A review by irina_maria
Eichmann and the Holocaust by Hannah Arendt

informative reflective

4.5

A powerful study of Adolf Eichmann, which manages to enrich one's picture of the inner workings of the Holocaust (for instance, I was unaware of the key role the Jewish leadership played in it) and of the Jerusalem trials, grappling with the notions of crime against humanity and genocide (and the difference in scope from other inhuman acts, together with the issue of intent and the nature of guilt in the law). I will surely pick up Eichman in Jerusalem as soon as possible.

Here's a lengthy, but essential excerpt from the postscript:

Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain'. Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself is in no way criminal. [...] He merely, to put it colloquially, never realized what he was doing. [...] He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness - something by no means identical with stupidity - that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. [...] That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man - that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. But it was a lesson, neither an explanation of the phenomenon nor a theory about it.