Death sentence 60 years ago: Why the evil was “banal” in Adolf Eichmann

Death sentence 60 years ago
Why the evil in Adolf Eichmann was “banal”

From Lea Verstl

SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann was sentenced to death on December 15, 1961 in Jerusalem for sending millions of Jews to their deaths. The prosecutor sees him as a monster. The philosopher Hannah Arendt, however, holds: Eichmann is “shockingly normal”.

When the judges read out his death sentence on December 15, 1961, the former SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann was sitting in the dock of the Jerusalem District Court behind a glass case. He is found guilty on 15 counts of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The eyes of the world public have been on the man behind the glass since the beginning of the trial in April, because Eichmann is the first Nazi functionary to be sentenced in Israel to punish Nazis and Nazi helpers under the law.

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The Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) provoked controversy in the 1960s with her work “Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil”, which continues to this day. Although her intellectual friends turned away from her, Arendt stood by her theses until her death.

(Photo: picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The chief prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, sits diagonally across from Eichmann while the verdict is being pronounced. In the past few months, Hausner has not missed an opportunity to portray Eichmann as a cunning criminal and staunch anti-Semite. From the podium, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, herself of Jewish descent, sees something completely different in the dock behind the window: The evil in Eichmann, she writes in her trial report for the US magazine “The New Yorker”, is “terrible and.” shockingly normal “. A conviction that made Arendt’s report a scandal and cost her many of her closest friends.

Although Eichmann, as head of Section IV B 4 for “Jewish Affairs” in the Reich Security Main Office, organized the deportation of several million Jews to their gruesome deaths at his desk between 1939 and 1945, Arendt sees no devil in him. Much more, she attests to his “inability to think”. Arendt comes to this conclusion after analyzing documents and Eichmann’s statements in court. In the process, Eichmann uses the language rules of the Third Reich. In doing so, he becomes entangled in clichés and illusions, which he repeats with remarkable frequency.

In court, Eichmann stylized himself as a victim

He actually claims in court that he “never killed a Jew”. Since he had only obeyed the command of the Führer, he should only be charged with aiding and abetting murder, so Eichmann demands. Although 15 years have passed since the end of the war, he is still stylized as a victim. Eichmann went over corpses for his loyalty to the Nazi regime. According to Arendt, he acted neither for nor against his convictions, but instead conformed to Hitler’s orders due to his love of authority – and initiated deportations even when the German defeat in 1944 was inexorably nearer.

Since he internalized Nazi doctrines without critical examination and acted accordingly, he saw no reason to take responsibility for his actions until his death. Eichmann tries, for example, with the help of a pardon and a revision to escape death by hanging. Without success. For Arendt, the absolute obedience to which he invokes in court testifies to the “banality of evil” – a figure that it also transfers to other Germans in the Nazi regime. Arendt does not want to play down National Socialism: Precisely because this evil had become a banal normal in Nazi Germany, it is particularly threatening. “A functionary, if he is really nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.”

Eichmann’s unconditional will to pursue a career in the Third Reich is attributed to Arendt’s failure to exist before the National Socialists came to power. Eichmann came from a middle-class family. Born on March 19, 1906 as the son of the accountant and later company owner Adolf Eichmann and his wife Maria in Solingen, he attended the “Higher Federal College for Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Building Construction” from 1921. Two years later he left school without a degree. He then worked as a miner and as a salesman in companies in which his father was a partner. After his admission to the SS, he sensed a career that had previously been denied him.

“Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth”

As early as 1935 he was ordered to the main security service office in Berlin, where he initially dealt with the forced relocation of the Jewish population. Several promotions followed until he was appointed head of the “Department for Jewish Affairs”. Eichmann nevertheless had to continuously defend his position in the Nazi hierarchy, since the totalitarian regime was a system of dual and parallel functions. Due to the lack of transparency and the not clearly defined areas of responsibility within the administration, functionaries like Eichmann could never be sure of their power. Not infrequently there was bitter competition among the National Socialist officials.

Sociologists like Norbert Elias also describe the Third Reich as a confused system of rule that fueled competition among functionaries. A strong drive was therefore the defense of their status and the associated fear of relegation. For this reason, Arendt concludes, resorting to villains from Shakespearean dramas: “Eichmann was neither Iago nor Macbeth, and nothing would have been further from him than to decide with Richard III to ‘become a villain’. Except for a very unusual diligence He had absolutely no motive to do everything that could serve his advancement. ”

Arendt’s portrayal of Adolf Eichmann is controversial. To this day she has to put up with the accusation that she played down the Nazi functionary with her concept of the banality of evil and underestimated his position in the Third Reich. Directly after its publication in the 1960s, its trial report aroused outrage among Jewish intellectuals in particular. Her assertion that the Jewish councils, who had worked with Eichmann in the Third Reich, should be considered complicit in the crimes he committed, contributed to the general outrage. Jewish councils were compulsory bodies of Jews set up by the Nazi regime who had to prepare the concentration camp transports for Eichmann. The members should send Eichmann lists of Jews’ names and provide him with forced labor.

Arendt blames Jewish councils for the Holocaust

Arendt, who was already in 1933 at the age of 26 had fled from Nazi Germany, in their report asks the Jewish Councils the question: “Why did you not prevent our cooperation in the destruction of your own people and ultimately your own downfall?” For this, it was sharply criticized in a declaration drawn up by the Council of Jews in March 1963. He accuses Arendt of misinterpreting “the attitude of men whose integrity and self-sacrifice there was no doubt”.

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The judges sentenced Eichmann to death by hanging. On the night of June 1, 1962, Eichmann was hanged on the first floor of Ramla’s prison.

(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Ultimately, Arendt’s closest confidante also took offense at her theses. There is a break with the historian Gershom Scholem after he accuses her in a letter of lacking “Ahabath Israel”, love for her Jewish brothers and sisters in faith. Arendt undoubtedly underestimates Eichmann’s anti-Semitism. Protocols show that Eichmann made clear anti-Semitic expressions in a conversation with SS officer Willem Sassen. However, these documents were not available to Arendt at the time. Eichmann always claims in court that he is not an anti-Semite. And Arendt believes him.

Although she sees neither a devil nor a staunch anti-Semite in Eichmann, she comes to the same conclusion as public prosecutor Hausner and the judges: Eichmann deserves the death penalty.

In her report, Arendt formulates her own justification for the judgment and writes, addressed to Eichmann:
“All that remains is that you have promoted and helped to implement a policy in which the will was expressed not to share the earth with the Jewish people and a number of other ethnic groups, as if you and your superiors had the right to decide who should and who shouldn’t inhabit the earth. No member of the human race can be expected to inhabit the earth with those who want it and put it into practice. That is the reason, the only reason that you must die . “

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