Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by the philosopher Hannah Arendt in which she reflects on the trial held in Jerusalem against Adolf Eichmann, one of the key organizers of the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. Arendt, a German-born Jew who fled after Hitler's rise to power, covered the proceedings as a correspondent for The New Yorker, and the book gathers and expands those reports. A revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1964.

The subtitle introduced the phrase "the banality of evil", which condenses the book's central thesis. According to Arendt, Eichmann did not present himself as a fanatic or a sadist but as an ordinary official, unable to think for himself and relying on stock phrases and the bureaucratic, euphemistic language of the regime. He claimed he had done his duty and had obeyed not only orders but also the law. Arendt argues that his main motivation was professional advancement and the wish to belong to an organization, rather than deeply rooted antisemitic ideology. She also contends that he had drawn a mistaken lesson from Kant: he claimed to follow the categorical imperative but understood it as obedience to a legislator, which in his case was Hitler.

The author also describes features of his character: his need to define himself through membership in organizations, his limited education, his tendency to boast of responsibilities he did not hold, and the sense of emptiness that overtook him at the war's end. Psychiatric evaluations carried out before the trial found no mental illness, which led Arendt to question the idea that great criminals were psychopaths unlike ordinary people. She insists that moral choice remains free even under totalitarianism.

The book also looks closely at the trial itself. Arendt criticizes the fact that Eichmann was seized in Argentina by Israeli agents in violation of Argentine law, that he was tried in Israel for crimes not committed on its territory, and that the proceedings, guided by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, aimed above all to show Jewish suffering rather than to establish the individual responsibility of the accused with precision. She also points to the complicity of some Jewish councils in the deportations.

The work was highly controversial. Many accused it of excusing Eichmann or blaming the victims, while others regarded it as a decisive contribution to thinking about evil and responsibility. The phrase "banality of evil" became one of the most quoted expressions of twentieth-century thought and remains present in debates about morality, justice and historical memory. Later, historians such as David Cesarani questioned some of her judgments, noting that Arendt did not attend the whole trial and that Eichmann held firmer antisemitic convictions than she acknowledged.