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Hannah Arendt

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil Paperback – January 1, 1994

by Hannah Arendt (Author)

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Provides a report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, including facts that were exposed after the trial, and presents Arendt's commentary on the controversy created by the report.

Print length

312 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Classics
Publication date

January 1, 1994
Dimensions

5.1 x 0.37 x 7.72 inches
ISBN-10

0140187650
ISBN-13

978-0140187656
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Abdollah Zeraatpisheh

A Profound Examination of Evil in its Most Banal Form!

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2023

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"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" is a profound and thoughtful analysis of a chilling piece of history. Hannah Arendt’s masterful examination of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the Holocaust, presents a haunting picture of 'the banality of evil'. Arendt's perspective on how ordinary individuals can perpetrate horrific acts in bureaucratic systems is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling. Her meticulous dissection of Eichmann's character and the societal structures that enabled his actions is an indispensable contribution to understanding the complexity of human nature. This book is not just a historical document but a timeless philosophical exploration. It's a tough but necessary read - offering invaluable lessons about personal responsibility, ethics, and the dark corners of human capability. Five stars without a doubt!

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Claudia Moscovici

Eichmann's psychopathy versus the banality of evil

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2013

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The wonderful new movie, Hannah Arendt (2012), directed by Margarethe von Trotta and starring Barbara Sukowa, shows that Arendt’s series of articles on Adolf Eichmann’s trial, covered by The New Yorker in 1961 and subsequently published under the title of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Books, New York, 1963), was a double-edged sword in her career. On the one hand, it gave Arendt a broader mainstream visibility, in part because of the international controversy it generated. On the other hand, this very controversy cost her several valuable friendships and even jeopardized her reputation in the academia. The controversy hinges upon the manner in which Arendt describes the nature of evil that characterizes the worst genocide in human history: the Holocaust.
Her explanation, captured by the phrase “the banality of evil,” posits that evil deeds are, for the most part, not perpetrated by monsters or sadists. Most often, they are perpetrated by seemingly ordinary people like Adolf Eichmann, who value conformity and narrow self-interest over the welfare of others. The concept of the banality of evil seems intuitive enough. Nontheless, it generated a huge controversy, primarily because ccritics interpreted it as exonerating Adolf Eichmann and indicting the victims of the Holocaust: particularly the Jewish leaders who were compelled by the Nazis to organize the Jewish people for mass deportations and eventual extermination.
Was Arendt putting the criminals and the victims in the same boat? Or, even worse, does her notion of the banality of evil end up blaming the victims? I don’t think so. In what follows, I’d like to explain why by outlining Arendt’s two explanations of the banality of evil: the first one being people who naturally lack empathy and conscience in any circumstances (like Eichmann) and who thrive in totalitarian regimes; the second understood as evil actions (or callous indifference) that even people who do have a conscience are capable of under extreme circumstances.

Adolf Eichmann and the banality of psychopathy

Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Nazi regime and one of the key figures in the Holocaust. With initiative and enthusiasm, he organized the mass deportations of the Jews first to ghettos and then to extermination camps throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Once Germany lost the war, he fled to Argentina. Years later, he was captured by the Mossad and extradited to Israel. In a public trial, he was charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging.
In her accounts of the trial, Arendt is struck by the contrast between Eichmann’s monstrous deeds and his average appearance and banal, technocratic language. Unlike other Nazi leaders notorious for crimes against humanity, such as Amon Goeth or Josef Mengele, Eichmann didn’t seem to be a disordered sadist. More remarkably given his actions against the Jewish people, unlike Hitler, Eichmann wasn’t even particularly anti-Semitic.

Although six psychiatrists testified during the trial to Eichmann’s apparent “normality,” in her articles Arendt emphasizes the fact that his normalcy is only a mask. In fact, she highlights the aspects of his behavior under questioning that were anything but normal: his self-contradictions, lies, evasiveness, denial of blame about the crimes he did commit and inappropriate boasting about his power and role in the Holocaust for crimes there’s no evidence he committed. Arendt is particularly struck by this man’s absolute lack of empathy and remorse for having sent hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths. To each count he was charged with, Eichmann pleaded “Not guilty in the sense of the indictment.” (p. 21) This leads Arendt to ask: “In what sense then did he think he was guilty?” (p. 21) His defense attorney claimed that “Eichmann feels guilty before God, not before the law,” but Arendt points out that Eichmann himself never acknowledges any such moral culpability.
If he denies any moral responsibility it’s because, as Arendt is astonished to observe, he doesn’t feel any. Although, astonishingly, none of the forensic psychologists see Eichmann as a psychopath, Arendt describes Eichmann in similar terms Hervey Cleckley uses to describe psychopathic behavior in his 1941 groundbreaking book, The Mask of Sanity. First and foremost, Eichmann is a man with abnormally shallow emotions. Because of this, he also lacks a conscience. Even though he understands the concept of law, he has no visceral sense of right and wrong and can’t identify with the pain of others. His extraordinary emotional shallowness impoverishes not only his sense of ethics, but also his vocabulary. Arendt gives as one of many examples Eichmann’s desire to “find peace with his former enemies” (p. 53). Arendt states that “Eichmann’s mind was filled to the brim with such sentences” (p.53). These stock phrases are a manifestation of Eichmann’s empty emotional landscape; his behavior towards the Jews even more so.
Yet, Arendt emphasizes, even ordinary people capable of empathy and remorse can still cause extraordinary harm in unusual circumstances. In such cases, they're motivated by a conformity which she describes as the banality of evil.

Claudia Moscovici, Literature Salon

23 people found this helpful

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NJM

Eichmann: Sympathetic Killer or Mindless Bureacrat (Unthinking)

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2014

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" 'Ya, I was only following orders. Oh, ya, I did take some initiative to save thousands of Jews. Oh ya, I did send 6 million to the gas chambers and death camps. Oh, but I co-operated with the local Jewish leaders'... sometimes with respect and sometimes Eichman acted like the murderers most Nazis were."

The author, Hannah Arendt, read all 3,000 pages of the transcripts, attended all sessions of the trial and read all the Eichmann interviews in Jerusalem. She provides numerous quotes from other contemporary (circa 1960) Jewish authors, that sometimes coincided with Eichmanns story and are part of this exhaustive discussion of the real Eichmann.

I have read several books on Eichmann ("Eichmann in my Hands", "Too Fantastic to Be True", etc.) and the Arendt's account is in depth and critical of the 1) Jewish leadership; the 2) Nazis's incredible casual attitude toward murder in wartime; the 3) esteemed but lame defense attorney and the 4) outrageous prosecution lawyer. The leadership in post-war Germany is lame probably because when it comes to pursuing war time criminals, perhaps since 5,000 of the current 11,000 public employees were Nazis... 'after all they were just following orders.'

Unfortunately, Arendt's critical eye is not sympathetic to anyone. The horror of all the genocide is in comprehensible. How could a nation be so brain washed during and after the tragic events. I am not a German (entirely) but did live in West Germany for 2 years. One of my close German friends, Hans Braun, born in 1950 as was I, related to me his child hood education and parental discussions of the war years. It was a short discussion for Hans when eluding to the times that Hannah discusses, because Hans's parents had absolutely nothing to say of his fathers war stories and Hans' history education had excluded all discussions of the Nazi years. It's no wonder the old Nazis are still around in spirit today.

The new Nazi's take Hannah's work out of context to prove various points that the Jews wanted to be lead around and follow the orders of Nazi Guards and Jewish Leaders. A paragraph taken out of context shows Eichmann as a sympathetic humanitarian and also shows Jewish leaders complicit in their own demise. To this day, the book is a controversial work. When Arendt wrote it, Jewish fury was hard to contain. It's still seems inexplicable that any of this happened in a civilized world, but it did.

This book and the events brought out in it have been the impetous for other books on the subject. This encyclopedic adventure is not exactly a page turner, but it is hard to put down and to put yourself there. The horror will stay with you. The german people were all complicit in these horrific events [It is true, according to, that the Nazi war machine kept many things secret from it's own populous).

Initial attitudes spiraled into unthinkable patterns of thought in the minds of the "ordinary" germans. An example, one of many, is described by Arendt regarding the defense attornies summation. This summation suggest terminalogy that de-humanizes the concept of killing to be an medical procedure.

I think that anti-semites have alway been with us, from the time of Assyrians, Babylonians and the pharoahs to the present day. The events of world war II described in the "typical" inhumanity shown in this book, will keep you thinking how these events might have played out differently. Maybe if the Germans had actually traded 1 million Jews for 10,000 trucks for Nazi Germany in 1937, events would have played out in ways that other nations could not deny. When the killings and plans for extermination of March of 1942 where being reported by civilian germans to Jewish organizations and American Counsellor official in Switzerland.... American, Jewish and British recipients of these reports seemed to be incredible and thus were not acted upon for 9 months. The reports were highly credible, comming from Polish and Swiss businessmen. Dozens of people in this chain of intellegence dropped the ball and millions more were killed, perhaps because of bureaucratic slowness. Our world should have taken notice.

Arendt tries to describe the magnitude of human suffering and 'mankind's inhumanity to man.' Her's was an arduous task and so must be taken seriously. Read and learn the unthinkable about Eichmann and his ilk. The Germans still owes the world an explanation....they (the german people) can be thankful North Korea does not judge them-- all my Germans friends would still be in concentration camps for the sins of there fathers.

7 people found this helpful

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StefanoS.

La banalita' del male e la banalita' della traduzione italiana

Reviewed in Italy on December 1, 2016

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Sul contenuto di questo libro non c'è nulla da dire o da aggiungere a quanto già detto da altri, nel corso degli anni. Tanto scioccante quanto informativo, questo grande lavoro della Arendt (che comunque lesse e pescò a piene mani dal monumentale "La distruzione degli ebrei d'Europa" di Raul Hilberg per tutta la parte storico-documentativa) cerca di rispondere con sguardo acuto e originale e scevro da pregiudizi alla più disturbante domanda del XX secolo: COME è potuto accadere l'Olocausto. Non "perché", ma "come". E a poco a poco ci rendiamo conto che gente normale, che si occupa soltanto del suo lavoro e che non è motivata da una particolare aggressività, può, da un momento all'altro, rendersi complice di un processo di distruzione semplicemente rifiutandosi di "pensare". Cioè mettendo a tacere la propria coscienza rifiutando di porsi domande sul senso delle proprie azioni.
L'immagine luciferina, scaltra e intrigante che noi ci facciamo del Male è spesso sbagliata. E' un modo per non dichiararci sconfitti o messi in pericolo dalla semplice e banale e ben più diffusa stupidità umana. Perché dal resoconto della Arendt sul processo ad Eichmann è questo che emerge: c'è uno stupido seduto di fronte a noi sul banco degli imputati. Non un Ubermensch o un prototipo della "razza superiore", ma soltanto un burocrate idiota, cieco e fedele come un cane al proprio padrone. E che tra l'altro nei giorni del processo si era anche preso il raffreddore e spesso tirava su col naso e si fermava per pulirsi gli occhiali. Siamo lontani mille miglia dall'immaginario cinematografico nazista dell'SS folgorante, alto, biondo e fatto d'acciaio, stretto nella propria uniforme nera. La normalità di Adolf Eichmann è molto più terrificante di tutte le atrocità commesse.

Detto questo, due righe veloci sulla traduzione italiana e sul perché ho invece scelto di leggere il libro in originale.
Mai guardare troppo da vicino certe traduzioni: come le dive sul viale del tramonto, non reggono il primissimo piano. Anche un saggio importante come questo, pubblicato in Italia da un grande editore come Feltrinelli, circola da decenni nell'edizione italica in una versione approssimativa se non addirittura fuorviante.
Un esempio su tutti. Quando la Arendt descrive la testimonianza del signor Dinoor a metà del capitolo 14 (forse la testimonianza più spettacolare dell'intero processo, perché culminò con un collasso e uno svenimento), nell'edizione italiana Feltrinelli si legge che, incalzato dal procuratore Hausner, il testimone "deluso e probabilmente offeso, perse la sua foga e non rispose ad alcuna domanda". Nell'originale invece è scritto che il signor Dinoor, "probably deeply wounded, fainted and answered no more questions" (pag. 224 ed. Penguin Classics). La traduzione italiana, insomma, trasforma un traumatizzato che sviene in aula in un semplice permaloso, che si zittisce perché gli rubano la scena.
Gettata l'edizione Feltrinelli nel bidone della carta da riciclare, ho riempito il buco lasciato sullo scaffale mettendo al suo posto il libro in lingua originale dell'edizione Penguin.

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Toby P Philpott

A Controversial but Worthwhile Account of the Eichmann Trial

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2021

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The first thing to say about Arendt is that she is very readable. However, I think her sub-title did her a grave disservice and raised hackles possibly needlessly.

She appears to have been unimpressed with Eichmann as an individual and does not see in him the “master villain” that the prosecution sought to depict. To her mind Eichmann was an unimpressive functionary even if his role was ultimately evil. She was also unimpressed with the conduct of the prosecution and felt that the Judges (with whom she was impressed) came to the right judgement despite the prosecution case.

She possibly did herself the greatest harm in suggesting that the Jewish Councils with whom Eichmann and others involved in the “Final Solution” perhaps collaborated more in the destruction of European Jewry than they should have done out of self-interest. There are ironic parallels with recent events and the behaviour of certain so-called “Anti-Zionists” towards Zionists amongst the diaspora Jewish community.

I’ve read this after Deborah Lipstadt’s rather more balanced view of Eichmann and the trial. I would recommend that Lipstadt’s book “The Eichmann Trial” is read after this book.

8 people found this helpful

Carol Long

Fantastic analysis of a complex issue.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2021

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I first read this book over 30 years ago and found it heavy going even then. But a book discussing the Eichmann trial, with all it's complexities, was never going to be a light read. Unlike other reviewers I did not view Arendt as a "self hating Jew", but an incisive thinker who was not afraid to weigh up the evidence (all from public record) and openly and honestly discuss them in this book. That's not to say that I agreed with everything she stated, but she certainly made me think about the notions of guilt and innocence and personal, as apposed to state, responsibilty.

If you want a book that only describes the monstrous deeds of the Holocaust, as well as Eichmann's role in it, this is not the book for you. Arendt discusses not just Eichmann's role, but the role other people and organisations had in this "catastrophe". A discussion some people, even to this day, find unpalatable.

I am glad that I have read this book again, as with age (and I hope maturity), I got much more from it than I did all those years ago. In the political climate of 2021 there are parallels with 1920's and 1930's Europe and the rise of populist politicians who don't allow the facts to 'get in the way of a good story'. Let's hope the lessons learned all those years ago are not forgotten and history does not repeat itself!

24 people found this helpful

oudodou

Astounding book, bizarre Kindle typos

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2012

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Arendt's perceptive take on the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem is not the definitive study of the Holocaust, but it is an essential text for anyone studying or interested in this period of history. In seeking to blur the distinction insisted upon by the Israeli court between good and evil you can see why Arendt's perspective was, and still is, so controversial: the portrayal of Eichmann as a dull and at times ludicrous administrator turns the finger of blame back towards his accusers, with the questions of complicity in the actions of the Nazi state astounding and thought-provoking. Moreover, Arendt tackles even the most contentious issues with an engaging style and a wry humour which highlights the absurdity of so many facets of human nature.

Given the importance of this book, it is a shame that Penguin seem to have entrusted the transcription of the Kindle version to a 16 year-old exchange student on a work-experience placement. The typos are frequent, glaring, at times jarring, and on several occasions involve the omission of whole lines of text or quotation marks, altering the meanings of sentences. You can tell no one has bothered to check the text through because Hitler's title is written as "Fiirher" more or less throughout. I would therefore advise any prospective customers to definitely buy this book, but to get it in paperback unless these issues are resolved.

44 people found this helpful

DaveR

Could be a lot more detailed but shows the automaton of Eichmann

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2019

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This is a summary of the Eichmann trial. The banal everyday face of evil. Eichmann was an automaton dancing to a pre-programmed tune without care and without humanity. He came in, did a 9 to 5, and murdered thousands of people whose sole crime was their birth. The book is a very, very short synopsis and I was expecting a lot more into the nitty gritty of the "trial" (it was a show trial, yes, but he got what he deserved). This is more like a very brief introduction but as a summary it contains a lot of information. I was hoping to find a lot more into the psychology of the automaton of Eichmann; he wasn't a man but he wasn't a robot. He was an unthinking beuarocratic cog. A piece of machinery more than a human. Maybe he was the first man-machine who did as he was programmed without thinking and without intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

The lack of serious detail has resulted in the low 3 star sore. This is just an abstract, a synopsis, of a very very complex issue that I feel is relevant today. Eichmann was a flesh and blood man-machine that danced to a pre-composed tune with deadly results for hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The lack of in-depth exploration of his psychology and indeed psychiatry is a huge letdown in this otherwise great book - hence the 3 stars (which I feel bad about giving :/ )

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