Pratinav Anil in the Times reviews a new book on Hannah Arendt by Thomas Meyer. On her Eichmann in Jerusalem:
Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who organised the logistics of deporting Jews to the concentration camps, appeared in Arendt’s account as a conscientious functionary of astonishing moral emptiness, distinguished less by fanatical conviction than by an incapacity for thought. Her phrase “the banality of evil” described the ease with which ordinary men could commit extraordinary crimes once they had handed their consciences over to the filing cabinet.
Shouldn’t we know about this by now? Eichmann has been shown to have been a fanatical – and highly intelligent – Nazi. His defence in the Jerusalem trial was that he was a dim functionary just following orders. Arendt swallowed it whole. Fortunately the Israeli court was not so easily fooled.
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