Over
Christmas I finally got around to reading Eichmann Before Jerusalem by
Bettina Stangneth. I cannot recommend this book... highly enough. It challenges and indeed changes nearly all
received wisdom about the leading figure behind the genocide of European Jews
during World War II.
The title of
course refers to Hannah Arendt’s omnipresent and over-praised account of Adolf
Eichmann’s 1961 trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of
evil. I would say that Stangneth’s book not merely surpasses but
actually buries Arendt’s account. Not least in showing how Arendt was
fooled by Eichmann’s role-play in the dock in Jerusalem. For whereas
Arendt famously portrayed the man in the glass booth as a type of bureaucrat,
Stangneth shows not only that Eichmann was not the man Arendt took him to be,
but that she fell for a very carefully curated and prepared performance.
Putting together a whole library of scattered documents from Eichmann’s exile
in Argentina in the 1950s, Stangneth puts the actual, unrepentant Eichmann back
centre stage.
There are a
number of startling discoveries in the book, not least among them being the
extent to which Eichmann had kept up with the books and scholarship on the
Holocaust as they came out so that by the time he was awaiting trial in
Jerusalem he was fully on top of all primary and secondary material put to
him. There is also the extent to which Stangneth is able to show (through
accounts from various members of the South America Nazi circles) how well known
the true identity of ‘Ricardo Klement’ actually was within the German expat
community in those years.
But
Stangneth’s principle scholarly triumph has been her ability to piece together
and make sense of the extant transcripts and recordings known as the Sassen
conversations. Together with Eichmann’s contemporary attempts at
memoir-writing they bring a wholly new interpretation on his years in Argentina.
These conversations – recorded by the journalist and Nazi Willem Sassen in the
1950s – came to light before Eichmann went on trial. But in Jerusalem
Eichmann threw doubt on their authenticity and for this reason (as well as the
complex dissemination and distribution of the transcripts plus disputes over
ownership as well as attempts to disown them) the complete picture of these
interviews has taken until now to come to light. Stangneth’s work on
these materials is extraordinary and the results more than reward her
considerable efforts. For instance she shows that those who participated
in the conversations (including Sassen himself) tried very hard to cover over
exactly what had gone on after Eichmann was abducted by the Mossad. And
Stangneth startlingly shows the extent to which these discussions were far from
being one-on-one interviews but were in fact semi-public events.
The nature of
these events, and their content, is of considerable contemporary as well as
historical relevance. For two reasons in particular. The first
relates to the ongoing European discussion of free speech and Holocaust denial
laws. Because Stangneth shows that as an increasing amount of information
on the Holocaust came to light in the 1950s the immediate reaction of the remaining
Nazis and neo-Nazis in South America was denial. Some of the Argentina
Nazis sincerely believed that the Federal German Republic would not last and
that their belief system might yet return to save the German people. But
even these remote fantasists realised that the news of the Holocaust presented
problems for their rehabilitation. And so they hoped to expose the
Holocaust. Their first attempts were not only crude but were swiftly
overtaken by an unstoppable flood of information and scholarship. By the
mid-1950s even the most committed remaining Nazis clearly found ignoring the
weight of evidence to be an uphill struggle. And so this group of Nazis
in South America, brought together by Sassen, thought that Eichmann might
provide the solution to their quandary. They believed that Eichmann would
be able to help them not just because he had been the person most closely
involved in the Nazi programmes against the Jews, but as the man cited at
Nuremberg as having first used the six million figure. The Buenos Aires
Nazis assumed that if they got Eichmann on record then they could show the
world that the six million figure was a lie, or at least a great exaggeration.
By this point
Eichmann was also thinking of breaking his cover in some way. In 1956 he
once again attempted to write a book, this time provisionally titled Die
anderen sprachen, jetzt will ich sprechen [The Others Spoke, Now I Want
to Speak!]. But the conversations with the Sassen circle – which came
from the same instinct of his to break his silence – turned out to constitute
an attempt to square an impossible circle. For Eichmann saw the Sassen
circle’s efforts to minimize the Holocaust as something like a spitting on his
life’s work. Eichmann knew that the six million figure was accurate, and
seems to have only gradually realised that his audience were hoping for
something quite different from him. The discussions clearly broke down
under this unresolvable issue. Among the reasons why I would suggest that
this has some contemporary relevance is that it is the clearest possible
reminder of how in open discussion even the people most committed to trying to
prove the Holocaust did not occur (former leading Nazi officials) ended up
being unable to disprove the facts. On that occasion – as so often – they slunk
away.
But the
second reason why Stangneth’s book seems relevant for more than historical
reasons is because of what it tells us about a stream of poison which remains
very much at the centre of current events.
In The
Others Spoke, Now I Want to Speak! (the reference is to his former
colleagues who – in another un-square-able moment – Eichmann believed had
defamed him at Nuremberg) he had the opportunity to write about the recent Suez
Crisis. Here is one passage Stangneth quotes which was new to me at
least.
‘And while we are considering all this – we, who are still searching for clarity on whether (and if yes, how far) we assisted in what were in fact damnable events during the war – current events knock us down and take our breath away. For Israeli bayonets are now overrunning the Egyptian people, who have been startled from their peaceful sleep. Israeli tanks and armored cars are tearing through Sinai, firing and burning, and Israeli air squadrons are bombing peaceful Egyptian villages and towns. For the second time since 1945, they are invading… Who are the aggressors here? Who are the war criminals? The victims are Egyptians, Arabs, Mohammedans. Amon and Allah, I fear that, following what was exercised on the Germans in 1945, Your Egyptian people will have to do penance, to all the people of Israel, to the main aggressor and perpetrator against humanity in the Middle East, to those responsible for the murdered Muslims, as I said, Your Egyptian people will have to do penance for having the temerity to want to live on their ancestral soil… We all know the reasons why, beginning in the Middle Ages and from then on in an unbroken sequence, a lasting discord arose between the Jews and their host nation, Germany.’
There then
follows an extraordinary and important passage. For Eichmann goes on to
say that if he himself were ever found guilty of any crime it would only be
‘for political reasons’. He tries to argue that a guilty verdict against
him would be ‘an impossibility in international law’ but goes on to say that he
could never obtain justice ‘in the so-called Western culture.’ The reason
for this is obvious enough: because in the Christian Bible ‘to which a large
part of Western thought clings, it is expressly established that everything
sacred came from the Jews.’ Western culture has, for Eichmann, been
irrevocably Judaised. And so Eichmann looks to a different group, to the ‘large
circle of friends, many millions of people’ to whom this manuscript is aimed:
‘But you, you 360 million Mohammedans, to whom I have had a strong inner connection since the days of my association with your Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, you, who have a greater truth in the surahs of your Koran, I call upon you to pass judgment on me. You children of Allah have known the Jews longer and better than the West has. Your noble Muftis and scholars of law may sit in judgement upon me and, at least in a symbolic way, give me your verdict.’ [pp 227-8]
Elsewhere
Stangneth shows how open Eichmann must have been in his admiration for Israel’s
neighbours. After Eichmann’s abduction his family apparently became
concerned about his second son. According to a police report, ‘As Horst
was easily excitable the Eichmann family was afraid that when he heard about his
father’s fate, he might volunteer to fight for the Arab countries in campaigns
against Israel.’ As Stangneth adds,
‘Eichmann had obviously told his children where his new troops were to be found.’ [229]
Of course for
years after the war there were rumours that Eichmann had fled to an Arab
country. He might have had a better time there. Other Nazis
certainly did, including Alois Brunner – Eichmann’s ‘best man’ – who settled in
Damascus after the war and who is now believed to have died in Syria as recently
as 2010. Eichmann’s Argentina years were certainly filled with
frustration and rage. What is most interesting is how mentally caught he
remained even before he was captured, principally by the impossible conundrum
of how to persuade the world to accept what he had done and simultaneously
boast about his role in the worst genocide in history.
There is much
more to say about this book. But I do urge people to read it. Not
least for the way in which Stangneth sums up the problem with the only strain
of Nazi history which really remains strong to this day. ‘Eichmann refused to do penance and longed for applause. But first and foremost, of course, he hoped his “Arab friends” would continue his battle against the Jews ... He hadn’t managed to complete his task of “total annihilation,” but the Muslims could still complete it for him.’
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