Eichmann Before Jerusalem

Introduction

Ever since Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil was published in 1963, every essay on Adolf Eichmann has also been a dialogue with Hannah Arendt. A Jew from Königsberg who had studied philosophy under Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger until National Socialism drove her out of Germany, Arendt went to Jerusalem in 1961 for Eichmann s trial. Like all philosophers, she wanted to understand. But our understanding is always mediated by our context: we bring to the task our own thoughts and experiences and our own images of the past. Hannah Arendt read about Adolf Eichmann in the newspapers for the first time in 1943 at the latest, and eighteen years later she was familiar with all the research on him. What she expected to find in Jerusalem was something she had already described in detail: a diabolical, highly intelligent mass murderer who commanded a kind of horrified fascination, the kind of murderer seen in great works of literature. He was one of the most intelligent of the lot, she wrote in 1960. Anyone who dared to understand him would be taking a great leap toward understanding the Nazis crimes. Am very tempted.

Arendt, a philosopher with a gift for acute observation, was not the only person who was puzzled by Eichmann in the flesh. Regardless of where they came from, almost all the trial observers received the same impression: Eichmann-in-Jerusalem was a wretched creature, with none of the scintillating, satanic charisma they had expected. The SS Ober­sturmbannführer who had spread fear and terror and death for millions exhausted the observers attention with his endless sentences, and his talk of acting on orders and taking oaths of allegiance. Shouldn't the fact that he was so astoundingly good at doing so have aroused suspicions, even in 1961? Voices of doubt were present, but they were very quiet and not at all popular. The crucial difference between these voices and the trial observers was that the

Bettina Stangneth wrote her dissertation on Immanuel Kant and the concept of radical evil. Ever since then she has been researching a theory of the lie and has written widely on anti-Semitism in eighteenth-century and National Socialist philosophy. In 2000 she was awarded first prize by the Philosophical Political Academy, Cologne, and she received the German NDR nonfiction book award for Eichmann Before Jerusalem in 2011. Bettina Stangneth is an independent philosopher and lives in Hamburg, Germany.

[An] extraordinarily moving book. The Independent (London)

[Stangneth s] comprehensive research brings the man and his circumstances firmly back into focus. . . . No future discussion will be able to confront the Eichmann phenomenon and its wider political implications without reference to this book. The New York Times Book Review

Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, engagingly written. Bettina Stangneth confronts Hannah Arendt s notion of the banality of evil with important new evidence and nuanced insight, permitting a fresh and informed reassessment of this riven debate. Timothy Ryback
 
Well-written and impressively well-researched. . . . Stangneth, acting more like an investigative journalist than an academic philosopher, does an excellent job in tracing the odyssey of [numerous] archival records, which are scattered across various continents. . . . [She] adds many new, surprising details to our picture of Eichmann before the trial. The Wall Street Journal

Remarkable. . . . Eichmann called himself a small cog in the Nazi war machine, but Stangneth draws on recently released documents to show that he was anything but. The New Yorker
 
[A] brilliant book, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued. . . . Only now, with the publication of [Eichmann Before Jerusalem] . . . can we see how completely Arendt (and later historians) were hoodwinked by Eichmann. The Daily Telegraph (London)
 
A detailed portrait. The New York Times
 
Important. . . . An extraordinary book. . . . Through unprecedented granular detail, Stangneth unearths exactly what Arendt obscured with her banality thesis. . . . The meticulous quality of her research and her distinctive moral outrage make the journey enthralling. . . . Stangneth presents an Eichmann from whom we cannot avert our eyes. The Daily Beast
 
Stangneth s absorbing account of his years in exile . . . adds considerably to our knowledge of Eichmann. . . . [She