Рецензия на книгу
Банальность зла. Эйхман в Иерусалиме
Ханна Арендт
billowyclouds18 декабря 2021 г.What was Adolf Eichmann's actual role in the Holocaust, and did he in fact commit any crimes against humanity?
Although Adolf Eichmann is considered to be a war criminal and a leader and architect of the Holocaust, the Final solution to the Jewish question, he claimed that he was just doing his job and following Hitler's orders. In fact, Hannah Arendt also claimes that he was a criminal only in retrospect and that he was following the law, as Hitler's orders at that time had possessed a force of law under the Third Reich. According to Arendt, Eichmann was an ambitious young man who wanted to excel in his career, as he had many failures before and working for the S.S. meant that he could start from scratch and make a career. She also noted that he had no hatred against the Jews and had no personal reasons for executing these atrocities. He was just a pawn in the big game and we can't see a monster in him. Thus, if we claim that he should be blamed because he was following the orders, all the other people, even we should be blamed for these atrocities as well. However, the one thing he was guilty of is that he did not think, he did not make moral choices and was not considering the political effects of his actions or chain of actions. According to Arendt's descriptions of his personality, he seems like a person who was fully dedicated to his Fuhrer and he believed that it was a good thing to follow the orders. Thus, he did not critically think about whether Hitler's orders or any other orders he was receiving were moral or not. Therefore, since the actions he made resulted in the deaths of millions of people when he had a chance to think and stop and he didn't, I believe that he did in fact commit a crime against humanity. We can consider him guilty of at least prioritising his career and his leader over the lives of millions of innocent people. So we should try, even when powerless, to question their actions and the orders they get for morality and political rightness.
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