Eichmann in Jerusalem

Arendt introduces the moral paradox created by Hitler’s government: legality and criminality were reversed, so that acting “normally” meant acting criminally while upholding normal morality meant violating the law of the state. This inversion meant that, whenever Eichmann sought explanations or justifications for his actions, in fact everything around him pushed him toward criminal evil; as such, he would have needed to be “exceptional” to disobey orders by acting morally. To the psychiatrists who evaluated him, it seems, Eichmann is not “normal” because he possesses the usual capacity to discern between good and evil; he is “normal” because he blindly followed orders, conformed to the Nazi common wisdom, and refused to think for himself.

The prosecution refuses to consider him “normal,” however, because they want to show that he had the “base motives” required by the indictment; while moral and legal codes of action were switched under the Third Reich, the judges continue to think in moral terms, since the notion that the law should necessarily uphold morality stands at “the very foundations of their profession.” “The greatest moral and even legal challenge” posed by Eichmann’s obvious guilt is that he managed to violate basic moral principles precisely by carrying out the law to its fullest extent, and the court evades the question of how to deal with legal regimes that go awry, becoming wildly detached from their intended function.

One of Arendt’s central issues with the Jerusalem trial was that it deprived Eichmann of due process. Because it was inconceivable that the prosecution could lose no matter how much evidence Servatius piled up, this seems like an enormous tactical error on Israel’s part, since it hurt the trial’s credibility (and bolstered the case for trying crimes like Eichmann’s before an international court). While it likely made the show trial much more spectacular, it also revealed deep biases in Israel’s judicial system and demonstrated that, structurally (if not in terms of the judges), the “court of the victors” had depressingly little interest in genuinely seeking truth and upholding justice.

The “witnesses could not be heard” because most were war criminals in their own right, so were either imprisoned or would have been subject to prosecution themselves if they tried to testify in Jerusalem. Likewise, the Israeli archives were understandably biased toward the evidence sought by the prosecution, and Servatius had to operate alone, facing Hausner and his team of assistants.

Arendt introduces the moral paradox created by Hitler’s government: legality and criminality were reversed, so that acting “normally” meant acting criminally while upholding normal morality meant violating the law of the state. This inversion meant that, whenever Eichmann sought explanations or justifications for his actions, in fact everything around him pushed him toward criminal evil; as such, he would have needed to be “exceptional” to disobey orders by acting morally. To the psychiatrists who evaluated him, it seems, Eichmann is not “normal” because he possesses the usual capacity to discern between good and evil; he is “normal” because he blindly followed orders, conformed to the Nazi common wisdom, and refused to think for himself.

The prosecution refuses to consider him “normal,” however, because they want to show that he had the “base motives” required by the indictment; while moral and legal codes of action were switched under the Third Reich, the judges continue to think in moral terms, since the notion that the law should necessarily uphold morality stands at “the very foundations of their profession.” “The greatest moral and even legal challenge” posed by Eichmann’s obvious guilt is that he managed to violate basic moral principles precisely by carrying out the law to its fullest extent, and the court evades the question of how to deal with legal regimes that go awry, becoming wildly detached from their intended function.

One of Arendt’s central issues with the Jerusalem trial was that it deprived Eichmann of due process. Because it was inconceivable that the prosecution could lose no matter how much evidence Servatius piled up, this seems like an enormous tactical error on Israel’s part, since it hurt the trial’s credibility (and bolstered the case for trying crimes like Eichmann’s before an international court). While it likely made the show trial much more spectacular, it also revealed deep biases in Israel’s judicial system and demonstrated that, structurally (if not in terms of the judges), the “court of the victors” had depressingly little interest in genuinely seeking truth and upholding justice.

The “witnesses could not be heard” because most were war criminals in their own right, so were either imprisoned or would have been subject to prosecution themselves if they tried to testify in Jerusalem. Likewise, the Israeli archives were understandably biased toward the evidence sought by the prosecution, and Servatius had to operate alone, facing Hausner and his team of assistants.