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Similarly, during his trial Eichmann was presented with any number of dubious accusations, the most salient of which include: being responsible for the notorious Krystal Nacht pogrom of 1938; measures for the removal of Jews from social and economic life; having total control of all Jewish life in the Reich; having the "decisive voice" on all Jewish affairs; having the power to order or halt the deportation process at will, and being a "special advisor" to Himmler by virtue of his unique position as "Reich-S.S. Leadership" - Reichsführung-S.S. (Eichmann trial transcripts, sessions 90-2; 90-3; 90-4; 93-1; 94-1; 97-3). Indeed, when one examines the charges made against him one gets the distinct impression that Eichmann was single-handedly responsible for the entire Final Solution, this being offset only by inclusion of the caveat "along with others". Perhaps, then, it is not too surprising that Landau (1992, pp.331-2) includes Eichmann in his "Principal Characters" section, whilst managing to exclude other, and arguably more culpable, figures such as Eichmann's immediate superior, Heinrich 'Gestapo' Müller, and WVHA* chief Oswald Pohl, who had overall responsibility for running the death camps.

 

* Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt

 

Herein lies the myth of Eichmann, an individual regarded by his Israeli interrogator, Avner Less, as both "cold and sophisticated" yet "disappointingly normal", and by trial prosecutor Gideon Hausner as a gifted actor whose 'normal' persona was merely "a clever last attempt to portray himself as different than he really is" (Less in Von Lang & Sibyll, 1999, pp. xix-xx; Hausner cited in Rabinovich news article). It seems that we must indeed regard Eichmann's memoirs, interrogation, and trial performance as nothing but the mocking finale of "The Master"*, the monstrous 'evil genius' behind the Final Solution. And yet these accounts seem inconsistent with Eichmann's role and rank, not to mention his character and modest intellectual gifts. How can we square this view of Eichmann with his pre-trial psychological evaluation, which found his attitude toward friends and family "not only normal but most desirable"? How could this 'evil genius' be described as "a man with very positive ideals"? (Arendt, 1994, p.26). How are we to judge the actions of this self-described "man of average character, with good qualities and many faults" (Eichmann in Life Magazine article, 1960)? Who exactly is the 'real' Adolf Eichmann?

 

* In a Life Magazine article published in 1960, which was based on an interview he gave to Sassen (himself a former S.S. man) in 1955, Eichmann claimed that this title was conferred on him by Müller. The context of this conferral was that of Müller ordering Eichmann to Hungary to personally supervise the concentration and deportation process, in order to prevent a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and show what the S.S. were really capable of.

 

O
tto Adolf Eichmann was born into a solid middle class family on March 19th 1906 in Solingen, in the Rhineland, and was the eldest of five children. Following the death of his mother the family moved to the Austrian town of Linz in 1913 and it was there that Eichmann began to prove himself something of a disappointment to his self-made and somewhat authoritarian father. A poor student, his father removed him from high school at the age of fifteen and he failed to graduate from the vocational engineering school in which he was subsequently enrolled (Arendt, 1994, pp.27-8; Eichmann in Von Lang & Sibyll (Eds.), 1999, pp. 5-8). Eichmann then commenced an apprenticeship with Austrian Electrotech, from which his father also removed him some two-and-a-half years later, having decided he "wasn't getting anywhere" (Eichmann in Von Lang & Sibyll (Eds.), 1999, p.9). He then spent time working as a manual labourer for his father's mining concern before - at the age of twenty-two and with no education to speak of - it was decided that he should become a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company, a position he held from 1928 to 1933 (ibid, p.9-11).

 

On April 1st 1932 twenty-seven year old Eichmann, by now well used to "being led in business and in everything else" (ibid, p.11), had a chance encounter with the son of a family friend, Ernst Kaltenbrunner*. Already a member of the S.S., Kaltenbrunner declared "You're going to join us!" to which Eichmann replied "All right!" (ibid), a rather innocuous beginning for a train of events that would eventually lead to the gallows and international notoriety. Dismissed from his job in spring 1933, Eichmann decided to seek his fortune in Germany, whereupon another seemingly random event changed the course of his life. The Nazi Party** had been outlawed in Austria and so Kaltenbrunner asked Eichmann to smuggle some paraphernalia to a German S.S. colleague. On completion of this mission he was advised to undertake some military training and agreed to join the Austrian Legion. He received training in an S.S. camp at Kloster Lechfeld before being posted to Dachau in December 1933 (ibid, pp.16-20; Arendt, 1994, pp.27-33).

 

* Schutz Staffel, literally Protection Echelon. In 1943 Kaltenbrunner was appointed head of the Reichsicherheitshauptampt (Reich Security Main Office - RSHA) following Heydrich's assassination in 1942.

 

**Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP)

 

Despite his rapid promotion to Unterscharführer (Sergeant), Eichmann soon tired of the monotony of soldiering and in spring 1934 applied to join the Security Service* of the Reichsführer-SS. His application was accepted - much to his surprise - and in September 1934 he was transferred to Berlin, only to realise his drastic mistake. Having confused the S.D. with the Reich Security Service, Eichmann believed he was joining an elite bodyguard unit for the protection of key party members. To his dismay he found himself posted to the S.D.'s Freemasonry museum as little more than a file clerk and suffered months of intense boredom before being transferred to Von Mildenstein's Jewish section in mid-1935 (Eichmann in Von Lang & Sibyll, 1999, pp.21-5; Arendt, 1994, pp.33-5). This marks the point at which Eichmann's career took off, it being the apprenticeship that turned him into a self-professed 'expert' on Jewish affairs, ardent supporter of the Zionist cause, and, ultimately, "Forwarding Angel of Death" (Arendt, 1994; Hausner in trial session 94-2).

 

* Sicherheitsdienst or S.D.

 

So much, then, for the 'evil genius' theory: one suspects that a more incongruent example of the genre would be hard to find. The fact that Eichmann tripped and fell into the S.S. goes some way towards explaining his constant and puzzled references to fate and destiny (see Von Lang & Sibyll, 1999,
passim
) and meant that he was no more able to offer a plausible explanation for joining the S.S. than were his Israeli captors. This led Arendt (1994, p.54) to conclude that "everybody could see that this man was not a 'monster', but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown", despite the prosecutor's best efforts to prove otherwise. These points aside, however, Eichmann was by his own admission a committed National Socialist. Although he started but never finished Hitler's
Mein Kampf
he was fully aware of the NSDAP's political programme and supported the party's desire for a rejuvenated, powerful Germany and rejection of the Versailles Treaty. He also supported what was then the desire for a 'political solution' to the 'Jewish Problem', while simultaneously, and somewhat inconsistently, maintaining that he was not an anti-Semite (Eichmann in Von Lang & Sibyll, 1999, p.35&38).

 

It seems, then, that Eichmann was no different than most of the German population, described by Gordon (cited by Bauman, 1989, p.76) as "latent" anti-Semites for whom the dehumanised and objectified Jew became "a legitimate subject of state policy deserving solution". Alas, unlike most Germans Eichmann went on to become an active participant in a 'solution' that did not accord or seem reconcilable with his own political views. That he
did
participate, despite his own views and subsequent recognition that his actions contributed to one of the "most heinous crimes in the history of mankind" (Eichmann in trial session 95-5) is this work's primary concern. However, before we examine his wartime activities it is first necessary to sketch his earlier pre-Final Solution activities and position his rank and role in the Nazi hierarchy and the Holocaust itself, in order to offer a final refutation of the Eichmann myth.

 

E
ichmann's transfer to the S.D.'s Jewish section marks the point at which he recognised himself as an 'idealist'. Throwing himself into his work, learning Yiddish, reading Jewish newspapers and generally devouring any and all relevant material (he even authored an S.S. pamphlet on the subject), his enthusiasm was rewarded with a minor intelligence gathering role, which permitted him to visit and report on Jewish meetings and activities in the Berlin area (Arendt, pp.40-5). He was further rewarded with a commission in early 1938. Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) Eichmann's subsequent posting to Vienna, where he organised a Central Office for Jewish Emigration, is a reflection of a time when the term "Final Solution" referred to emigration rather than extermination. Believing this compatible with the Zionist position, he attacked the problem with gusto and ingenuity, arranging the 'emigration' (i.e. forced deportation) of some 150,000 poor Jews via a fast-track passport system financed by 'taxing' (i.e. extorting money from) their rich counterparts (Eichmann in Von Lang & Sibyll, 1999, pp.49-55). His system was so successful that he was posted to Prague in 1939 and charged with creating a similar central office. As Arendt (1994, p.48) observes, it simply never occurred to him that most Jews were not Zionists and did not share his new-found idealism. Throughout his trial he seemed genuinely puzzled by the charges made against him in this context.

 

Eventually, Eichmann's activities caught the eye of Reinhard Heydrich and in October 1939 he was ordered back to Berlin and appointed to section IV-D-4 Jewish Affairs and Evacuation Affairs (later re-named IV-B-4 Jewish Affairs) of the newly created Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Ironically, his appointment came at a time when the possibilities for emigration were all but exhausted, and with little else to do it seems that Eichmann was at least partly responsible for the second, so-called "territorial Final Solution" (Eichmann trial session 98-1; Arendt, 1994, pp.66-7). During 1939 and 1940, in conjunction with Stahlecker and Rademacher*, he worked on the Nisko and Madagascar resettlement projects, seeking a territorial solution to the 'Jewish Problem' through the creation of semi-autonomous reservations to which European Jews could be deported (Arendt, 1994, pp.67-71; Burrin, 1994; Burleigh, 2000, pp.590-3). Neither plan came to fruition and so in July 1941, having won four more promotions, Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Eichmann was summoned before Heydrich and informed of the final and physical 'solution' to the 'Jewish Problem'. From that moment on, Eichmann claimed that he lost all joy, interest and initiative in his work (Eichmann in Arendt, 1994, p.83; Eichmann trial session 79-1).

 

* His former superior in Vienna and head of the Jewish desk in the Foreign Office respectively.

 

B
y this time Eichmann was a department head and part of an organisational hierarchy comprising Gruppenführer Reinhardt Heydrich (RSHA head), Brigadeführer Heinrich 'Gestapo' Müller (head of Section IV Gestapo), Hartl (head of Section IV-B Sects), and himself (head of Section IV-B-4 Jewish Affairs) (Hilberg, 1961, p.263). As Arendt (1994, p.69-70) notes, his position was both technically and organisationally low, being important only in relation to its central function vis-à-vis the 'Jewish Problem'. As such, Eichmann was responsible for organising and scheduling transports to the extermination camps, personally with respect to deportations from the Reich and via representatives attached to German embassies abroad in the case of occupied territories and countries allied to Germany. Eichmann was also responsible for creating, and negotiating with, Jewish agencies in the relevant territories, in order to facilitate Jewish co-operation with the deportation process. However, Eichmann was not responsible for the transports themselves. Rather, his section would make arrangements for the requisite number of trains to be available in the required locations in order to facilitate the transportation process. The transports themselves were handled by the Ordnungpolizei or Order Police (Hilberg, 1961, p298; Arendt, 1994, p.115).

 

Thus Eichmann did not, as has been claimed, have the power to order or halt the deportations, or even to determine who was to be deported. Rather, Himmler set the locations and numbers to be deported, gave the relevant order to Heydrich, who in turn passed it to Müller, and then on to Eichmann (Arendt, 1994, p.152; Mildner cited in trial session 93-1). Moreover, Eichmann's activities outside the Reich were closely circumscribed by the Jewish desk of Abteilung Deutschland (Department Germany) of the German Foreign Office, and by regional Higher S.S. and Police Leaders - who reported to Himmler himself - to whom his representatives were subordinate (Hilberg, 1961; pgs.135, 353 & 405; Browning, 1978, pp.43-4). As such, Eichmann's role seems fully in keeping with Hilberg's (1961, p.32) description of the "machinery of destruction" and concomitant assertion that an "administrative process of such range cannot be carried out by a single agency, even if it is a trained and specialised body like the Gestapo" (ibid, p.640).

 

So, Eichmann's legendary status, and the wide-ranging powers attributed to him, derives in part from the fact that he
did
play a vital, central role (Arendt, 1994, p.153; Hilberg, 1961, p.266). And yet it is essential that we place these activities within the context of the Final Solution as a whole, that we recognise Eichmann as a minor bureaucratic functionary within a hierarchical organisation, which was in turn only one of many components in the "machinery of destruction". This lends a certain credibility to his claim that it "would be as pointless to blame me for the whole Final Solution … as to blame the official in charge of the railroads" (Eichmann in Life Magazine). To assume otherwise, to assume that Eichmann did indeed have the powers accredited him by the prosecution, is to ignore Weber's first principle of bureaucracy: that positions are distributed as fixed, rule-governed jurisdictional areas (in Gerth & Mills, 1991, p.156). Insofar as the bureaucratic form is predicated on a functional division of labour, in which regular activities are distributed as official duties and form a hierarchy of super- and subordinate positions, it makes no sense to have
Lieutenant Colonel
Eichmann instructing
General
Göring, to accuse him of drafting the complex legal arrangements needed to remove Jews from social and economic life, or to claim that he possessed the authority to override Himmler's orders (Albrow, 1970, pp.43-4; Weber, 1978, pp.956-7).

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