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deceive himself about? 1bis Miss Arendt does not even try to say.
Obviously Eichmann knew at the very least about what he himself
was doing; he was involved in the vastest murder enterprise in all of
history. But Miss Arendt does not distinguish between the man she saw
on the prisoner's dock and the man who sent millions to their death.
When certain European Jews, who had had dealings with Eichmann
when he was in a subaltern position and afterwards when he was
the High Chief Executioner of Jews, said on the witness stand that
he was quite different in his very different posts, at first he had
seemed to them like an insignificant clerk, but later like a "master
of life and of death," Miss Arendt demurs. She insists on seeing
Eichmann as forever an insignificant clerk-just as she says he was
converted forever by reading Herzl to the vision of a Jewish state in
Palestine.
Miss Arendt gives a brief biography of Eichmann, but in so
doing, steadfastly refuses to consider any of the major decisions he
had to make in his career in the light of any political or moral cate–
gories, except perhaps one, dutifulness, and this, of course, is a
positive value. In the main, the categories Miss Arendt relies on in
describing Eichmann are purely aesthetic. He is commonplace, with–
out humor, comical. Now since one cannot ,explain the significant
decisions a person makes in life in terms of aesthetic categories–
people do not act in order to be commonplace or comical, however
commonplace or comical they are in acting--every decisive
s~ep
Eichmann took toward his final role as executioner of the Jews
appears to have been taken for him by chance, or by the decision
of others. During his four years of high school he joined the youth
section of an anti-republican organization of war veterans; this was
of course a right wing, reactionary group. Why did he join it? Miss
Arendt gives no explanation. Why did he join the Nazi Party? Miss
Arendt writes: "At any rate, he did not enter the Party out of
conviction, nor was he ever convinced by it-whenever he was asked
to give his reasons, he repeated the same embarrassed cliches about
the Treaty of Versailles and unemployment; rather as he pointed out
in court, 'it was like being swallowed up by the Party against all
expectations and without previous decision. It happened so quickly
and suddenly.' He had no time and less desire to be informed, he
