Responding to a recent Newsletter in which I wrote about Adolph Eichmann (please see directly below), one of my colleagues wrote, "Um ... writing in ALL CAPS means shouting. This post looks hysterical ... "

Well, wouldn't you be a bit hysterical if you had to listen to years and years and years of commentary about how people like Eichmann were simply "obedient to authority" or "following orders?" Insisting that he was just a "bureaucrat" carrying out a task that had no meaning to him? That he was "banal?" 

The "Commandant at Auschwitz," Rudolf Hoess, stated that Eichmann "showed that he was completely obsessed with the idea of destroying every single Jew that he could lay his hands on." Without pity and in cold blood, Eichmann insisted that "We must complete this extermination as rapidly as possible."

The book in which this quote appears was published in 1956, four years before the publication of Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem (1960).

There is substantial evidence appearing since--documenting that Eichmann had a powerful desire to murder Jews. Killing Jews was the essence of Eichmann's existence: his deepest desire. 

Eichmann was well aware of who he was--that he deeply desired to kill Jews (how could he not have been?), but of course he would not say this at his trial. He understood the liberal consciousness. Indeed, the Nazis understood the liberal consciousness very deeply. Nazism was, at its core, a struggle against liberal consciousness.

Eichmann knew wnat he had to say in order to get acquitted. He pulled the wool over Arendt's eyes (although finally he was hung).

It's time for the fantasies to come to an end. Scholars should stop writing about obedience to authority and banality and the "innocence" of mass-murderers. Some leaders have a desire to destroy or to harm other human beings. It's happening right now. Still, some people "can't believe it."

Best regards,
Richard Koenigsberg

From Rudolf Hoess, COMMANDANT AT AUSCHWITZ (1956/2000).

"He (Eichmann) showed that he was completely obsessed with the idea of destroying every single Jew that he could lay his hands on. "Without pity and in cold blood we must complete this extermination as rapidly as possible."

Eichmann WANTED & DESIRED to kill Jews.

Liberal fantasy and denial of reality (Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963): He was "banal," just "following orders" and simply being "obedient to authority."

Killing Jews was the Nazi's FUNDAMENTAL PROJECT.