“He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness — something by no means identical with stupidity — that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is ‘banal’ and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace [Eichmann in Jerusalem 287-288). This quote was among, writer of “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt’s challenging passages that can be found in the book and offers a quite startling judgment of Eichmann. Jew, refugee from Nazi Germany, and distinguished writer of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt proposed herself to be Eichmann's trial reporter to take a closer …show more content…
look at one of the greatest criminals in history. Her mission to examine the behavior of Eichmann was made possible when Eichmann had been captured by some Israeli agents on May 11, 1960 and brought to trial in Jerusalem.
During World War II, Eichmann, having risen to the Obersturmbannführer (a paramilitary Nazi Party ranking used by both the S.A. and the S.S.) position, was extremely loyal and obedient to the Nazi bureaucracy. Eichmann worked closely with Adolf Hitler’s plan for a “final solution” which had the goal to put an end to the Jewish people. In the “final solution,” Eichmann played the important role of arranging the mass deportations of the Jewish people and sending them off to the killing centers which were usually located within Poland. Unluckily for Eichmann, he was captured directly after Germany’s defeat in May 1945 by American soldiers. This was when Hannah Arendt heard of Eichmann’s discovery and trial and set forth to be the qualified for covering the …show more content…
trial. Eichmann’s trial began on April 11, 1961 and further continued until a long four months later in August 14. On December 11, 1961, the court declared the decision that Eichmann was indeed found to be guilty of arranging the mass deportations of the Jewish people to the killing centers. In fact, Eichmann was found to be guilty and charged for about fifteen crimes which included crimes against the Jewish people, war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc. To Eichmann’s and his family’s dismay, he was condemned to death and had to face execution by being hung in May 31, 1962, almost a year after the trial ended and the court’s rejection of Eichmann’s legal appeals during the trial. During Eichmann’s trial, Hannah Arendt made many observations relating to Eichmann’s display of what she called “sheer thoughtlessness,” “inability to think,” and the changing character of evil in modern societies. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt emphasized that there was an absence of critical thinking in Eichmann’s trial and behavior. Hannah Arendt first reaction to Eichmann was just a common man with no traces of evil, as she says, “The deeds were monstrous, but the doer ... was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous” (Eichmann in Jerusalem). In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt, in her own words, portrayed Eichmann as one with “sheer thoughtlessness.” As Arendt states that, “the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think,” she demonstrates that Eichmann fails to display critical thinking. Hannah Arendt therefore states and emphasizes a point that the absence of the ability to critically think was extremely striking and obvious in Eichmann throughout her observations during his trial. She believes that such absence of critical thinking has a possibility of directly affecting Eichmann’s evil-doing. Arendt believes that this means Eichmann clearly lacks “demonic profundity,” as she states: “if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace" (Eichmann in Jerusalem 20). In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt successfully characterizes Eichmann to be as “thoughtless” due to his inability to make his own decisions “whether he wanted to or not throughout his life, particularly during the war. Arendt states that because Eichmann is so simple minded and displays frequent “thoughtlessness,” he was the perfect candidate for his positioning within the S.S. I agree with this because, just as Arendt even states, Eichmann seemed to have cared more about just obediently completing assigned tasks rather than taking into consideration how his actions and obedience to the S.S would affect other people’s lives. Arendt even added in her book that Eichmann seemed to hardly recall anything about what he did, demonstrating Eichmann’s lack of care but abundant amount of “thoughtlessness, “as she states “His memory proved to be quite unreliable about what had actually happened. Eichmann remembered the turning points in his own career… [but not] the turning points in the story of Jewish extermination” (Eichmann in Jerusalem). Regarding Hannah Arendt's analysis of Eichmann’s thoughtfulness throughout his life in comparison to what the course reader states about Eichmann perhaps being a fanatical anti-Semite, I believe that for the most part, just because Eichmann is claimed to be an Anti-Semite doesn’t mean he can’t suffer from thoughtlessness. Arendt points out that Eichmann seems to not even realize what his actions are doing to negatively impact the Jewish people.
Instead, he is simply blinded by his desire to complete his tasks correctly rather than think twice about the effects and outcomes his actions cause. AT the same time, I think that Eichmann is an obedient, insensitive, and mindless man that doesn’t seem to entirely understand what his actions are causing to the Jewish people and lives to “impress the boss” and be obedient to his tasks, he cannot participate in such horrific events without being an anti-Semite. Therefore, I believe that while Eichmann is an Anti-Semite, he is still a victim of “thoughtlessness,” as Arendt
emphasizes. To Arendt, there is an opposite of “thoughtlessness” and “inability to think,” which is the capability to break through the mechanism of second nature. With the way that Arendt emphasizes Eichmann’s lack of thinking throughout her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, I see that Arendt seems to set out a clear explanation that thinking is to can have perspective and be able to rightfully judge what is right or wrong. She includes that with “thinking” comes the capability to consider what one does from another person’s perspective and in terms of any other possible alternatives. Meanwhile, “thoughtlessness” and “inability to think” demonstrate the incapability to judge the appropriateness and rightness/wrongness of one’s actions. As previously mentioned, throughout her book, Hannah Arendt doesn’t fail to emphasize that there is a lack of critical thinking in Eichmann that she noticed during his trial. Arendt ties this absence of critical thinking with “banal” since Eichmann failed to practice strong thinking skills. I think that Arendt finds this amusing and “even funny” because she is disgusted and appalled at how someone could take such a huge roll during the war and mindlessly and insensitively take part in huge tasks that made huge negative impacts on the Jewish people. Arendt believes that such mindlessness and acts of thoughtlessness are very common within people who worked around Eichmann. In fact, Arendt sees Eichmann as an example of new form of “evil” that comes into being within society. However, I think that “modern evil” within our modern society is not perpetrated by just single individuals as frequently anymore. Instead, within modern society, evil comes from institutions performing evil acts because there are many individual evil people such as Eichmann who suffer from “thoughtlessness.” Instead of realizing their negative impacts on society, they remain obedient to higher authority and add on to the “evil” activity within their society. In conclusion, according to Hannah Arendt, in “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Eichmann was a threat to humanity due to his “thoughtlessness” and “inability to think.” To Arendt, “thoughtlessness” is almost no different from “stupidity” and Eichmann was guilty of it, which ultimately “predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period” (Eichmann in Jerusalem 285)
Kershaw later depicts a comment made by Hitler discussing the dire need to deport German Jews, away from the ‘Procterate,’ calling them “dangerous ‘fifth columnists’” that threatened the integrity of Germany. In 1941, Hitler discusses, more fervently his anger towards the Jews, claiming them to responsible for the deaths caused by the First World War: “this criminal race has the two million dead of the World War on its conscience…don’t anyone tell me we can’t send them into the marshes (Morast)!” (Kershaw 30). These recorded comments illustrate the deep rooted hatred and resentment Hitler held for the Jewish population that proved ultimately dangerous. Though these anti-Semitic remarks and beliefs existed among the entirety of the Nazi Political party, it didn’t become a nationwide prejudice until Hitler established such ideologies through the use of oral performance and
Michael Boehmcke Mrs. Vermillion AP Language and Composition 16 March 2018 The Search for A Killer In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, initiating World War II, as well as laying the ground work for what became known as the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, the German extermination of millions of European Jews. In The Nazi Hunters, Neal Bascomb describes the hunt after the war for Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who oversaw the deliverance of the Jews to the extermination camps.
The time, 1941, the place, the then Soviet Union, the Red Army is in retreat from the German forces, following closely behind the German frontline is an unspeakable force coming over the conquered lands like a deadly plague. The Einsatzgruppen were considered as mobile death dealers by their victims. The major occupation of the Einsatzgruppen was the humiliation, extermination, and complete of annihilation of Jews, Romany or gypsies, members of the communist party, and intellectsia or major thinkers. They were organized to be the most efficient at occupying and murdering the undesirables. The leaders of these hounds of war were hand selected by Heydrich Himmler from the brightest, bravest, and most loyal of the Nazi members.
Adolf Eichmann was a high-ranking German officer who was one of a few top-ranking officials responsible for the "legal work" of the extermination of millions of Jews. He was a wanted Nazi war criminal because he escaped just before the end of World War II. He was not immediately captured and thus evaded the Nuremberg Trials as he fled to the country of Argentina where he attempted to fade into history. Israeli secret service agents somehow managed to track Eichmann down, kidnap him, and bring him back to Israel to face the consequences of his past. Throughout the trial, Eichmann's defense was simply that he was basically a puppet of Nazi Germany saying that he was "a tool in the hands of superior powers and authorities."
This declaration was as surprising as the justification behind it, for on page 81, that neighbor explains, “‘I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.’” This moment was something I could only describe as shocking, as it was the truth, or a crooked version of it. Hitler promised to exterminate the Jewish people
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
Christopher Browning believes that Hitler did not have a pre-existing plan to liquidate the Jews but rather, the Final Solution was a reaction to the cumulative radicalization amongst the German nation from 1939 to 1941. Although Hitler was notoriously one of the most anti-Semitic people to walk the Earth, he had not intended to mass slaughter the Jews, but rather attempted to find another solution to the Jewish problem. Hitler had such an obsession on finding this solution, that he promised one way or another he would reach his goal in perfecting a Judenfrei Germany (Browning 424). The first solution to the Jewish problem in Germany was through emigration. Once Hitler seized power he imposed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped the Jews of all of their rights, expecting the Jewish people to comprehend the message and leave the country. The German officials even supported emigration and Zionistic movements. By 1939 only half of the Jews had left so the Jewish problem still rested unfinished. In September of 1939, the German declared war on Poland in an attempt to conquer Lebensraum. [Living space] After starting the war, they decided they could no longer let the Jews emigrate (Browning 12). By capturing Poland they inherited three million Jews. Hitler summoned all of the Jews in the German empire into ghettos in Poland until he could find another plan. Himmler, Hitler’s right hand man, proposed two plans to expel the Jews to either Lublin or to Madagascar. Hitler approved both but neither was put into affect. The Nazis’ inability to solve the Jewish question once again disappoints them. The obligation to solve the problem still weighed heavily upon them, which lead to frustration, which lead to the radical decisions to liquidate th...
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Eichmann was a simple man that thought of himself as always being the law-abiding citizen. Eichmann stated in court that he had always tried to abide by Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative (Arendt,135). Arendt argues that Eichmann had essentially taken the wrong lesson from Kant. Kant’s moral philosophy is so closely bound up with man’s faculty of judgment, which rules out blind obedience. Knowing this, we learn that Eichmann could not have just been going along with the Nazis without knowing anything that was going on or the consequences. Eichmann had not recognized the ‘golden rule’ and principle of reciprocity implicit in the categorical imperative, but had only understood the concept of one man's actions coinciding with general law. Eichmann attempted to follow the spirit of the laws he carried out, as if the legislator himself would approve. In Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative, the legislator is the moral self and all men are legislators. In other words, we are all taking on the roll of the leader. In Eichmann's formulation, the legislator was Hitler. Eichmann claimed this changed when he was charged with carrying out the Final Solution, at which point Arendt claims "he had ceased to live according to Kantian principles, that he had known it, and that he had consoled himself with the thoughts that he no longer 'was master of ...
“The Holocaust is the most investigated crime in history, as has often been pointed out in response to deniers. Eichmann may be that crime’s most investigated criminal” (Sells, Michael A.). Adolf Eichmann was one of the head Nazis. He had a lot of authority in enacting what Hitler had told the Nazis to do. He was just about as responsible as Hitler was for killing all of those innocent
After World War II the world began to here accounts of the atrocities and crimes committed by the Nazi’s to the Jews and other enemies of the Nazis. The international community wanted answers and called for the persecution of the criminals that participated in the murder of millions throughout Europe. The SS was responsible for playing a leading role in the Holocaust for the involvement in the death of millions of innocent lives. Throughout, Europe concentration camps were established to detain Jews, political prisoners, POW’s and enemies of the Third Reich. The largest camp during World War II was Auschwitz under the command of SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess; Auschwitz emerged as the site for the largest mass murder in the history of the world. (The, 2005)
The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp that carried out Hitler's ‘final solution' in greater numbers than any other.
To many in the United States and Europe, World War II is an icon that represents unimaginable turmoil and tragedy. The hardships brought about by World War II raises the theodicy question of how a righteous God could allow the Nazi’s to reign. Elie Wiesel was one of the many Jews who were persecuted during this period of history. When he was fifteen years of age, Wiesel was a prisoner in the infamous Aushwitz concentration camp (Brown vii). In an introduction to the trial of god, writer Robert Brown takes note of what Wiesel witnessed.
The thoughtlessness in which Eichmann embodied in the courtroom, along with the normalcy he possesses, aids in the development of the enigmatic structure of the trial. Arendt's battle to find middle-ground between the idea of Eichmann as a common man attempting to fulfill objectives and his connection to the Nazi regime is what defies original theories on evil. The guilt Eichmann carries is clearly much larger than the man himself, especially one so simplistic and thoughtless. Therefore, the evil presented in Eichma...