PDF Summary:Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt

Adolf Eichmann—the Nazi official who arranged the transportation of Jews to their systematic deaths in concentration camps—is often considered a sadistic mastermind. But according to German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem reveals otherwise. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt argues that Eichmann was an unremarkable evildoer whose atrocities reveal the banality of evil—evil driven not by sadism, but by mundane motives and aims.

In this guide, we’ll begin by discussing the historical context of Eichmann’s case, highlighting his specific role in the Holocaust. Next, we’ll focus on Eichmann himself, examining his unremarkable upbringing, his alleged “expertise” regarding the Jewish people, and his mundane motivations for committing atrocities throughout the Holocaust. Finally, we’ll assess the trial against Eichmann and explore Arendt’s reasons for thinking that, although Eichmann was clearly guilty, the trial lacked legitimacy. Throughout this guide, we’ll add further historical context for the trial and the Holocaust itself.

(continued)...

(Shortform note: Because of the structure of the German education system, Eichmann’s lack of intellectual giftedness at a young age probably impacted his trajectory. In Germany, students are sorted into different educational paths early: Even today, at around age 10, the more promising students are admitted to a Gymnasium (similar to a preparatory school), while the less promising students go to a Hauptschule (vocational school).)

Following his struggles in vocational school and a brief stint working for his father’s mining company, Eichmann earned a bland job as a traveling salesman for an oil company in 1927. According to Arendt, this was likely the closest Eichmann came to success: Although he wasn’t a high earner, he made a steady income amidst economic hardship in Germany and Austria. However, even this modicum of success was short-lived, as Eichmann was laid off—though he never framed it that way—in 1933.

(Shortform note: Ironically, the economic turmoil that affected Eichmann—which was partially caused by Germany’s large reparations payments to countries like France and Great Britain after World War I—was part of the reason the Nazis rose to power in the first place. According to experts, the economic hardship in Germany made citizens more receptive to the Nazis’ extremist views, especially as the Nazis scapegoated the Jews for the economic instability.)

Eichmann’s Unfounded “Expertise” on the Jewish Question

While Eichmann’s job as a salesperson ended in failure, his time in the SS ultimately led him to be considered an expert on the Jewish question (as we discussed above). However, Arendt writes that his self-proclaimed expertise on Jews was mostly a sham, as Eichmann lacked any formal education about the Jews and had only a smattering of informal education.

First, Arendt points out that following Eichmann’s transfer in 1934 to the Jewish division of the SS’s intelligence agency, he was forced to read the Zionist book Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), which convinced him of the merits of Zionism. But, according to Eichmann, this book was the main source of his “expertise” about the Jewish people, and it’s hard to believe that true expertise could stem primarily from a single book.

(Shortform note: Although Eichmann agreed with the goal of Zionism laid out in Der Judenstaat—namely, the relocation of the Jewish people to Israel—he doubtless disagreed with the motivation behind Zionist reasoning. Theodor Herzl, author of Der Judenstaat, wanted Jews to relocate to Israel to avoid the antisemitism and oppression rampant in Europe, whereas Eichmann wanted Jews to relocate to Israel precisely because of his antisemitic views.)

Second, Arendt writes that Eichmann didn’t seem to understand the other source that allegedly contributed to his expertise—Adolf Böhm’s A History of Zionism. Though Eichmann frequently sang its praises at trial, he often mixed it up with Der Judenstaat. For this reason, Arendt suggests that Eichmann’s role as the “expert” on the Jewish question wasn’t earned through his keen insight and erudition, but rather through a series of fortuitous promotions that landed him in a job beyond his skill level.

(Shortform note: One way to explain Eichmann’s ascent to a high-ranking role in the Nazi Party is via the Peter Principle, which maintains that employees receive promotions until they reach a point of incompetence. In other words, low-ranking employees are promoted until they can’t handle their role. In Eichmann’s case, the Peter Principle suggests that his earlier success at more menial tasks in the SS caused him to rise too far in the party ranks.)

Eichmann’s Motivations for His Role in the Holocaust

Having shown that Eichmann wasn’t the evil genius that many portrayed him as, Arendt rebuts the popular view that he participated in the Holocaust because he was a sadistic monster. On the contrary, Arendt argues that Eichmann committed evil acts in the Holocaust for strikingly mundane reasons: He wanted to seem successful, felt obligated to fulfill his duty, and succumbed to social conformity that led him to abandon morality.

Motivation #1: Desire for Success

According to Arendt, one of the primary drivers of Eichmann’s evil acts was his desire to succeed within the Nazi Party. Eichmann made this clear in several interviews in which he frequently lamented his inability to join the highest echelon of Nazi members (such as Hitler, Himmler, and Müller), even attempting to garner sympathy from his interrogators. Further, Arendt points out that evidence from the trial shows that when Eichmann rose to an executive position as head of Jewish Emigration in 1939, this taste of power led him to begin exclusively pursuing more powerful positions.

(Shortform note: In everyday workplaces, performing immoral actions to become successful at work (like Eichmann) can lead to moral injury, a form of disillusionment that occurs when your job undermines your sense of morality. However, because moral injury often strikes at the core of your identity, evoking feelings like shame, guilt, and frustration, it seems unlikely that Eichmann suffered from it—after all, he showed no signs of internal conflict over the actions he was tasked with performing.)

Motivation #2: Obligation to Fulfill His Duty

Arent relates that beyond his desire to rise up the ranks, Eichmann was also driven by a sense of duty to follow orders. She explains that in the legal system of the Third Reich, anything that Hitler commanded became law. Consequently, in Eichmann’s testimony, he consistently maintained that he would never have disobeyed an order because such orders were laws and he felt obligated not to break them. Even when the prosecution cited examples of Nazi Party members who’d disobeyed orders and refused to partake in the horrors of the Holocaust, Eichmann steadfastly claimed that such disobedience was dishonorable.

(Shortform note: Eichmann’s unwavering sense of duty to Nazi law, as reported by Arendt, may have been influenced by his cultural context. According to experts, German culture puts an exceptionally high weight on rules and laws, meaning that Eichmann was likely sincere about feeling compelled to obey orders—even if he was, in fact, fully capable of saying “no.”)

Motivation #3: Social Conformity

Arendt reports that the final motivating factor for Eichmann was the fact that seemingly nobody was objecting to the Holocaust. Per Eichmann’s own testimony, during the 1942 Wannsee Conference in which the higher Nazi officials began planning the Final Solution, he “sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling”—the sight of “great” Nazi leaders embracing the Final Solution wiped away any of his scruples. Indeed, Eichmann reportedly felt that he had no right to judge if these leaders were in agreement.

(Shortform note: In referring to Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province Judaea who ordered that Jesus Christ be crucified, Eichmann likely had in mind Pilate’s quote in the Gospel of Matthew—after washing his hands before the crowd that wanted Jesus crucified, Pilate declared “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”)

However, Arendt reports that the historical evidence reveals a more nuanced account than Eichmann recalls. In September 1941, when Eichmann was first ordered to begin deporting Jews to concentration camps where they’d immediately be killed, he disobeyed—instead, he sent them to a ghetto in Lódz, Poland, where they’d be temporarily safe from harm. But Arendt notes that this resistance was short-lived; after four weeks, Eichmann began deporting Jews to concentration camps as ordered, hastening their deaths. Thus, she concludes that Eichmann’s conscience functioned normally for about one month, after which he fully acquiesced to the Nazi plan.

(Shortform note: Although Eichmann’s resistance was transient, experts point out that some other Germans steadfastly resisted the Nazi regime throughout World War II. For example, the White Rose movement openly distributed anti-Nazi messages and leaflets in Munich from 1942 to 1943 until its leaders were caught and executed in February 1943. Similarly, a small group of upper-rank military officials attempted to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, though their bomb blast left him with only minor injuries; the entire group was brutally executed afterward.)

The Trial

Having delved into the nature of Eichmann’s character, Arendt then focuses on the trial itself. In this section, we’ll examine her reasons for thinking that the trial—although it delivered the correct verdict—was in many respects illegitimate. We’ll also explore her assessment of Eichmann’s final words.

The Illegitimacy of the Trial

Although Arendt spares no sympathy for Eichmann, whom she believes was blatantly guilty of the charges against him, she clarifies that the trial against him was deeply flawed. According to Arendt, Eichmann’s trial was primarily an attempt to educate the world about Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, rather than a dispassionate attempt to determine Eichmann’s guilt or innocence.

First, she points out that this view of the trial shouldn’t be controversial, since Israel’s then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion openly expressed his hopes for the trial—namely, to underscore how the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust fit into a larger narrative of Jewish oppression throughout history, and to show the ruthlessness of Israel’s enemies. Consequently, the prosecution in Eichmann’s trial called over 100 Jewish Holocaust survivors to the stand to recount their experiences, even though their testimonies didn’t specifically shed light on Eichmann’s guilt or innocence.

(Shortform note: Ben-Gurion also famously said with respect to the trial that “Eichmann’s personal fate is unimportant.” In other words, he maintained that shedding light on the Nazis’ systematic extermination of the Jewish people was the only thing that mattered about the trial. So, Eichmann’s sentence wasn’t secondary to Ben-Gurion—by his own admission, it didn’t matter at all.)

Arendt maintains that although Eichmann was indeed guilty, the trial nonetheless fell short of the standards of justice. She contends that because this trial was largely for show, it heavily favored the prosecution from the beginning. To illustrate, she points to several handicaps imposed on the defense. For instance, the defense wasn’t allowed to call witnesses to the stand or to cross-examine many of the prosecution’s witnesses. Moreover, the court didn’t supply the defense with any researchers to pore over the endless documents cited by the prosecution, meaning the defense couldn’t adequately prepare for the trial.

(Shortform note: Much like Arendt contends that Eichmann’s trial was tilted toward the prosecution, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin argue in American Prometheus that the same was true of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s trial. Oppenheimer, the scientist responsible for developing the atomic bomb in World War II, underwent a hearing in 1954 to determine whether he could keep his security clearance. According to Bird and Sherwin, the hearing systemically favored the prosecution; Oppenheimer’s lawyers were denied access to the evidence cited by the prosecution, and the jury was biased by reading Oppenheimer’s case file before the trial began.)

The Verdict and Execution

Arendt reports that in December 1961—eight months after the trial began—the judges passed down the verdict: Eichmann was guilty of crimes against the Jewish people. Specifically, he was found guilty on four counts:

• Causing the deaths of millions of Jews
• Placing Jews in inhospitable conditions on the trains
• Causing bodily harm to millions of Jews
• Banning pregnancies and coercing abortions among Jewish women in one of the Jewish ghettos

(Shortform note: In the Israeli court’s conviction of Eichmann, it also had to justify its right to charge Eichmann—a German citizen—in the first place. Accordingly, the judges argued that Eichmann’s crimes against the Jewish people afforded the Israeli court jurisdiction over his hearing, since Israel (formally founded in 1948) was the official state of the Jewish people.)

Arendt explains that in finding Eichmann guilty, the judges argued that he didn’t satisfy either of the legal exemptions listed in the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law of 1950. First, he wouldn’t have been legally responsible for his actions if he had acted under pain of immediate death (when someone takes action to avoid being killed). But this condition wasn’t satisfied: Members of killing squads could leave their posts or request a transfer without much penalty, and the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders found no cases where someone was killed for leaving the SS.

(Shortform note: Similar to this legal exemption in the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law, US criminal law says that defendants are generally not responsible for crimes committed under duress—that is, under the threat of serious harm or death. However, the duress defense has limits; for example, duress defenses in the case of homicide are often unsuccessful since many states are reluctant to provide exemptions for murder.)

Second, Eichmann would’ve been legally exempt from responsibility if he’d done his “best to reduce the gravity of the offense,” such as by intentionally creating an inefficient train system to hamper the Nazi’s genocidal efforts. However, Arendt points out that per Eichmann’s own admission, this wasn’t the case—on the contrary, Eichmann consistently bragged about working hard to fulfill his oath to the Nazis and obey orders from higher-ups.

(Shortform note: One such individual who attempted to hinder the Holocaust by reducing the gravity of his offenses was Kurt Gerstein, a major of the SS assigned to improve efficiency in the gas chambers. Gerstein, who joined the SS in hopes of sabotaging it from within, was assigned to transport Zyklon B—an especially deadly gas—to the gas chambers directly. Realizing its purpose, he instead disposed of the gas by convincing other officials that the chamber was leaking. For this reason, the Nazis had to use far less efficient gases in their chambers, meaning Gerstein minimized the number of Jews that the Nazis could murder.)

Following an unsuccessful appeal in May 1962, Eichmann was hanged days later. According to Arendt, his last words were striking for how bland and uninspired they were: “After a short while, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them.” Arendt argues that these tepid last words reinforce what was obvious throughout the trial—Eichmann’s evil nature was startlingly unremarkable and mundane, highlighting the banality of evil.

(Shortform note: Eichmann’s execution was particularly significant given that it was the first, and only, civil execution in Israel’s history. And although the death penalty technically remains legal in Israel, experts note that it is vanishingly rare because Israel only allows it in cases of genocide, treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.)