Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

The outbreak of the war in 1939 leads to the fusion of the Security Service of the S.S. with the Security Police of the State, which includes the Gestapo, thus aligning civil services with “the most radical section of the Nazi hierarchy” and creating an organization that discusses “concentration camps in terms of ‘administration’” (68-69). Eichmann’s role in “the Jewish question” remains relevant throughout the war, despite his low position, primarily due to its connection to the organization of transportation and evacuation (70). To maintain a relevant role in the intricate “labyrinth of parallel institutions” that composes the Nazi hierarchy is no small feat (71). Each branch competes with one another, “which was no help to their victims, since their ambition was always the same: to kill as many Jews as possible” (71).

Eichmann, struggling with his realization that forced emigration is no longer the solution, comes up with three ideas, two of which, Arendt points out, turn out to be other people’s ideas, rather than his own. The first idea, known as “the idea of Nisko” (73), consists of finding land roughly the size of Poland that can act as a Jewish protectorate to where all forcibly expelled Jews can settle. The second idea is not unlike the first, in that Eichmann hopes to resettle four million Jews on the French island of Madagascar. Even though the Madagascar plan fails, it prepares those in power for the final solution, extermination, because no territory exists to which the Jews can evacuate. The final idea proposed ends with the evacuation of the Czech population from Theresienstadt so that it can be used as a temporary housing camp for expelled Jews, eventually becoming the only concentration camp to remain under Eichmann’s responsibility to the very end of the war. Arendt theorizes that Eichmann’s memory is faulty not only because of his questionable use of the German language but also because he remembers only what directly affects his career. Had his memory served him, Arendt argues, Eichmann would not have testified to “the Theresienstadt story at all” since it positions him for the prosecution as having directly participated in the “physical solution” to “the Jewish question” (82).

About six to eight weeks after Hitler attacks the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Eichmann meets with Heydrich, who tells him: “‘The Führer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews’” and that the “official code name for extermination was to be ‘Final Solution’” (83). Along with Hitler’s orders also comes coded language, which assists in the “maintenance of order and sanity” for those whose “cooperation [is] essential in this matter” (85). Müller sends Eichmann to visit Poland and Russia to report back on the various methods of extermination. Eichmann first visits Lublin to see the preparations for the gas death chambers, then to Kulm, where mobile gas vans are already in use, and finally to Minsk and Lwów, where Jews had been shot and dumped in a ditch from which “a spring of blood like a fountain” came “gushing from the earth” (89). Eichmann is horrified by what he sees and reports as much, worrying that Germans are sure to “go mad” while executing Hitler’s orders (89).

One of the original questions of the court is whether or not Eichmann had fully comprehended what he was doing at the time, and with his testimony of his visits to Poland and Russia, it would appear the answer is yes. This prompts the judges to ask a new question: “Had the killing of Jews gone against his conscience?”, but the answer would have been of a moral nature and not “legally relevant” (91). Very shortly after these visits, Eichmann orchestrates “his first mass deportation from Germany and the Protectorate” of twenty thousand Jews and five thousand Gypsies, only he defies his orders by sending them to Lodz, where he knows no preparations for extermination have been completed, rather than to a Russian territory where he is certain they would be shot immediately (93-94). It is the only time on record that Eichmann attempts to save the Jews, an attempt for which he is not punished by his superiors, but an attempt that he also does not remember. Eichmann does not bring it up in court or his memoirs or any of his interviews. Arendt notes others who attempt to oppose the implementation of Hitler’s Final Solution, namely former high-ranking Nazi officials, but she also determines that their resistance is not motivated by a disgust for what is happening to the Jews but rather out of a fear for the impending destruction of Germany.