276
MARY MoCARTHY
MARY McCARTHY
Sms:
In reply to Abel. " '1 will jump into my grave laughing.' Who,
before Eichmann, ever said anything like that?" Well, Wedekind. "Hap–
py is he who jumps over fresh graves merrily." Apparently Eichmann
had this winged word in mind.
I cannot supply the names of any of the psychiatrists who pro–
nounced Eichmann normal. Miss Arendt tells us in her book that there
were half a dozen. Does Abel have any grounds for hinting that she is
lying? Furthermore, if Szondi was right, Eichmann belonged in a lunatic
asylum.
Of course Eichmann was a Nazi. Who ever denied it?
The question is, what was a Nazi? The German Everyman, it would
seem, during the Hitler years. This is becoming evident again in the
Auschwitz trial; Arthur Miller has made the point very well in his
Herald Tribune
report. What did it take to be a Nazi, an S.S. man, an
Eichmann? Very little, evidently. This is what is so terrible.
Abel now insists that Miss Arendt and I are smearing Western
civilization: we are pretending that Eichmann is everywhere. This is
Abel's own contribution to the discussion. Speaking only for myself, I
would say that Eichmann was a peculiarly German phenomenon and is
not likely to recur elsewhere. But the problem raised by Eichmann and
by the "German-uncle" defendants in the Auschwitz trial is pertinent
to the whole world. I believe that the environment of technology we live
in is favorable
to
the murder of whole populations without any emotive
euphoria or political commitment on the part of the technicians who
would carry the operation out. These technicians (Western or Eastern )
are no more exceptionally villainous or insane than anyone else. In a
nuclear war, they will mildly execute orders like the bomber crew of
normal men in the
Dr. Strangelove
film. The bomber crew there is full
of the pathos (and the virtue) of the assembly line, each man limited in
his responsibility to his own dial, or bombsight, or navigational chart. This
is cleaner work than Eichmann's, and I must say that I cannot help
feeling that unleashing a nuclear war is more innocent than sending
Jews to the gas chamber, though this may be a prejudice and history,
if
there were to be any, might judge otherwise.
As for Miss Syrkin, she is right in noticing that I misparaphrased
Miss Arendt. I said "Jewish Councils," and Miss Arendt spoke of Jewish
leaders. But Miss Syrkin is mistaken in her figures. The sentence (p. 111)
