing societies would erase the distinction between Eichmann and our Hausfrau.

Arendt wants to think and write about human freedom; she wants to stand against the social-engineering of totalitarian societies; she wants to do this so badly that she simply refuses to engage with the *actually existing* social engineering that goes on even in democratic societies (see: mass media); she refuses to engage with the actually occurring structural forces that shape our world (see: global capitalism).

So although Arendt is, on the one hand, the smartest person in the room (particularly when that is a court-room), she also comes across as stunningly obtuse. She seems to be caught halfway between traditional philosophy (she remained close to and impressed by Karl Jaspers), political theory (obsessed as it is with political freedoms and giving short shrift, all too often, to social issues), and social theory. She seems to have realized that one can't analyze the modern world without social theory, but also to fear it, as if the analysis of social determination was itself social determination, and not a necessary step towards recognizing and overcoming the forces that shape our world.

I don't think this is the only way to hold on to a sense of human freedom, and it's tremendously frustrating to read this brilliant woman--head and shoulders above almost all twentieth century theorists--not engage with the most important intellectual tradition of her time. ...more

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Jul 05, 2019 Mike rated it really liked it

Recommended to Mike by: Paul

Shelves: failed-visionary-cults, germany, ww-ii

I had no real sense of why Arendt's conclusions about Eichmann might be considered controversial until I read the introduction to my fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by a guy named Ron Rosenbaum, and found that a good portion of it was dedicated to attacking Arendt and her notion of the banality of evil. Rosenbaum essentially cherry-picks one thing that Eichmann (might have) said- something about being able to leap happily into the grave knowing that he had s
I had no real sense of why Arendt's conclusions about Eichmann might be considered controversial until I read the introduction to my fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by a guy named Ron Rosenbaum, and found that a good portion of it was dedicated to attacking Arendt and her notion of the banality of evil. Rosenbaum essentially cherry-picks one thing that Eichmann (might have) said- something about being able to leap happily into the grave knowing that he had so many victims- and concludes that from this point in history on, surely no one will ever again be 'taken in' by Arendt's moral exculpation of this monster.

In other words, Rosenbaum is annoyed by Arendt's interpretation of Eichmann because...he's an idiot. Or disingenuous. Or to put it a little more generously (more generous than he is to Arendt), he has a psychological need to see Eichmann as a movie villain, a cackling psychopath who emerges from a void...or the dregs of a hack screenwriter's coffee mug. But as Terry Eagleton points out in On Evil, context isn't the same thing as an excuse. And if you read Arendt's book with an open mind, I think you notice that she has some really compelling things to say about the nature of conformity. I especially appreciated her focus on Eichmann's use of language- his cliches, the way he seemed unable to speak outside the language system of Nazism. His language, and therefore his thoughts, were the thoughts of the state. This hint that there's something authoritarian in a cliche is a good reminder of why it's not only vanity to make the effort, fail as we often might, to think and write for ourselves, to choose our own forms of expression, to avoid slogans and appending social media hashtags to everything we write (and therefore everything we think). Arendt also emphasizes the value Eichmann placed on 'success', on good standing in society, traits that we tend to encourage in civilized, non-Nazified countries as well:

What he fervently believed in up to the end was success, the chief standard of 'good society' as he knew it...Hitler, he said, 'may have been wrong all down the line, but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up from lance corporal in the German Army to a Fuhrer of a people of almost eighty million...His success alone proved to me that I should subordinate myself to this man.' His conscience was indeed set at rest when he saw the zeal and eagerness with which 'good society' everywhere reacted as he did. He did not need to 'close his ears to the voice of conscience'...because his conscience spoke with a 'respectable voice', with the voice of respectable society around him.

It seems to me that Eichmann in Jerusalem is part of the body of literature that nobly refuses to see the Nazis as incomprehensible monsters, and instead suggests cultural and psychological habits that could under certain circumstances make it easier for people to participate in a Nazi-like system. Rosenbaum's view is probably more comfortable, but for just that reason it's also more dangerous. ...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Bettie rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, fraudio, autumn-2012, tbr-busting-2012, published-1963, nazi-related

History to listen to as I bake chicken pies.

Brilliantly narrated by Wanda McCaddon

Natural follow up to Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascombe (I see the 'add book' has broken now!)

I am sure that there were many who would have loved to slap that smirk off his face.

For a superb review, I can do no less than point you towards Lobstergirl: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ...more

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Feb 19, 2017 Ana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: law-abiding-citizen, of-life-and-death, absolute, about-murders, philosophy, somehow-societal, racism, war-stories, fallen-characters, non-fiction

In true Arendt style, the writing is concise, each sentence crafted beautifully, the subject matter studied from all sides. In some cases, she even comes to Eichmann's defense against the things he had been accused of that he hadn't done. To her, it was very important for him to be tried for his own crimes, and his own crimes only, which is a very hard thing to do considering the complexity of the German bureaucracy and the enormity of the Jewish (and other peoples') genocide. Required reading f ...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Rob rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography, fascism, politics, history

Do not be fooled by the title of this book. It is not a philosophical text about the nature of evil.
This book is about the politics of the trial of Eichmann and more particularly the real politic of the Holocaust. In fact out of the many books I have read about Nazism it is the most insightful about how the Holocaust worked politically in the nuts and bolts sense.
This book is not about the horror of the Holocaust. If it was I would have put it down.
The most interesting part of the book is that ...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Dave Russell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: jewish-literature, nonfiction

The Nazis are this modern age's greatest villains. You can stop debate on any subject just by invoking a comparison ("You know who else was in favor of the public option? Hitler, that's who!") I know, I know, Stalin killed more people than Hitler, yadda yadda yadda, but did you see the last Indiana Jones film? Nazis make much better villains.

And yet what kind of villains were they and what does this tell us about the nature of evil? Were they Shakespearean villains a la Richard III or Iago, men The Nazis are this modern age's greatest villains. You can stop debate on any subject just by invoking a comparison ("You know who else was in favor of the public option? Hitler, that's who!") I know, I know, Stalin killed more people than Hitler, yadda yadda yadda, but did you see the last Indiana Jones film? Nazis make much better villains.

And yet what kind of villains were they and what does this tell us about the nature of evil? Were they Shakespearean villains a la Richard III or Iago, men revelled in their evil? Or perhaps Bond supervillains like Goldfinger or Drago with grandiose dreams of world conquest? Hitler was certainly a charismatic megalomaniac capable of seizing power and twisting people to his will. But Hitler alone did not accomplish the deeds that would later make the Nazis the catchword for evil. He needed a vast bureaucracy. Departments and sections and sub-sections and sub-sub-sections all staffed by secretaries and undersecretaries and directors and on and on.

Adolf Eichmann was one such bureaucrat, and not a particularly high up one. The S.S. to which he belonged was divided into four departments. One department, the R.H.S.A., was divided into four sections. Section IV was divided into four bureaus. Eichmann headed one of the four offices within Bureau IV, specifically Bureau IV-B-4. It was his office's job to deport the Jews to the killing centers. How they were rounded up and what happened to them at the killing centers were handled by other departments in the vast machinery of the Nazi Government. It was not his concern.

In 1960 he was captured in Argentina and taken to Israel to stand trial. Hannah Arendt covered the trial and wrote what she subtitled, "A Report on the Banality of Evil." What she noticed was that Eichmann, rather than being a larger than life evildoer, was rather ordinary. When speaking, he relied heavily on slogans and cliches. He thought rather ruefully of his career as a "hard luck story," because of the office politics he had to endure. In short, he was far from the brown shirt wearing, virulent, violent Anti-Jew we think of when the word Nazi is invoked.

Starting from this fact, Arendt creates a fascinating meditation on evil and the character of the men who carry it out, and the implications this has for the concept of criminal justice.

While I found her picture of the vast bureaucratic operation that was the Final Solution to be compelling, the major difficulty I had with the book was in her writing. She is not always clear and her sentences are sometimes completely cumbersome, which prevents me from giving this book the five stars her portrait deserves. Why is it so hard to find a non-fiction writer who is also a great prose stylist?

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Jun 09, 2017 Boudewijn rated it really liked it

Shelves: world-war-2, non-fiction, english, local-library

Hannah Arendt did not see a demon in Eichmann, rather an ordinary person, whose evil did not come from ideological conviction but from thoughtlessness, an inability to reflection and lack of empathy. With the term ‘Banality of Evil’, Hannah Arendt has coined one of the more memorable quotes from the Eichmann process.

Hannah claims that the extraordinary circumstances in relation to the Eichmann process were multiple, and these circumstances overshadowed the central ethical, political and juridica Hannah Arendt did not see a demon in Eichmann, rather an ordinary person, whose evil did not come from ideological conviction but from thoughtlessness, an inability to reflection and lack of empathy. With the term ‘Banality of Evil’, Hannah Arendt has coined one of the more memorable quotes from the Eichmann process.

Hannah claims that the extraordinary circumstances in relation to the Eichmann process were multiple, and these circumstances overshadowed the central ethical, political and juridical problems that were created during the process.

These circumstances were created by Ben-Goerion and the prosecution itself. With the process, Israel wanted to make a showcase to its young generation (born after the war) and to the world, in presenting the horrors of the Holocaust. In this way, too much was claimed from the prosecution which function was, after all, merely to speak justice.

First of all, there was the problem of the abduction of Eichmann from a foreign country, which clearly was against international law. On such a base, Hannah Arendt postulates that this removed the right to prosecute Eichmann according to the Israeli law, but rather to the International Law, and therefore the case never should have been held under the jurisdiction of Israel.

The same problem arises due to the fact that the prosecutors accused Eichmann of the fact that he was facing trial for “crimes against humanity”, which in itself should have been a reason to prosecute Eichmann under the jurisdiction of (for example) the Tribunal in The Hague.

Another problem that is described by Hannah Arendt is Eichmann itself. The judges were never able to completely understand the nature and motives of Eichmann itself - an important task for a judge in order to create a fair conviction.

The problem with this fact was exacerbated due to the fact that Eichmann was just so frightently plain, one of many and not the perverted sadist that we wanted him to be. The banality of evil. This raises the problem that today, or in the future, another human being can be born who will again do the terrible things that Eichmann has done, and not be able to understand the scope of the evil that he is creating.

In the end, Eichmann was - no doubt - guilty. His reasoning of ‘collective guilt’ and the fact that he just acted ‘according to orders’ didn’t reflect the fact that obedience is just another word for consent and support for one of the greatest crimes in human history. ...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Eric_W rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy

I read this in college and it just blew me away. One of the more important books of the 20th century. Her idea that "banality" and thoughtlessness, relying on the routines of bureaucracy lie at the root of evil had a profound impact on my thinking. "It was sheer thoughtlessness that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period," she says of Eichmann. One can still see the basic truths of her book operating very day.

The latest method to avoid accountability seems to be to ...more

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Nov 10, 2018 Beth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, political-thought, public-library, classics-club, classics, aab-read-the-name-2018, women-writers, nonfiction, nbrc-wheel-a-thon-iii, back-2-the-classics-2018

Read for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018
Category: Read a book that scares you

"It is true that the totalitarian state tried to establish these holes of oblivion into which all deeds, good and evil, would disappear, but just as the Nazis’ feverish attempts, from June, 1942, on, to erase all traces of their massacres—through cremation, through burning in open pits, through the use of explosives and flame-throwers and bone-crushing machinery—were doomed to failure, so all efforts to let the Read for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018
Category: Read a book that scares you

"It is true that the totalitarian state tried to establish these holes of oblivion into which all deeds, good and evil, would disappear, but just as the Nazis’ feverish attempts, from June, 1942, on, to erase all traces of their massacres—through cremation, through burning in open pits, through the use of explosives and flame-throwers and bone-crushing machinery—were doomed to failure, so all efforts to let their opponents 'disappear in silent anonymity' were in vain. The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be ‘practically useless’—at least, not in the long run. It would be of great practical usefulness for Germany today, and not merely for her prestige abroad but for her sadly confused inner condition, if there were more stories like Schmidt’s to tell. For the lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody’s grasp.

Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not,just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that 'it could happen' almost anywhere but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a fit place for human habitation."

Hannah Arendt’s study of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. Arendt revised the book and added a postscript in 1964. The first few chapters and the last few chapters of the book are specifically about Eichmann’s trial, but the book also covers the prewar years in Germany, the Wannsee Conference, and the response of the European countries to Nazi demands to deport their Jews. Arendt writes that Denmark, alone of all the countries in Germany’s sphere of influence, contested the policy of deportation.

Italy, despite its formal alliance with Germany, protected most of its Jews by bureaucratically sabotaging its own official compliance:"The gentlemen of the Foreign Office could not do much about it, because they always met the same subtly veiled resistance, the same promises and the same failures to fulfill them. The sabotage was all the more infuriating as it was carried out openly, in an almost mocking manner."

Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann makes it clear that he did not see himself as merely an obedient bureaucrat, but she did not think that he was driven by a deep personal belief in antisemitism, either. She portrays him as an ambitious person who wanted to be part of some grand project. His indifference to the content of that project, as he avoided thinking about it too hard, lead a particularly destructive version of the common impulse to be part of something larger than yourself.

I didn’t do much background reading, but this article in The Nation is a very interesting look at the book’s critical reception.

Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a 'monster,' but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath ('Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won't do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me'), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might ‘do so under oath or without an oath,’ declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? ...more

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Dec 21, 2017 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing

It's so remarkable to read a mind like Arendt's dissect Eichmann's trial. This is much more focused than her earlier works, but the focus gives her the ability to say a lot about the nature of evil. I kept waiting for her to say the Banality of Evil part and that comes at the very end, but she carefully constructs the bureaucracy and the institutionality of evil before that. This is a remarkable and essential read for us now or really any time. Anyone could have been Eichmann, but also, it was p ...more

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May 09, 2012 Laura rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: nazis, government, law, seminal-texts, cthulhu, biography, civilization, history, being-human, horror

This book disturbed my peace with the universe. I read it while I was working on a death penalty case some years back, mostly on the bus too and from work. It led to me spending no little time starring out the window. Trembling ontologically.

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Hannah Arendt

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Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held ...more

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33 Sweeping Multigenerational Family Dramas

Why not focus on some serious family drama? Not yours, of course, but a fictional family whose story you can follow through the generations of...

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“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. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.” — 198 likes

“For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.” — 63 likes

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Preview — Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

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Preview — Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

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