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Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Ruth Martin, Bettina Stangneth
andrewrobins's review
5.0
I read a lot of WW2 history, and - as is probably going to be the case with most people who tackle this book - approached this work being familiar with Hannah Arendt's writing on the subject, and in particular the phrase "banality of evil". Eichmann as a cog in a big machine, a faceless bureaucrat, shifting around people with the same detachment you'd expect him to ship around any form of cargo. Eichmann not driven by hate or dogma, Eichmann the civil servant, the back office guy keeping his head down and doing his job. Evil rendered banal.
This excellent book demolishes that. It shows that Eichmann was in fact manipulative, self-serving, as ideological, as driven by hatred as the men he worked with both during and after the war. A man riven by a conflict between his pride, his need to cling on to a status "earned" during the years of the holocaust, on one hand, and the need to lay low in South America after the war.
I had always known the story of his abduction by Mossad, and his trial in Jerusalem, and - naturally - had assumed that this had been a case of a long manhunt, of a man who had taken huge care to cover his tracks, a man who stuck to his new identity in order to keep the past at bay. It turns out that this wasn't the case.
Eichmann was, at times, remarkably open about his true identity. Comfortable in his circle of fellow believers, a circle which allowed him to cling on to some semblance of prestige, of rank, the number of people who knew who he really was, and what he had done, was remarkable. His case is an interesting contrast with Mengele, who was, by comparison, obsessive about the need to lay low. Mengele lived till 1979, and even then died in an accident, whereas Eichmann went to the gallows in 1962.
The degree to which fugitive Nazis were able to feel comfortable in Argentina is remarkable. Even after their protector Peron fell from power, this continued. These are things we have known for years, but Stangneth makes it shockingly clear how lethargic the West German government agencies (themselves the post war homes of many men with highly questionable wartime CVs) were, both at home and abroad, in their "pursuit" of war criminals. Eichmann could have been brought to justice the best part of a decade earlier, had there been the slightest inclination amongst those who held the information to do something about it.
This is an excellent, extremely scholarly book. It is amongst the best researched books I have read in a long time. I read it on the Kindle, and was surprised when the book ended showing I was on 51% - the remaining 49% consisting of footnotes and references, which gives you an idea of how meticulously researched it was.
If you are thinking about reading it and only have a casual interest in the subject, you might want to flick through a copy first. An easy read, it is not. A rewarding one, very much so.
In so much as we still care about subjects like this in the modern world (and we should), this is a very important book, both for the insight it gives into Eichmann, as well as the light it casts on the post war reaction to those who committed such horrible crimes.
This excellent book demolishes that. It shows that Eichmann was in fact manipulative, self-serving, as ideological, as driven by hatred as the men he worked with both during and after the war. A man riven by a conflict between his pride, his need to cling on to a status "earned" during the years of the holocaust, on one hand, and the need to lay low in South America after the war.
I had always known the story of his abduction by Mossad, and his trial in Jerusalem, and - naturally - had assumed that this had been a case of a long manhunt, of a man who had taken huge care to cover his tracks, a man who stuck to his new identity in order to keep the past at bay. It turns out that this wasn't the case.
Eichmann was, at times, remarkably open about his true identity. Comfortable in his circle of fellow believers, a circle which allowed him to cling on to some semblance of prestige, of rank, the number of people who knew who he really was, and what he had done, was remarkable. His case is an interesting contrast with Mengele, who was, by comparison, obsessive about the need to lay low. Mengele lived till 1979, and even then died in an accident, whereas Eichmann went to the gallows in 1962.
The degree to which fugitive Nazis were able to feel comfortable in Argentina is remarkable. Even after their protector Peron fell from power, this continued. These are things we have known for years, but Stangneth makes it shockingly clear how lethargic the West German government agencies (themselves the post war homes of many men with highly questionable wartime CVs) were, both at home and abroad, in their "pursuit" of war criminals. Eichmann could have been brought to justice the best part of a decade earlier, had there been the slightest inclination amongst those who held the information to do something about it.
This is an excellent, extremely scholarly book. It is amongst the best researched books I have read in a long time. I read it on the Kindle, and was surprised when the book ended showing I was on 51% - the remaining 49% consisting of footnotes and references, which gives you an idea of how meticulously researched it was.
If you are thinking about reading it and only have a casual interest in the subject, you might want to flick through a copy first. An easy read, it is not. A rewarding one, very much so.
In so much as we still care about subjects like this in the modern world (and we should), this is a very important book, both for the insight it gives into Eichmann, as well as the light it casts on the post war reaction to those who committed such horrible crimes.
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