Eichmann and the Holocaust

"Nothing's as hot when you're eating it as when it's cooking." The failure of that piece of conventional wisdom to predict the Holocaust, to predict the way things actually went down, cuts to the awful core of what those men--bad men, but not monsters, because that lets us all off the hook (how terrifying is it to speculate that some of them may even have been good men?)--did in the same way that Eichmann the man, the cliche-spouter, the bureaucrat, the banal evildoer, does. This happened because of our ability to keep going--to filter out, to play through, to overcome and triumph. It happened because millions of regular Germans kept their heads down and focused on what they could comprehend, not the enormity before which words fail. show more The capacity to reduce existence to platitudes--"just doing my job", "there's a war on", "Elders of Zion", "it's worse in Russia"--is the only way you can reconcile the obvious human drives toward altruism and cooperation with the Final Solution. Sometimes it feels like platitudes are also the only way we can understand it, and we should quit trying to stain the silence with words. But Arendt's words show us just how culpable we all are--and that's vital. This is a collection of excerpts from the complete Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil, and I don't know why you wouldn't just read the whole thing, but Eichmann and the Holocaust is still a great book. show less

This is an abridgment of Hannah Arendt's classic Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Having not read the larger work, but having been taught the point of this book decades ago, it was a short, interesting read in Penguin's "Great Ideas" series. Eichmann's character and motivations, his history and culpability, et cetera, are detailed in this work. The banality isn't evil, it's that this apparently banal guy countenanced, condoned, and perpetrated evil. This should be essential reading, now that many are questioning the Holocaust.

An excellent and detailed description of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, probably the most prominent and well-known figure behind the Holocaust. Arendt's description of the thinking of the war criminal amplifies the character of the man who felt no remorse, no shame over what he had done. She describes vividly the psychology of a narcissist whose only motivations are how he is perceived by others, his only regrets centering around himself and his aims and not around anymore code or remorse for what he did.
Arendt's writing style can be difficult. I found myself often wishing to re-write many of her sentences, breaking them down into more manageable and easily followed lengths. Her use of multiple dependent clauses and frequent parenthetical show more explanations could easily have been better edited for a more readable style. In spite of this, however, the book itself tells a vivid story free of judgmentalism and pontification. show less

An excellent and detailed description of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, probably the most prominent and well-known figure behind the Holocaust. Arendt's description of the thinking of the war criminal amplifies the character of the man who felt no remorse, no shame over what he had done. She describes vividly the psychology of a narcissist whose only motivations are how he is perceived by others, his only regrets centering around himself and his aims and not around anymore code or remorse for what he did.
Arendt's writing style can be difficult. I found myself often wishing to re-write many of her sentences, breaking them down into more manageable and easily followed lengths. Her use of multiple dependent clauses and frequent parenthetical show more explanations could easily have been better edited for a more readable style. In spite of this, however, the book itself tells a vivid story free of judgmentalism and pontification. show less

It was sheer thoughtlessness that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period.

In her own words: "And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations - as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world - we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang."

A truly memorable book. So sad . . .