Question: This is a crucial chapter in the book. What is Arendt’s stance on Eichmann’s guilt in this chapter? Back up your claim with specific evidence from the text. As I mentioned in class, you are welcome to modify this topic… or even, once in a while, come up with your own topic in its place. If you do so, make clear that’s what you’re doing.
Answer: While this chapter was exceedingly long, I was surprised how much Arendt talked about other things than Eichmann or his trial. The last pages of the chapter hardly mentioned Eichmann at all, and only discussed Germany as a whole or other individuals involved in the war.
However, the beginning of the chapter started by explaining Eichmann’s recollection of the day he was informed of the Final Solution by Heydrich. I found it odd how well Eichmann remembered this, even though Arendt said there were a couple points he forgot to mention. However, while this moment definitely would be engrained in most people’s minds forever, I was surprised Eichmann remembered it so clearly because it was not particularly pertaining to his career. Aside from the aspect of his memory, Eichmann retold this instance with more emotion than he had previously showed. He told how he was so shocked and speechless because he “had never thought of such a thing, such a solution through violence” (84).
Next Arendt talks about “language rules” which were lies essentially. They were the codes used to say things like “the Final Solution” instead of “killing”. I think a clear point of Arendt’s judgment on Eichmann was when she said “Eichmann’s great susceptibility to catch words and stock phrases, combined with his incapacity for ordinary speech, made him, of course, an ideal subject for ‘language rules’” (86). I think this is one of the points in the chapter that shows that these people (Eichmann and other perpetrators) were brainwashed in a sense. The whole idea of “language rules” was to prevent people from equating what they were doing with killing. Arendt is really sarcastic in this chapter, and I think it has to do with the fact that she doesn’t understand how all these people actually fell for it. “It” being the justification for what they were participating in. I know the concept of brainwashing perfectly intelligent people is really hard to grasp, so I think maybe Arendt is struggling with that possibility since she is such a smart individual herself. Another instance in the text that had to do with this brainwashing theory was when Arendt was discussing how Germany as a whole reacted. While she talks about the attempted movement of conspirators and rebels of that nature, she talks largely about how they did nothing. While some of them deep down knew what they had turned a blind eye , they still thought it was reasonable to “have a right to negotiate with their enemies ‘as equals’ for a ‘just peace’” (101). What I got out of this section was that the majority of the people may have known what was going on, but they convinced themselves that it was not wrong. That in a sense is brainwashing.
When it comes to Arendt portraying Eichmann’s guilt, I think she mostly talked about it when she discussed his conscience. This part was interesting because it talked about how Eichmann made a “choice”, the only one he ever had the chance to make, to redirect a group of Jews, away from immediate extermination. After Eichmann had been to some of the death camps and saw such terrible things, he might have made a little connection that he was somewhat responsible for this because he decided who got sent/transported where. Arendt argues how before Eichmann actually saw all of the killings in the camps, he knew about them. I think here is where she is trying to illustrate a kind of “out of sight, out of mind” thing with Eichmann. He really didn’t attempt to do anything to save the Jews until he saw the fate he was choosing for them when he sent them to the death camps. Once Eichmann did see these atrocities, he made his “choice” to spare just one shipment of Jews to a less severe camp. Then Arendt discusses how it might have been that Eichmann was not really guilty about the murders in general, but just the murders of German Jews. While this is a form of a conscience, it doesn’t justify anything that Eichmann did regardless of this notion. Then Arendt becomes sarcastic (quoting someone else) again proposing that maybe it would not be such an atrocity if the group of people they murdered didn’t have a culture.
I think the rest of the chapter deals more with the guilt/conscience of others, or for Germany as a whole, more than Eichmann. Overall, I think Arendt pretty much thinks Eichmanns faulty memory, lack of ability to formulate his own sentences/thoughts, and lack of action after he witnessed the death camps makes him guilty as charged.
