Margaret Holub recommended this book to me when I was worrying whether
it is possible to lead a moral life when one is a running dog lackey for a large
multinational corporation. I still am not sure what the answer to the question is,
but I can second Margaret's recommendation, this is very much a book worth reading.
It is a book about history and a book about morality.
Hannah Arendt was a philosopher, editor and teacher. She was born in Germany in 1906, emigrated to Paris in 1933 to escape the Nazi's and fled to New York in 1941. She was assigned to cover the Eichmann trial by The New Yorker magazine.
In 1960, Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli Agents, and was smuggled to Israel where he was tried in Jerusalem, for crimes against humanity. He was found guilty and executed by hanging. The trial dragged on for a long time and Eichmann was portrayed by the prosecution as a much bigger fish then he probably was. However, I believe, if anyone ever deserves the death penalty, Eichmann did.
What I found fascinating about the book were not the details of the trial, but the exploration of Eichmann's character, the ethical questions Arendt poses and the historic details of the mechanism of the Holocaust.
Eichmann was the head of Subsection IV-B-4 (The Department for Jewish Affairs) in the
R.S.H.A. (Head Office For Reich Security) of the Shutzstaffeln (S.S.). He was a middle
management bureaucrat responsible chiefly for the transportation of Jews to concentration
and extermination camps. He reported to Reinhardt Heydrich, who reported to Heinrich
Himmler, who was Hitler's head of the Gestapo and Waffen SS.
Eichmann pompously considered himself an expert on Jews and their friend (!) and was the German Government's chief liaison with the Jewish community. He was a participant and advisor in the "First, Second and Final Solutions" to the "Jewish Problem". The solutions were deportation, concentration and extermination. The problem for the Nazi's was that Jews existed.
What I found most startling and revolting about Eichmann was not merely that he willingly participated in the extermination of millions, but that he did so without qualms. Even when he was on trial, he showed no remorse and his principal regret was that his career had not advanced further within the Third Reich.
In many ways, he was an unexceptional man. This is perhaps what was most frightening, that he was so ordinary and petty. He could have been almost anyone, I fear that under different circumstances he could have even been me.
I think that this is the primary lesson of the book, that the veneer of civilization is thin and that the face of evil is usually not demonic. We are far closer to repeating the horror of the Shoah than we would like to believe; maybe not with Jews, but with African-Americans or gays or Arabs or single teenage mothers, or maybe with Jews. I fear that few people give much thought to the consequences of their actions, and many find it easy to conform as long as they are entertained and fed and have money to spend. I hope that I am wrong.
I learned a great deal about the mechanisms of the Holocaust from the book. I was surprised that the Nazi's obsession with the elimination of the Jewish people was so overwhelming that they dedicated huge quantities of rail resources for the transportation of Jews to the death camps, even at the expense of the war effort and when it cost the lives of German soldiers retreating from the Eastern Front.
I had not known how different the response to the Final Solution was among the occupied countries. In Denmark and Bulgaria, very few Jews were deported to Germany, while ironically Poland welcomed the elimination of "their" Jews, without realizing that the Nazi's intended to employ the same solution against the Slavs when they were finished with the Jews.
Hannah Arendt was criticized when this book was published for her discussion of the
Jewish Leadership Councils, and their role in facilitating the plans of the Nazi's.
If these Nazi apponted groups of Jewish leaders had been less cooperative, the Nazi's
might have had a harder time, but after
centuries of the strategy of Jewish accommodation with enemies, it is not hard to
understand why they did not act differently.
This is a difficult book to read, but I highly recommend it. I think that it has given me some insight into the nature of evil and of personal responsibility.
- Bob Evans
Copyright 1997
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