Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Rating:
Summary: Knowing Eichmann, Punishing Banality
Review: Eichmann in Jerusalem -- perhaps Arendt's most accessible volume -- is truly a masterwork. In addition to the copius summaries already given I would add several things.

In this book, Arendt, a female Jew and Holocaust survivor, gets inside Adolf Eichmann's head. She begins speaking like him, losing her normally depressed and indignant tone (see Imperialism in _The Origins of Totalitarianism_ for classic examples) for a colder tone, Eichmann's tone, that doesn't feel affected, as one might suspect that it would.

When Eichmann's sentencing comes around, Arendt herself seems to struggle a bit to regain her normal tone and condemn him to death herself. It feels as thought Arendt's empathy has led her to pity this man, rather than hate him. How can you kill someone you pity?

This same dilemma, it seems, arises in her relationship with Heidegger, only she resolves it in the opposite direction.

Rating:
Summary: Explains the True Horrror of the Third Reich
Review: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt is one of the most disturbing books that I have read in a long while. Along with Gita Sereny's interviews with Stangle and Speer, they demonstrate the true horror of the Third Reich. This horror is not the inherent evil of Hitler or Himmler or the sadistic camp guards. The holocaust presented these already morally bankrupt men with the opportunity to commit the evil which their consciences allowed. Of greater horror are the individuals, such as Eichmann, who were not evil per se, but who were willing to put conscience aside in order to advance within an evil system.

As Arendt moves through the holocaust in the different countries in Western Europe and the Balkans, it becomes evident that the difference in degrees of the destruction of Jewry was not defined by the presence of potentially evil wrongdoers, but by the existence of individuals who would not put their conscience aside in order to further short-term goals. The contrast between the destruction of German Jews and the survival of the Jews of Bulgaria and Denmark can be directly traced to a commitment by the Bulgarians and Danes to save their fellow countrymen. The German Jews did not survive as the Danish and Bulgarian Jews did because Germany lacked such men of conscience.

It is easier to think of the chief architects and perpetrators of the attempted destruction of a whole people as madmen, the madder the better. Their acts can be rightfully condemned, but also understood, as evil things done by evil people. Furthermore, if the holocaust can be blamed on the acts of evil madmen, then it is also easier to believe that it could not have been prevented. Arendt destroys each of these rationalizations and raises questions that frankly kept me up at night. If, as she demonstrates, the success of the holocaust was determined by those who put their consciences aside, then it also seems agonizingly true that the deaths of six million were not predetermined. Had more people acted on their consciences, perhaps those deaths need not have been integral to the Nazi conquest of Europe.

The fact that she does not treat Eichmann as a mad sadist, and instead explains why the prosecutions portrayal of him was incorrect, does not mean that Arendt is an apologist for Eichmann - far from it. Unlike Hitler, Eichmann was under no illusion that the Jews were responsible for all of the world's problems. His prior relations with Jews had been friendly. However, he was willing able to put this aside and play a vital role in the Final Solution. His excuse was that he was ordered to do so. But the reality was that he was more worried about his failure to get the promotions that he believed he deserved. This made Eichmann, like most of the perpetrators of the holocaust, the paradigm of the "banality of evil." However, such a rational led Arendt not to condemn the Jerusalem Court's death verdict but to condone it.

Arendt does an amazing job of delving into the mind of Eichmann as well as the reasons why the Final Solution was successful in some countries and not others. This is not a book for one who desires light reading. However, if one is seeking to understand the Final Solution, then this book is a must.

Rating:
Summary: Explains the True Horrror of the Third Reich
Review: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt is one of the most disturbing books that I have read in a long while. Along with Gita Sereny's interviews with Stangle and Speer, they demonstrate the true horror of the Third Reich. This horror is not the inherent evil of Hitler or Himmler or the sadistic camp guards. The holocaust presented these already morally bankrupt men with the opportunity to commit the evil which their consciences allowed. Of greater horror are the individuals, such as Eichmann, who were not evil per se, but who were willing to put conscience aside in order to advance within an evil system.

As Arendt moves through the holocaust in the different countries in Western Europe and the Balkans, it becomes evident that the difference in degrees of the destruction of Jewry was not defined by the presence of potentially evil wrongdoers, but by the existence of individuals who would not put their conscience aside in order to further short-term goals. The contrast between the destruction of German Jews and the survival of the Jews of Bulgaria and Denmark can be directly traced to a commitment by the Bulgarians and Danes to save their fellow countrymen. The German Jews did not survive as the Danish and Bulgarian Jews did because Germany lacked such men of conscience.

It is easier to think of the chief architects and perpetrators of the attempted destruction of a whole people as madmen, the madder the better. Their acts can be rightfully condemned, but also understood, as evil things done by evil people. Furthermore, if the holocaust can be blamed on the acts of evil madmen, then it is also easier to believe that it could not have been prevented. Arendt destroys each of these rationalizations and raises questions that frankly kept me up at night. If, as she demonstrates, the success of the holocaust was determined by those who put their consciences aside, then it also seems agonizingly true that the deaths of six million were not predetermined. Had more people acted on their consciences, perhaps those deaths need not have been integral to the Nazi conquest of Europe.

The fact that she does not treat Eichmann as a mad sadist, and instead explains why the prosecutions portrayal of him was incorrect, does not mean that Arendt is an apologist for Eichmann - far from it. Unlike Hitler, Eichmann was under no illusion that the Jews were responsible for all of the world's problems. His prior relations with Jews had been friendly. However, he was willing able to put this aside and play a vital role in the Final Solution. His excuse was that he was ordered to do so. But the reality was that he was more worried about his failure to get the promotions that he believed he deserved. This made Eichmann, like most of the perpetrators of the holocaust, the paradigm of the "banality of evil." However, such a rational led Arendt not to condemn the Jerusalem Court's death verdict but to condone it.

Arendt does an amazing job of delving into the mind of Eichmann as well as the reasons why the Final Solution was successful in some countries and not others. This is not a book for one who desires light reading. However, if one is seeking to understand the Final Solution, then this book is a must.

Rating:
Summary: More than just a biography
Review: Hannah Arendt first wrote this book as a series of articles before she compiled all her materials and published "Eichmann in Jerusalem" in 1963. This book is truly fantastic because it brings the trial, life, times, and death of Adolf Eichmann into light and life. It is truly a work of history which especially sheds light on the startling fact that numerous Jewish councils had helped the Nazis deport the millions that went to their deaths in the killing centers of the East. (Over time, of course, those members of the councils were also deported). It does not attempt to be apologetic and defensive of Eichmann--as the reviews above so claim this to be. It shows his guilt through a recreation of the events--the Wannsee Conference, his relations with Auschwitz kommandant Rudolf Hoess, the deportations from all of Europe, the killing centers...Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt (the latter was in fact a model ghetto but was classified as a concentration camp by the SS and was intended to make the camps look better than they actually were)...Eichmann's life, and finally, his death. Need I go on? I hope that I have proven that this book--one which caused so much trouble among the Jews and Arendt--is for anybody interested in one of the most capturing, magnifying, and horrifying eras in the history of mankind.

Rating:
Summary: The moral failing of a great thinker
Review: Hannah Arendt is one of the great political thinkers of the twentieth century. Her understanding of the concept of totalitarianism which analyzed together the Nazi and Soviet terror worlds is a major achievement. Her philosophical works are deep and rich, and provide a sense of the greatness and dignity of human life and thought.
But in this work she fails morally, and exposes her own personal frailty. In writing about the executioner of what is arguably the greatest crime done in human history , she makes the terrible moral slip of in some way demeaning the victims further, and in some way finding , if not excuse, then 'alleviation' for the executioneer. She does the first not only by her indictment of the leaders of the Jewish councils, but even more severely by the tone she often takes to the victims. It is a German superiority and contempt , the tone of the foremost pupil of Nazi- sympathizer Heidegger. Her alleviation of evil of the evildoers is by this time well- known argument that the man in the box represented the ' banality of evil' He was no Faust or Satan but rather a little clerk looking out for his own little end, and trying to climb up a bit in the heirarchy. And while it is true that he was no great genius or hero, in fact he was very ideologically committed to the program of the Nazis. And that program and that ideology and its execution were the heart of the Evil. Arendt many believe did mankind a moral service by showing us just what ordinary people are capable of. And subsequent genocides in Cambodia or Rwanda and now in Darfur many argue show that is the case. But that point , however well taken i.e. the point that the ordinary human being can be not simply the passive witness,but the active participant in evil by no means excuses those particular individuals and that particular people who committed this crime. The ordinary man become a monster is still a monster.
But to repeat and above all, Arendt's great moral failing here was in her coldness , her lack of sympathy, compassion and human understanding for the victims.
No intelligence and no superior intellect and even no greatness , can excuse for wanton cruelty to other human beings, especially those who have suffered so much.

Rating:
Summary: Masterfull interpretation of evil
Review: Hannah Arendt is probable one of the most astute political and moral thinkers of the previous century.

The book approaches Eichmann as a competent but morally vacant burueacrat who sinks into the 'banality of evil' not out of a malicious hatred of the Jews but rather out of a perverted sense of duty and respect for authority. He perverts the Kantian categorical imperative to read - you have the duty to do what society instructs of you - instead of - you have the duty to act in yourself as you would expect society to act towards you. Some reviewers have misread this moral emphasis of Arendt as a defence of Eichmann This is completely false and a basic misunderstanding of her moral argument.

Her brave mentioning of the fact that the Eichmann Trial was probable not in truth a trial but a show to justify retribution as well as the illegality of his kidnapping deserves praise. The fact that Eichmanns council never used this in his defence as well as the fact that technically Eichmann contravened no law in Germany whilst exercising his duties ,gave me the idea that if there was someone in Israel that could saved him from the gallows it would have been Hannah Arendt. Ironic as I have not read a better condemnation of the man from any other author.Then again she also paints the picture of a man making no real effort to avoid his fate but being without the moral fibre to actively seek it out made no effort to hide his identity from anyone. Eichmann wanted to get caught and seeked in his trial and sentence final recognition for his contorted sense of remorse Although the sincerity of his remorse is not doubted it is the nature of his remorse that remains highly questionable. And that is Hannah Arendts exclamation mark behind the banality of this mans' evil.

Her synopsis of the fate of the Jews in various countries during the holocaust is also very valuable to casual students of the Shoah.

Rating:
Summary: The Banality of Evil
Review: Hannah Arendt's book is a powerful and disturbing account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and the subtitle, A Report on the Banality of Evil, couldn't be more apt. According to Ms. Arendt, Eichmann wasn't an evil fanatic but just an unquestioning bureaucrat who felt very proud of his achievements, a person who thought his professional advancement was more important than the lives of millions of people. Without shifting any responsiblity from the Nazi leadership, Ms. Arendt argues that if society at large hadn't consented and in many cases cooperated, the extermination of human beings in such an enormous scale could have never been accomplished. Eichmann always maintained that he didn't agree with his superiors' policy, but he didn't disobey or even question his orders and eventually became one of the key figures in the deportation of millions of people from the occupied countries to the extermination camps in Eastern Europe.

The book also includes a lot of information about the reactions to the deportations in different countries, ranging from the zealous cooperation of the Poles to the admirable refusal of the Danes who eventually managed to save all their Jews by transporting them to neighbouring Sweden. Ms. Arendt has a very clear, analytic and eminently readable style and her book is an essential work that should be read by anyone who wants to know more about the implementation of the Final Solution and the personality and ideas of one of the individuals that made it possible.

Rating:
Summary: Blatant Misrepresentation
Review: I am astonished by the comments Amazon.com includes under *Eichmann in Jerusalem*: to characterize Arendt's book as a "defense" of Eichmann is either a deliberate falsehood or a comment written by someone who has never read the book. I assume the comment was written on the basis of Michael Musmanno's incompetent review of *Eichmann* for the *New York Times*. Musmanno's review blatantly misrepresented Arendt's work, and I would expect Amazon.com to be able to do better. Far from "defending" Eichmann, Arendt portrays him as a willing participant in mass murder, and, in her Epilogue, she strongly agrees with the death sentence that he received. The myth of Arendt's "defense" of Eichmann is a result of her belief that Eichmann was motivated more by immersion in the totalitarian "system" of Nazi Germany than by hatred of Jews. In no way does she excuse him or the Germans, and, indeed, she argues that complicity in the Holocaust was ubiquitous in Germany. Her thesis is certainly open to debate, but to suggest that this brave and decent thinker sought for a moment to defend Eichmann or the Nazis is outrageous. Her book remains one of the most thought-provoking studies of the perpetrators of the Holocaust ever written.

Rating:
Summary: Evil just below the surface
Review: I am not sure what the other reviewers below are complaining about. Amazon's review seems a correct and fair assessment of Arendt's depiction of Eichmann. I think Arendt developed a certain amount of empathy for the man as she got deeper into his head, but she never suggested exculpation, nor has amazon's reviewer made the claim that she did. My own criticism is directed at the New York Times Reviewer...whimsical?? I think he or she need to go back and try giving the book a *serious* reading.

Rating:
Summary: A forest without trees
Review: I finished reading this book and sat back, totally baffled. On the one hand, the words are gorgeous. It "feels" like it's intelligent, like the author is a great thinker. I could not imagine what was bothering me.

So I researched Hannah Arendt.

No one should ever read this work without understanding her tortured relationship with Judaism, her self-hate, the complete schizophrenia that consumed her. She had as her "Doktorvater" one of Germany's most brilliant anti-Nazis, Karl Jaspers. Jaspers had become required reading for serious Christians, whether Catholic or Lutheran, if they opposed Hitler's regime. And Jaspers remained Germany's conscience in the first decade or two after the war, when people wouldn't talk about how many Jews had been annihilated and the society concentrated on rebuilding instead of healing. Hannah Arendt had this exceptional person as her mentor and philosophical guide.

And then she had Heidegger. She was his mistress before the war and after it, and she crafted his defense, saving his neck at the trial in Nuremberg. Heidegger! The antithesis of Jaspers. And somewhere along the line, she seems to have lost her sense of identity, neither living as nor dying as (ie, buried as) a Jewish woman.

I doubt I will ever understand Hannah Arendt, but the split personality she exhibited enabled me at least to understand how she could possibly deem Eichmann's evilness as "banal". She was willing to believe the facade, willing to swallow the lie that he was just doing his job, willing to write that perhaps he was telling the truth when he said he accepted his initial promotion that vaulted him into the direct neighborhood of Adolf Hitler because he believed he would be riding on the sideboards of cars as a body guard.

Sadly -- and I mean sadly, for Hannah Arendt squandered a great gift -- she is the one who was self-delusioned. Not Adolf Eichmann. He knew exactly what he was orchestrating. This book misses that essential point.