Eichmann Before Jerusalem

by Bettina Stangneth

  Of course, this was a catalog of lies from a man who played a large role in the development and implementation of the Nazis’ expulsion and extermination policies. Eichmann certainly hadn’t just been “passing on orders.” But more interesting is the reason he could not force himself to make even the most minimal of confessions: “I said I had to accuse myself of abetting the killing of enemies during the war, if I were to pass a severe and unreserved judgment on myself. I just do not yet see clearly whether I also have the right to judge the people who were my direct subordinates at that time, or to make this judgment before there has been a general consideration of others—because so far I have not heard (forgive me the comparison) that my colleagues on the other side, some of whom have been highly decorated and are in senior official positions or are enjoying their pensions, have been prosecuted for abetting killings, or have accused themselves of this.” Eichmann may have sent thousands of Jews on death marches in 1944, and continuted to involve himself in new plans for gassing into 1945, but he had not the slightest pang of conscience in comparing the extermination of the Jews with the expulsion of “many millions” of other people, “the majority of them after the war.” He demanded “the same justice for all.” “And—this one must understand—as someone who was a mere receiver of orders, I cannot be holier than the Pope,” a statement which was not meant “cynically” or “sarcastically.” Of course, Eichmann did not suggest how else it should be taken. Someone who had already been compared to czars and other dignitaries clearly didn’t have a problem assuming the holy throne. Anyway: everything that he had done, he had done “with a clear conscience and a faithful heart.” He had been convinced of “the people’s need,” and as the “leaders of the former German Reich” “preached” the “necessity of total war,” he did his patriotic duty. “The morality of the Fatherland [!] that dwells within me quite simply did not allow me, given these considerations, to declare myself guilty, as I believed I should, of abetting killings during the war. So I may act on the balance of my inner morality, just as the gentlemen receiving the same orders on the other side obviously have.”26

  We may doubt whether Eichmann ever “believed” that he should confess anything. He was clearly someone who was out to “create” a verdict rather than to reach one.27

  The yardstick against which this “inner morality” was measured was not an idea of justice, a universal moral category, or even a kind of introspection. It was quite clear to Eichmann that any verdict on his actions would always rest on the wrong political mind-set—a measure that lay outside the “morality of the Fatherland” and therefore outside an ethnic German perspective. What sounds on a first reading like an invocation of universal justice, an appeal for all men to be judged by a common human law, is revealed on closer inspection to be an entirely different kind of “equal right.” Eichmann was not demanding a common human law, which would also apply to him because he, too, was human. He was actually demanding recognition for a National Socialist dogma, according to which every people has a right to defend itself by any means necessary, the German people most of all. And they had not stopped defending themselves: it had merely been necessary to postpone the final victory, when military supplies ran out. The people, however, had not surrendered their ideological weapons. Eichmann was still convinced that “the people’s need” existed, and his ultimate justification was that one’s own people stood above all other interests. Otherwise, you became a “filthy swine and a traitor.”28 And conscience? Conscience was simply the “morality of the Fatherland that dwells within” a person, which Eichmann also termed the “voice of blood.” There is as little universal law within us as there is a right to the starry sky for everyone. For a German, the law is a German law.

  Eichmann didn’t see “conscience” as a corrective to all thoughts and actions, something that even allowed people to question the prevailing customs. Nor was it the guiding light in the search for what was right and good. On the contrary, anyone who thought of “conscience” in these terms would be a traitor to the voice of blood. If Eichmann listened to the “voice of his heart,” he would be showing a sentimental weakness, which was a fundamental evil for National Socialists. His heart could whisper the search for peace till it was blue in the face; he would always remain strong enough to ignore these vestiges of an “un-German” education. Eichmann clearly still believed in “victory in this total war, or the downfall of the German people.” There could be no “search for peace” that was not preceded by victory—and the victory was that of ethnicity over a genuine universal right to justice. Without further ado, Eichmann put off his confession of guilt until after the final victory of German morality. “The more often and intensively I … consider these things, the more convinced I am that in truth I have not made myself guilty of any crimes, even according to today’s laws.”29 After all, “the enemy” wasn’t confessing his guilt, either. The only universal element here is “guilt,” not justice: guilt, under which heading all actions in war become equal. The real perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity always welcomed the theory of collective guilt. It allowed them to disappear into a vast guilty crowd and persuade the rest of the population that they had been their accomplices. The declaration of universal guilt also became Eichmann’s get-out clause. First, everyone else had to recognize that they were all just as guilty as Eichmann was, and only then would he do the same—because when everyone is guilty, nobody is, and confessions can be made without legal, or indeed moral, consequences. These evasive acrobatics might be termed justification by accusation. This was the master race making the rules once again. And the train of thought in the short handwritten texts of “General/Personal” provided the framework for the larger manuscript they were intended to introduce.

  “The Others Spoke, Now I Want to Speak!”

  It is now time for me to step out of my anonymity and introduce myself:

  Name: Adolf Otto Eichmann, Nationality: German

  Position: SS Obersturmbannführer (retired)

  —Eichmann, “The Others Spoke,” 1956

  Only the middle section of the original 107-page manuscript called “The Others Spoke, Now I Want to Speak!”30 is really well known, as a fragment of it was contained in the pages that found their way to Israel for the trial.31 The text consists of a ten-page introduction, followed by a segment entitled “Re: My Findings on the Matter of ‘Jewish Questions’ and Measures by the National Socialist German Government to Solve This Complex During the Years 1933 to 1945,” and a twenty-six-page final section containing thoughts on the question of guilt.

  Eichmann’s planned reentry into public life comes across as self-assured and even forceful. The author presents himself as the victim of malicious defamation and misrepresentation. His patience, which until now has been almost superhuman, is finally at an end: these vicious attacks have become too much for him. Now it’s his turn—surely people will understand that. “I want to create clarity. I want to name and shame the lie at its source,” the brave hero proclaims.32 And again, he announces that he is ultimately willing to confess his guilt (under certain conditions), but not straight away: “I don’t want to act prematurely,” he says mysteriously.

  Eichmann had a very clear idea of his text’s target audience. These “accounts” are for “my friends and non-friends”—but especially for his friends. To his surprise, he adds, he has discovered that he has “a large circle of friends, many millions of people.” However, anyone curious to know who Eichmann is talking about will have to wait another hundred pages to find out. By the second paragraph, he is explaining that his own judgment of himself is a foregone conclusion: “Now I am neither a murderer nor a mass murderer; to prove this, I now intend officially to sit in judgment on myself.” Eichmannism, as the psychologists who examined him in Israel explained, is essentially monologism. When Eichmann says he doesn’t want “to gloss over anything in this justification” or even “sidestep” what he has done, the words have a hollow, rhetorical ri
ng, even for those who don’t know what the following pages contain—as do the references to his own “average character” and his playful allusions to German literature, where he speaks about “human deeds and striving” and his “trials and tribulations.”33

  The arguments Eichmann used as justification are well known: the oh-so-depraved world, and the claim that he “certainly did nothing worse” than the many other people acting under orders. A more interesting aspect of this text is how he dramatizes the return of his real name. Eichmann skillfully builds the tension: “Who am I, in any case,” he asks, before presenting himself as the savior of all his fellow men who find themselves in a moral quandary.34 “You human, who were my superior, you human, who were of equal rank, you human, who were my subordinate, in war you are obviously not guilty, just as I am not.”35 And I shall take away your sins, “just as I” forgive myself. “Evidently,” says Raphael Gross, “theological rhetoric works particularly well for reclaiming a universalized understanding for the Germans, without having to look too closely at past events, or even recognize a specific responsibility toward the victims.”36 This clearly applies even to this perpetrator, in conversation with his peers. Eichmann, in any case, writes himself into a state of euphoria, proclaiming the “logic” and “clarity” that will free the oppressed Germans from the incubus of their own victims. Not that a few words of understanding for the victims would have made matters any better, but the fact that there is not a single one here tips Eichmann’s words of comfort over into accusation. Regret is something this perpetrator feels only for himself and perhaps for his peers. The victims, meanwhile, implicitly remain the real guilty party, as Eichmann had always believed.

  The man whose passport said he was Ricardo Klement must have yearned desperately for his return to the public eye. Hence the well-calculated introduction of his real name, at the height of the suspense he has built during this first section: “It is now time for me to step out of my anonymity and introduce myself: Name: Adolf Otto Eichmann.”37 The specialist had returned, to correct the liars who claimed to be his victims. If we imagine the circumstances in which Eichmann produced this text, the sense of triumph that writing it must have given him is tangible, even now. At the end of his working day, the rabbit farmer returns to a time when he was “famous.” Eichmann’s handwriting displays his euphoria as he scales this height: on the first page it is tiny and laboriously legible, but by the second page it is already more expansive and idiosyncratic. The ballpoint pen was clearly flying over the paper, and the author formatted his text in exactly the same way that he spoke on the tapes he recorded later: with pauses for effect (paragraphs) and accentuated punctuation—the familiar attributes of an orator’s manuscript. Eichmann was aiming to create the same effect here as he did elsewhere: decisive, energetic, professional. These sentences were to be published. Eberhard Fritsch and Willem Sassen had big plans, and Eichmann made every effort to rise to the occasion.

  A Rounded History

  May current and future historians be objective enough not to stray from the path of the truth set down here.

  —Eichmann, “The Others Spoke,” 195638

  Following his introduction, in which he has steeled himself to tell “the truth” (directing a threatening undertone at all the liars), Eichmann turns his attention to historical events. He calls his “record” “Re: My Findings on the Matter of ‘Jewish Questions’ and Measures by the National Socialist German Government to Solve this Complex in the Years 1933 to 1945.” He wants to depict “the truth” in a “sober and factual” way, “the way things took place,” without personal judgments based on his own experience.39 As he hastens to explain to Sassen, and to the general reader, he is the only true surviving insider; everyone else is already dead. He is the only one who can help “current and future historians” “to get a rounded and truthful picture.”40 As evidence of his preeminent expertise, Eichmann adds that he had had “to steer and lead” “a large part of this complex” during his time in the SD and Department IV B 4. And “where I was not responsible, as for example with the physical extermination of the Jews, I was still obliged to get an overview of the matter.”41 This demonstrates the two-pronged tactic that Eichmann used, both in the Sassen circle and in Israel: he presented himself as an irrefutable key witness, while editing out the final years of the National Socialist regime, when his department was called IV A 4b. Self-promotion and manipulation would return control of written history to him. He alone could establish the path of truth “objectively” and for all time. The presentation of one’s own interpretation as objective truth is traditionally known as “preaching.”

  Giving a “factual account,” in this section, means avoiding questions of anyone being “guilty or not guilty.” Instead, Eichmann presents such a “rounded” picture of the Nazi period that it is a wonder we have any questions left. If we are to believe him, it was all quite simple, and surprisingly unspectacular. The responsibility for dealing with the “Jewish question” rested solely with the German government, meaning Adolf Hitler “and his ministers, which is to say his Reich leaders.” The rest was just a question of oaths and obedience. But then, of course, “the former Führer” was also just doing his duty: there was a war on, and all sides lived by the “slogan” “our enemies will be destroyed.” And this meant one enemy in particular: “world Jewry declared open war on the German Reich through its Führers [!], especially Dr. Chaim Waitzmann.” And open war was what they got. Eichmann the historian calmly explains that the peaceful emigration of the Jews from the Reich was the initial goal, but this effort failed due to lack of cooperation from other countries. Then there was Theresienstadt, which had made the “Jewish leaders” happy, because here the recalcitrant, egoistic Jew “was committed for the first time to communal life and work.” The members of the Red Cross, following their visits, were full of enthusiasm for it, even in 1945. Everything was done in strict accordance with the law, and in mutual agreement with “the Jews,” in a controlled, “correct,” and nonviolent manner. But then the war arrived, and emigration was banned. At that moment he, Adolf Eichmann, knew that nothing good could come of it—and yet he was the one who, at the first Nuremberg trial, was called “the most sinister figure of this century.” (Evidently the actual words of the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson, hadn’t reached Eichmann in Buenos Aires—he had simply called Eichmann “the sinister figure who had charge of the extermination program,” without the hundred years and the superlative.)42 Anyway, Eichmann continues, he certainly wasn’t responsible for the extermination of the Jews. He had preferred to devote his efforts to the Madegascar Plan, until this “dream” too was struck down by the war with Russia. Unfortunately, the Russian campaign didn’t develop “as quickly as people ‘at the top’ expected”; they found themselves fighting a war on two fronts, and then “world Jewry” declared war on them as well. This was why, “as I suspect,” “any last constraints” fell away, and Hitler gave the order for “physical liquidation.” “What I felt at this time,” says the historian, “is hard to put into words, and I shall not do it.” Still, he had sworn an oath to the flag. However, when he saw the air raids, he realized that “my work actually had an uncanny similarity with—indeed, it was the same as the work” of the people transporting the bombs. Sabotage—secretly dispatching trains full of Jews abroad—would have been no use. “Who would have taken them from me?” What else could a person do, Eichmann suggests, but commit murder? He spares himself and his readers the details of the “physical liquidation,” as if it were an episode of little importance. Instead, he focuses on the tall story of his “negotiations” with Kasztner, which would have been a complete success, he says, had not the enemy hindered them once again. Nobody wanted to take on “even these million” Jews,43 and then, of course, the war came to an end. Eichmann spent sixty-five pages mapping out this “path of truth,” as if none of it could be doubted.

  Naturally, he knew that one thing in particular might bring his creation
crashing down about his ears, and that was the number of victims. He therefore rounded off his account with a statistic that counts among the most perfidious lies he ever told. At the end of 1944, he says, a statistician drew up some figures for Himmler and Hitler, and Eichmann is able to draw on them, “particularly as I had to redraft the ‘Führer report’ twice at that time.”44 Later, he consistently denied having anything to do with this document, which achieved notoriety as the Korherr Report. But the real lie is hidden in the detail: he dates the statistician’s report to the end of 1944, when the figures were actually prepared in March 1943. Eichmann was a master of fudging dates and frequently employed the technique to paint himself in a more favorable light. And if somebody were to rumble his numbers game, he could rely on people’s willingness to believe that, after so many years, a man might accidentally mix things up from time to time. Eichmann gave a detailed explanation of this method during one of his conversations with Sassen, which was as ill advised as a magician explaining his tricks. By presenting figures from early 1943 as a final balance, Eichmann made almost two years, and over a million murders, vanish from the books—if the earlier figures were even correct in the first place.