‘Neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’ is how historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt had described Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer in charge of the mass deportation of millions of Jews to the extermination camps across Nazi-occupied Europe. Arendt had reported on the trial of Eichmann, and described it in her seminal work Eichmannin Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The subtitle of the book has achieved independent notoriety, with the expression ‘banality of evil’ often being employed to describe the “innumerable men in the federal and state administrations and, generally, in public office whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime”.
Normal people, evil deeds
The expression was coined to describe the behaviour of the proverbial “cautious bureaucrat” whose “deeds were monstrous” and yet the doer “quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous”. The description was apt not merely for Nazi-era bureaucrats but also for the many “good Germans” who stood by haplessly as millions were sent to death. Furthermore, the very decade that witnessed the barbarism of the Holocaust witnessed the profound dereliction of the British government in famine afflicted India or the purges in erstwhile USSR.
These were well-oiled states that allowed their individual members to acquiesce their personal responsibility to allow for the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. What is further beleaguering is the realisation that many of the people who had to partake in these cruelties were perfectly civil and courteous in private life. By all accounts, Eichmann was a family man. His last words were reportedly: “I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We’ll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.”
During his trial, half a dozen psychologists, who had examined Eichmannn, had submitted that “his whole psychological outlook, his attitude toward his wife and children, mother and father, brothers, sisters, and friends,” was “not only normal but most desirable”. Another contemporaneous figure said that he was “a man with very positive ideas.” His last moments were not the wrangling of some deranged lunatic but rather a modest drink of dry wine. Not exactly the bloodlust of a psychopath. But the ‘banality of evil’ was not meant to be a mere insight into one man but rather a look into what drove hundreds and thousands of administrative officials to engage in what they knew would lead to the death of millions.
During his trial, Eichmann had referred back to Immanuel Kant’s idea of a categorical imperative in defence of his actions, and argued that that he had always done his “duty” without reference to other considerations. Arendt was shocked at the rather tenuous use of an enlightenment concept of ethics in defence of a horrifying genocide. In Arendt’s understanding Eichmann “was not stupid”. It was “sheer thoughtlessness” not “identical with stupidity” that inclined him to become “one of the greatest criminals of that period”.
A stark contrast to Arendt’s observations, in the book Eichmann Before Jerusalem, the German historian Bettina Stangneth explores another side to the man besides the banal, apparently apolitical administrator, merely working as any other career bureaucrat.
Through a careful consideration of the audiotapes of Eichmann’s interviews by the Nazi collaborator and journalist William Sassen, Eichmann is revealed as a sworn ideologue strongly committed to National Socialist dogma. He expresses neither remorse nor guilt for his role in the Holocaust. This is no simple bureaucratic officer merely following distasteful orders but a radically extremist functionary living behind the mask of an unglamorous official.
These notions of otherwise good Germans who simply followed orders takes a particularly stark appraisal in our own day and age.
Here and now
The incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump has advocated for the ownership of the Gazan enclave by the Americans, and has proposed its transformation into an “international city”. He has in the past made remarks about “cleaning out” Gaza and has suggested that Gazans “should not be going back to Gaza” since it has been “very unlucky for them”, where they have “lived like hell”.
He has proposed that Gaza could be made “a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” as it is a “phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather”, and has called it effectively a “Riviera” of West Asia that “could be so magnificent”. Trump said the U.S. would play the lead role in this real estate development that would make Gaza into “an international, unbelievable place”. But it would not have the Palestinians getting back to Gaza; most of them would be relocated in other countries, while “representatives from all over the world would live there”. Under his plan, Trump said that Gazans “would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region”.
Trump’s words echo the “sheer thoughtlessness” that Arendt spoke of with regards to Eichmann. It is not some sadistic act with malice writ large but rather something done with the sheer bluster of someone hoping to make their mark on the pages of history.
There are many who also feel that Palestinians as a whole must pay for Hamas’ crimes. This too reverberates a pernicious idea of the ‘blood libel’ that was affixed onto the Jews as a whole by bigoted Christians — an idea which became the fount of the hate that allowed for the callous murder of millions of innocents during the Holocaust. The doctrine of collective guilt necessarily leads to collective punishment, and with it a denial of the autonomy that individuals have in the face of social control. Human history is littered with such mass violations of innocents lives, and in all cases a political machinery manned by bureaucrats and administrators becomes requisite to eliminate those fellow human lives.
Whence and wherefore
It must be noted that under international law, attempts to forcibly transfer a population from occupied territory are strictly prohibited. It must also be mentioned that 15 months of sustained fighting have left the Gaza Strip, largely uninhabitable, with nigh 50,000 people having been killed and nearly twice as many injured. It must be pointed out that it was the Democrats, who had allowed President Biden to provision Israel with massive arms sales, to continue its war with Hamas.
These observations are important to remind us that the many bureaucrats and officials working in these disparate nation states are faced with the prospect of “following orders”. They can as Eichmann did, choose to further their own careers while forcing out hapless victims out of their homes in order to make way for condominiums and casinos, with the best prospect of the victims’ return being in the form of factotums employed to serve the very people who forced them out in the first place. The bureaucrats and officers in charge of these programmes that are being put forth must judge for themselves how they wish to conduct in the face of these “orders” from high above.
These choices are not easy, particularly for those who still retain a conscience while being employed while still having to worry about their own survival.
While the idea that so many individuals who had participated in the Holocaust were merely “following orders” came under much criticism, many could not imagine what sort of resistance a meagre bureaucrat could offer against the state, particularly a dictatorial one.
Responding to the criticism in a speech titled ‘Personal responsibility under dictatorship’, Arendt argues that an “adult consents where a child obeys”. George Sabine once wrote that “even the most despotic government cannot hold a society together by sheer force”.
Arendt similarly recalls the Madisonian dictum that even the worst of tyrannies “rest on consent”. Arendt argues that in such a situation it is “better to suffer than to do wrong” even when doing wrong is the law.
By suffering through the rejection of a law that is evil, one might in Arendt’s words recover a “measure of self-confidence and even pride” and “regain what former times called the dignity or the honour” of “being human”.
Published – February 12, 2025 08:30 am IST