An Analysis Of Hannah Arendt 's ' The Eichmann Case ' Essay

‘Is Eichmann a rotten, soiled and evil man, and were his motivations boring, mundane and obvious?’ Why did Eichmann kill so many Jews if he ‘supposedly’ no real hate or motivation to do it?

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

The first chapter of Lying About Hitler examines the challenges to objectivity that surfaces in the court case between David Irving and Debra Lipstadt. Evans was requested to participate due to his objectivity, however, impartiality within the field of History comes under scrutiny. Evans examines what it means to history and its importance to the court case. The trial transforms into a study of whether the Holocaust had been depicted truthfully or had objectivity created our modern notion. Irving’s belief of preconceived notions and opinions corrupting studies in the field, if true, would discredit many historians’ works. Lipstadt believes that Irving’s anti-Semite sentiments are the cause of him misrepresenting and falsifying sources. Evans

The Eichmann trial reveals a lot about the strengths and limitations of the “the trial” to achieve justice in such cases. The reason of a trial is to render justice; even the ethical of underlying motives, as mentioned in the novel, “the making of a record of the Hitler regime which the withstand the test of history… Nuremburg Trials, can only detract the laws main business: to weigh the charges brought against the accused, to render judgement, and to mete out due punishment” (253). The judgement in the Eichmann case, whose first two sections had been written in respond to the better cause idea as it was changed into expanded both inside and outside the out room, could not have been clearer in this respect. As proven in the novel, it states

Arendt simply points out that in order for total terror to be inflicted the Nazis had to do away with all opposition. The lack of opposition would give the Nazis, perhaps, a sense of security while they executed millions of people.

You may not remember me but I asked the first question of how long you were in the concentration camps, I am blonde and tall and I was sitting in the front row. I want you to know that taking your time and effort to educate us is a very important thing to everyone at Medea. You talking about the horrors of the Nazis concentration camps I expect is hard for you, but the fact that you open up what you have inside and let all your feelings toward this topic out is amazing. I recently had my bar mitzvah and I had the Torah portion concerning the topic Emor which included the rules and laws of the death penalty and I included Adolf Eichmann in my speech. When you were talking about the execution of Eichmann I knew word for word what you were talking

efficiently. Arendt argues that Eichmann was thoughtless and that possessing the trait of thoughtlessness contributes to evil

Because this tribunal values the sanctity of human life above all other values, the prosecution brings Fritz Haber to the bar of justice to prove his guilt in crimes against humanity. We advocate this stance because Fritz Haber played a decisive role in the advocating for and manufacturing of deadly war gases.

Further, his motives were also banal: ordinary, trite and intrinsically non-criminal. He was ready to do anything to advance his career in the Nazi bureaucratic grades. One of the most astonishing things about him was that anti-Semitism was not his foremost motive. Arendt chose to believe Eichmann when he claimed not to harbor “ill feelings against his victims.” (Arendt) Nonetheless, a lack of motive did not inhibit his fearsome efficiency, insomuch as the murder of the Jews called for planning and the carrying out of the whole administration, state and party. The other side of banality refers to the activities that produced such evil. These activities were not murderous in themselves. Merely office work such as organizing transport, deciding how many Jews should be deported Eichmann knew that the Jews were to be killed, and how they were to be killed. Yet Arendt’s emphasis was that “he [Eichmann]…never realized what he was doing.” (Arendt). Namely, he did not connect his activities to their eventual consequences. Arendt identifies such a lack of imagination and the inability to adopt another’s viewpoint as “a curious, quite authentic inability to think”

This event has oftentimes been conceived as a revolt against reason, the ultimate example of the “irrational,” designed and executed by the pathologically insane. But if reason was the subject of the revolt, it was also an associate, a dialectic so unusually rational that it could abrogate all the traditional bounds of morality. The Holocaust was an attack against morals, an attack against human rights, and attack against our dignity.

My position on the matter is that the international community is its own territory and since the victims and perpetrators all live in that community, Eichmann should have been tried by an international court. Israel should have detained Eichmann until an international tribunal was created to accomplish the task of seeking justice. Arendt argues that establishing an international tribunal would have been difficult, however I argue it would not have been impossible. The Israeli government was so focused on showing their domestic power and exacting vengeance that they did not consider the principle elements and goals of a criminal trial such as innocent until proven guilty, only putting the accused on trial for crimes they committed, unbiased assessment of the accused and clearly defining legal concepts. An international tribunal would have had the proper jurisdiction to take on the trial and they would have addressed the crimes committed on all those affected, not just the Jewish community, as the war was a crime against all of humanity. The international tribunal would not simply comprise of the winners putting the losers on trial. The focus of the trial wouldn’t be on revenge, but rather justice for the international

Arendt was very judgmental of Eichmann because she claimed that he was unable to think for himself and had the tendency to obey orders and conform without critical evaluation of his actions. She further asserted that throughout Eichmann’s life he was always trying to define himself and that he ended up joining the S.S. purely out of coincidence, “… it was like being swallowed up by the Party against all expectations and without previous decision”. When it came to the final solution of the Jewish question, Eichmann acted in a kind of “Pontius Pilate” manner . Here, Arendt insists that Eichmann willingly and consciously followed the solution of the elite Civil Service of deporting Jews into concentration camps and then killing them and that it was at this moment that he made the moral choice to remain in these “bloody matters”. Moreover, when the Israeli government provided psychologists to examine Eichmann, they found no trace of mental illness and no evidence of abnormal personality, “… half a dozen psychiatrists had certified him as normal…” .

Hannah Arendt’s Human Condition is crammed with distinctions: between labour, work, and action. In this essay I will talk more about the human action, the uniqueness of individuality, and how the actions draw human life story. Actions are unique and unrepeatable. Action is not what they do, but what they did, and how meaningful it is. Action defines the unique individuality. “To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin, to set something into motion”(pg 177). When you stand up and do something different than others around you, and the action you do is telling something about you, this is called to be an action. Action is public and it’s creating something that is lasting within the world. For Hannah Arendt action is one of the most important things in human nature. In fact, your actions will shape yourself and give a description about your biography. Action is the most unique thing that human nature has. As human we all have many things in common, but we all act in different ways. Every single being is unique in his or her way of acting. It is funny how we all are living our lives but at the same time we all are acting. In some point we can say living life is equal of acting, and being a human is equal of being an actresses. But as we know every play beside an actress has an author too. Who is an author of human life-story? Is it us? Are we the actor or the author of our own actions? Those are the questions that will be answered on this essay.

in 1789 when the French revolution abolished the rule of the first estate and established collective sovereignty for its citizens (Britannica, 3). It is evident to note that as societies became increasingly heterogeneous, a cross-class alliance forms, thus disempowering actors who stood external from the public sphere such as women and people of colour. Nonetheless, economic power silences the marginalized (Guidry and Sawyer, 274). Participating in political ventures appeared to only validate those who belonged to the elite. That is to say, public spheres tend to benefit dominant groups while denying the subordinate groups from debating their needs, objectives and strategies, thus depriving them of fulfilling their zoon politikon.

During the Holocaust, many innocent people were killed at the hands of the German Nazi Party, otherwise known as the Third Reich. Some of the worst war crimes in history were committed during the Holocaust, however not enough of the people who were at fault have been prosecuted. During the Nuremberg trials, 22 Nazi officials were tried for their war crimes, and 10 were sentenced to death by hanging. In some cases, crimes are so terrible, and people are such threats, that execution is necessary. Unfortunately, these trials took a very long time, and there was quite a large gap in which they had the privilege of leading happy lives that they did not deserve, before they were convicted for their crimes. Many people realized that this was going to be the case for Nazis, and decided to create their own justice. This was the case in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. He was a monstrous leader of the Nazi party, second in command only to Adolf Hitler himself, with the blood of millions on his hands. It is likely that he would have been convicted and sentenced at Nuremberg for his terrible war crimes anyway had he not been assassinated. Although some argued that he only acted the way that he did because of his upbringing by his “eccentric” father, Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination was justified, because he played a key role in organizing and initiating the Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust itself.