Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Banality of Evil

Starting point is 00:00:00 When you think of evil, characters like Hannibal Lecter, The Joker, or Michael Myers probably come to mind. But what really is evil? Evil can take different forms, sadistic and brutal, but it can also be boring and normalized. During the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, political philosopher Hannah Arendt reported on the trial for the New Yorker magazine. Her journalism became incredibly controversial due to her account of Eichmann, viewing him as banal, normal, and a clown. Learn more about The banality of evil, what it means and how it can be used to interpret Nazi Germany on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:54 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. A few years ago, I did an episode on the Nuremberg personality tests. To quickly summarize the episode, many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were captured and tried in the city of Nuremberg in a tribunal which was run by the allies. During these trials, they conducted various clinical tests to assess the competency of the Nazis to stand trial. And the results were shocking.

Starting point is 00:01:38 The public perception of the Nazis after World War II was that they were monsters, because how else could you rationalize systematically murdering millions of people? But the results of the test showed something different. Top Nazi officials were not statistic monsters. They were actually painfully average. And needless to say, these results proved highly controversial. I bring this up because it's highly relevant to the subjects of this episode, Adolf Eichmann and Hannah Arendt.

Starting point is 00:02:08 Adel Feikman was born in 1906 to a middle-class Austrian family. He was not a particularly bright student, and his initial career was that of a traveling oil salesman. In 1932, he was looking for a new job and joined the Nazi Party and the SS, which was the Nazi paramilitary service responsible for carrying out many of the policies of the Third Reich. In 1933, he returned to Germany from Austria and joined the SD, which was the Nazi intelligence service. His duties here were mainly the surveillance of Jewish organizations. Eichmann specifically worked with Zionist.

Starting point is 00:02:42 groups to inspect Palestine and to promote emigration to the Middle East and out of the Third Reich. During this time, Eichmann became known as the Nazi Jewish expert, becoming educated on Zionism, while also picking up the languages of Hebrew and Yiddish. In 1938, he was promoted to the head of a subsection known as 4B4, which is part of the Reich Security Office. This office organized the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which, quote, facilitated the forced emigration of Austrian Jews. Eichmann stated in his trial that the years from 1938 to 1941 were the happiest times of his life.

Starting point is 00:03:19 This fulfillment in his work, he claimed, changed with the enactment of the final solution. In January 1942, he was present at the Wansy Conference, which was the conference where top Nazi officials decided to implement the final solution. At this conference, Eichmann recorded information for his superior Reinhardt Heidrick and prepared the minutes of the meeting. Eichmann left the meeting with a new position. Instead of forced immigration, Eichmann and his team would now be responsible for the deportation of Jews to concentration camps. Eichmann didn't rank exceptionally high in the Nazi system. His role was important, but he was not a key decision maker. He had many people above him in the hierarchy who gave him orders. Nonetheless, his position was crucial to the events which unfolded during the Holocaust. His role was essentially to make sure the trains to the death camps were full and to make sure that everyone was in the right place to be killed efficiently.

Starting point is 00:04:15 Eichmann never took part in the physical killings. He was strictly a bureaucrat, but his actions resulted in the deportation of over 1.5 million Jews, many of whom would die in the concentration camps. Eichmann performed his duties diligently until Germany's defeat. It was then that he, along with some other prominent Nazis, fled to South America. And the flight of Nazis to South America after the war is also a subject I've covered in a previous episode. Eichmann specifically fled to Argentina, living under the

Starting point is 00:04:45 alias Ricardo Clement. Israeli intelligence eventually found him, and agents kidnapped him and flew him back to Israel for a trial for his crimes committed during the Holocaust. Eichmann was put on trial in 1961, and it was the only trial of a Nazi ever held in Israel. And that now brings us to Hanna Arendt. Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, to a Jewish family in 1906, the same year as Adolf Eichmann. She was a brilliant student studying philosophy and gaining her doctorate at the age of 22. Arendt left Germany when Hitler came to power, moving to France and later the United States. And in the United States, she worked at multiple universities.

Starting point is 00:05:24 She was sent by the New Yorker magazine to cover the Eichmann trial. Her perception of the trial was written in a book titled Eichmann in Jerusalem, and this work was immediately vilified due to her perception of Eichmann. Unlike the prosecution and most of the public, she found Eichmann to be banal and ordinary, not a sadistic monster. And I should note that Arendt was vilified for more than her opinions of Adolf Eichmann. She also criticized Jewish leadership during the Holocaust, which some believed was betraying her own people.

Starting point is 00:05:55 Over time, however, Arren's perspective grew in popularity. She primarily worked from Eichmann's testimony using it to help to understand. his psychology. One example of this was when Eichmann was asked to describe his reaction to the final solution plan. He was not naive to the final solution. He had taken a tour of the death camps in the east before the Vancey conference had even occurred, as killings had been taking place in the east the year before the final solution was implemented. At the time, Eichmann was not convinced of the need for death camps, as he had not thought that a violent solution to the Jewish question would be used. He actually showed some initial defiance of the violence, rerouting a deportation train to a

Starting point is 00:06:35 ghetto where the killings hadn't yet started. However, during the trial, he emphasized that this wasn't disobeying orders, as he had a choice of destination, and he simply chose not to send them to death. He said he was later convinced of the killings after the Wansy conference. After watching other top officials approve of and offer contributions at the meeting, any doubts he may have had would have been stifled. By the end of the war, Eichmann was carrying out deportations to concentration camps against direct orders, deporting Hungarian Jews despite the war basically being over. Hanna Arendt wanted to see why this flipped.

Starting point is 00:07:12 How did he begin, disgusted by the killing centers, and then send people to their deaths against orders? She believed that this flip occurred within a month. He was initially uncomfortable with sending away German Jews, not those located in the east. He had Jewish relatives. He worked and cooperated with Jewish colleagues and viewed some of them as his friends. He only had a problem with the killings when they personally impacted him. Arendt viewed Eichmann as thoughtless and lacking an understanding of other people's perspectives. His motivation was not to be sadistic or take pleasure in the killings, but rather to perform his job. She believed that Eichmann had a conscience, as shown by his initial reluctance to deport people to death camps,

Starting point is 00:07:56 but his desire to be obedient to his leaders and do his job overwhelmed his sense of morality. Arendt viewed him as a new different type of killer, not one that was understood in the context of the trial. This new type of criminal was one that under normal circumstances would not be considered evil and would act just like you or me. The problem was, is that he was considered normal working in an evil system. for this, Arendt feud Eichmann as not technically guilty of the charges brought against him in the trial. Was he guilty according to Orent? Yes. Did he deserve to be given the death penalty according to a rent? Yes. But was he guilty of the crimes as accused in the indictment? According to a rent? No. Arendt then used her perceptions of Eichmann to attempt to understand the perpetrators of the Holocaust. She believed that most of the perpetrators, like Eichmann, were normal, not some exceptional evil.

Starting point is 00:08:55 Nazi Germany created a completely different social climate that instituted a new set of values within society. Up became down, right became wrong, killing became a duty, and empathy became a weakness. The crime was universal, and Arendt believed that the moral collapse was in all of German society. For Arendt, Eichmann displayed, quote, the fearsome word and thought-defying banality of evil. When looking at Adolf Eichmann, you see a normal man who committed heinous atrocities. The problem in Nazi Germany was that so many others were just like Eichmann.

Starting point is 00:09:30 They too were not sadistic or perverted, but normal. And for Hanna Arendt, that normalcy is what was terrifying. Criminals like Eichmann committed crimes because they're incapable of knowing right from wrong, and because of this, events like the Holocaust could happen again. So why was her perception of Eichmann so controversial? For many people, the concept of the banality of evil trivialized the events of the Holocaust because they believed it offered an excuse for the perpetrators. And again, this was only 15 years after World War II ended,

Starting point is 00:10:06 so the wounds of the Holocaust on the world were still fresh in the memories of those who participated in the trial. The purpose of the trial was to condemn and punish the perpetrators and to seek some sort of retribution, not to try to understand their actions. Additionally, it went against society's characterization of evil, which tends to view morality as black and white. Evil is viewed as insane, intelligent, and sadistic. It paints the perception of evil as exceptional, not normal, and it creates a point of contrast for the heroic figures who fight against evil.

Starting point is 00:10:39 During the trial, any of Eichmann's perceived ordinariness was interpreted as a disguise, and any of his explanations for his actions during the Holocaust were considered a lie. Arendt was not sympathetic towards Eichmann, nor did she believe everything he said, but she also didn't think that his ordinariness was fake. And to be clear, she did not deny that Eichmann committed the deportations, that he was willingly carrying out his duty, or that he could have backed out and left his bureaucratic job at almost any time. And also, for the amount of death he caused, that he did deserve to die.

Starting point is 00:11:12 for Hana Arendt, for evil to become banal, certain conditions must be met. You need a society that legitimizes killing, perpetrators who act without selfish motives and genuinely believe their actions are not morally wrong, and the acceptance of this new corrupt social reality where evil is perceived as an obligation. Sadism is not required, but what is required is a willing obedience to commit evil acts. Hunter Arendt revealed a troubling truth of human nature. Evil does not need to be blatant and in your face, but can be found in the capabilities of an average person.

Starting point is 00:11:50 That is what makes the banality of evil so terrifying, as anyone can be susceptible to the moral flipping of society. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research in writing for this episode is provided by Olivia Ash. Today's review comes from listener Zip 1 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, incredible podcast. I'm now part of the Completionist Club.

Starting point is 00:12:19 I've always been interested in history, but this gives the perfect amount for a day and I'm always learning. I love the random things that aren't normal knowledge. Thank you. Well, thanks, Zip. Welcome to the Completionist Club. I'm sure by now you've already visited your local chapter where you've been given your key in members jacket. And as always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app, Facebook or Discord, you two can have it run in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Banality of Evil

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