Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem offered a controversial new interpretation of the nature of evil as perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Arendt argued that evil could result from the unthinking actions of ordinary people, an idea that first provoked widespread condemnation and debate but eventually won general support.
In 1963, political theorist Hannah Arendt stunned the intellectual world with her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official who had been responsible for transporting Jews to death camps during World War II. Arendt suggested that far from being a monster, Eichmann was instead “terrifyingly normal.”
Arendt first published a series of articles in The New Yorker
Arendt’s supporters, including American writer Mary McCarthy, argued that far from minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust, Arendt believed that it was possible that “ordinary” persons could perpetrate the Holocaust, thereby making it even more horrifying than if it had been the work of sadistic monsters. One supporter even argued that Arendt had shown that there exists an Eichmann in every person, but Arendt disavowed this claim in the postscript to the revised edition of Eichmann in Jerusalem (1964).
Arendt does not argue that every person has the potential to act like Eichmann but that those who do not think for themselves are in danger of becoming accomplices to evil acts in times of disordered morality, as when a country’s leaders are dedicated to evil. Drawing on the work she had done for her acclaimed study of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Eichmann that Arendt characterizes was an ordinary man who had to scramble to make his way as a sales representative until he was invited to join the Nazis. In Arendt’s account, Eichmann was not an ideological or fanatical Nazi; he did not have strong views about Jews. Arendt’s Eichmann was also a joiner and a follower. He apparently liked to follow orders, although as Arendt shows, he would not follow just anyone’s orders. At the end of the war, when Heinrich Himmler, Eichmann’s superior, issued orders to curtail the extermination program, Eichmann resisted on the grounds that Himmler was going against the wishes of a higher authority, Adolf Hitler
In distinguishing between Hitler and Himmler, one could argue that Eichmann was developing individual judgment, but to Arendt, he was primarily caught up in following the law of the land without questioning the morality of that law. Similarly, Arendt criticizes the Jewish leaders of the time for, in effect, accepting the morality of Nazi law by agreeing to negotiate within the framework of that law. Jewish leaders, in Arendt’s account, helped the Nazis by drawing up lists of Jews for deportation, hoping to save some by sacrificing others and hoping that they could negotiate exceptions. However, by pursuing exceptions, Arendt argues, they were accepting Nazi rule.
Arendt believed that the collapse of morality in Nazi Germany affected both Nazis and Jews—victimizers and victims—alike. The unprecedented crime of the Nazis, she writes, could only have been carried out in an atmosphere of moral inversion in which few people questioned the inversion. When people did question it, lives were saved. She points to the example of German soldier Anton Schmidt and also to the actions of the Danish, one of the few European peoples who effectively worked to save their Jewish population.
Arendt did not set out to “excuse” Eichmann or to minimize the horrors of the Holocaust, nor did she mean to lessen or redirect responsibility for the Holocaust by attributing blame to Jewish leadership. Her aim was to understand what kind of a Germany it took to produce the Holocaust. She concluded that moral collapse and a lack of opposition to a new, immoral order allowed for the Holocaust.
Despite the firestorm of criticism that Eichmann in Jerusalem provoked, by the end of the twentieth century its argument about the nature of evil had become much admired. By the end of the century, “the banality of evil” had become a catchphrase, a part of everyday language. The idea that it does not take monsters to commit evil became a commonplace, and that commonplace was supported by psychological experiments such as those by Stanley Milgram
Arendt and her work on the Holocaust had long been shunned in Israel, but many Israelis had a change of heart; a conference on her work was held in Jerusalem in 1997. She was so praised at this conference that one of the participants worried she was being canonized. In the short term, Eichmann in Jerusalem stimulated further investigation of the Holocaust at a time when Holocaust studies were just beginning. In the long term, the work helped redefine the nature of evil.
-
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking, 1963. Arendt’s classic work on Eichmann as an “ordinary” man. Based on details revealed at his trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. -
Ascheim, Steven E., ed. Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. A collection of papers presented at the 1997 Arendt conference in Jerusalem, including one paper on the early responses to Eichmann in Jerusalem and others analyzing Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil. -
Barnouw, Dagmar. Visible Spaces: Hannah Arendt and the German-Jewish Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Discusses Eichmann in Jerusalem and accompanying controversy. -
Bernstein, Richard J. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1996. Discusses the connections between Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Origins of Totalitarianism. -
May, Derwent. Hannah Arendt. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1986. A brief but good biography of Arendt. -
Sharpe, Barry. Modesty and Arrogance in Judgment: Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999. Discusses Stanley Milgram’s psychology experiments and other later reactions to the Eichmann book, including Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. -
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982. Detailed biography that included a long chapter on Eichmann in Jerusalem. -
_______. Why Arendt Matters. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Arendt’s major biographer argues for the continued relevance of Arendt’s work and calls for moving beyond the “banality of evil” label affixed to her work’s legacy.
Stein Is Killed by the Nazis
Citizens Rescue Danish Jews from Germans
Bonhoeffer Is Executed by the Nazis
Norwegians Execute Nazi Collaborator Quisling
Nazi War Criminals Are Tried at Nuremberg
United Nations Adopts Convention on Genocide
Wiesel’s Night Recalls the Holocaust
Eichmann Is Tried for War Crimes