Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a Desk Murderer [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Studying the motivations of those who actively participated in the Holocaust and trying to understand them is no easy task. There have been many attempts to do so ranging from a simplistic 'they must have been monsters' view to 'they were victims of their circumstances'. But neither captures the true complexity of interacting causes of any one person's behaviour nor the slippery-slope aspect of increasing brutalisation through participation. Sadly for humanity's peace of mind, there is probably no simple explanation for why anyone actively participates in genocide - if there were we should have been able to prevent its regular reccurence since 1945. However, David Cesarani goes a long way to reaching the most balanced view I've yet read to date.

The book assumes that you are reasonably familiar with the facts and chronology so a novice of the era would probably struggle to keep up with the narrative. Cesarani takes you through Eichmann's life until his kidnapping by Israeli agents in Argentina at a fair pace, occasionally skimming events that you might have wanted covered in greater detail. But this is not a book about what happened - it's looking at Eichmann the man, and so the author rightly (in my view) does not dwell on the untold misery and horror that he inflicted from afar (and witnessed on occasion at close quarters) on millions of innocent people. He then goes through his trial in Israel in great detail giving as much attention to the trial as to Eichmann himself. It becomes clear that the trial needed to serve the interests of the State just as much as the interests of Justice, but nevertheless, the verdict is no surprise to anyone except perhaps Eichmann himself. And here lies the clue to the real man within. Eichmann lived a life so full of self-delusion for so long that he found it impossible to separate the spark of real humanity left within his corrupted soul from all the conceited self-justifications, lies, propaganda and, ultimately, anti-semitism that had so taken over his life and his sense of Self.

The book ends by assessing Eichmann's impact on history and the debate over the Nazi Final Solution. He takes time to argue against Hannah Arendt's views as expounded in her book of the trial (The Banality of Evil), claiming she was only interested in pushing her personal theory, and because of the huge publicity she achieved, how she warped the ongoing debate. This book certainly addresses this and puts Eichmann back into a more balanced, and in my view, more realistic place.

Cesarani leaves you with a view that although Eichmann was made by his circumstances (he could never have become a genocidaire without Hitler's Nazi state), he was ultimately personally responsible for allowing himself to be sucked into the machinery of genocide. In other words, Eichmann started out as normal a person as you or I, but he chose the path he trod - and, quite rightly, his end was that reserved for a monster.

Cesarani insightfully and comprehensively reinterprets Eichmann's life and career in the context of the huge wave of research on the Nazi era since his trial and execution in the 1960s, perhaps most particularly Christopher Browning's brilliant 'Ordinary Men'.

The Eichmann who emerges is neither the cipher for Arendt's totalitarian man, the spider at the centre of the Holocaust web of the Israeli prosecutors, nor the glorified transport clerk of his own defense. Ceserani's Eichmann is demonstrably human rather than a grotesque caricature, but is no more edifying because of that humanisation. His normal (in the context of time and place) upbringing, ambition and his dispassionate efficiency are thoroughly described and analysed by Cesarani.

Like 'Ordinary Men'and Richard Rhodes' rather under-rated study on the Einsatzgruppen, 'Masters of Death', the iterative process by which the Holocaust evolved and the involvement of 'normal' people in barbaric acts is perhaps even more sobering than the master plan view which was prevalent at the time of Eichmann's trial.

Well written and reasoned, this is a highly recommended and valuable addition to research on the Nazi era and places Eichmann in context to that era.

The problem with all books dealing with evil people is that they begin with the assumption of exceptionalism: that the mass murderer is an exception. The 20th Century, if not all recorded history, should have taught us that this is not so. The Mongols Ghengis Khan led in their slaughters were no more inherently evil than Eichmann or the Soviet executioner who won an award for shooting several thousand people in a few days.

Cesarani does a good job of presenting Eichmann as an ordinary man seeking advancement and prestige within a society that saw nothing wrong with murdering millions. Hannah Arendt's characterization of Eichmann as a dim-wit was nothing but an intellectual's refusal to acknowledge that the Germans in their bloodlust were no different than the Soviets, Communist Chinese or other societies that considered murder and enslavement a normal part of the exercise of power. (It should be remembered that Stalin and Mao each murdered more of their own citizens than the total of all murdered by the Germans. Stalin and Mao also enslaved hundreds of millions more people than the Germans. These have always been inconvenient facts for left-leaning intellectuals to deal with, thus their propensity to attempt rendering the German experience as unique.)

Cesarani traces every aspect of Eichmann's life, sometimes to the point of dullness. The ultimate story is that Eichmann wasn't any different than any of his peers in Germany, the Soviet Union or what would become Communist China. In Germany, it is estimated that about 500,000 people were at one time or another in the extermination of Jews and other groups, not counting their Ukrainian, Polish, French and other European helpers. Eichmann held an important position in this apparatus, organizing and administering much of the system that gathered and delivered Jewish victims to the place the Germans had designated for their cruel deaths.

Cesarani successfully "humanizes" Eichmann as a man who could spend his work hours plotting the deliberate enslavement and murder of millions simply because they were Jewish and literally go home to be a typical husband and father. It is that part of Eichmann and nearly all the other state-sanctioned murderers like him through the ages that is so disturbing. To them, slaving and murder was an ordinary part of their lives. For many today, it still is: just look at the recent experience in the Balkans, the Sudan and elsewhere.

The ultimate repugnancy of Eichmann is that he was the exception in that he was tried and hanged. Of the estimated 500,000 Germans who are estimated to have participated in the murder of the Jews, very few were punished. Most went on to live the normal lives their victims were denied. The same is true of the killers in the former Soviet Union, China and elsewhere in the 20th Century. Such crimes and the criminals who commit them are too easily forgotten. Cesarani is to be congratulated for once again reminding us that ordinary men and women can embody the most horrible evil.

Jerry