Description

When the State of Israel began legal proceedings against the former SS officer Adolf Eichmann on 23 May 1960, it attracted worldwide attention, as Eichmann was regarded as the chief architect of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’.

Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the weekly magazine The New Yorker, and the articles were subsequently published as a book – *The Banality of Evil* – which was the subject of lively debate due to its controversial positions.

The controversy surrounding *The Banality of Evil* lies on several levels. Arendt discusses how the Eichmann trial was used for political purposes by the young State of Israel; she draws attention to the role played by the so-called Jewish Councils during the Holocaust; but above all, she de-demonises Adolf Eichmann. He was neither diabolical in character nor an ideological fanatic. The man who had been regarded as the executor of the Holocaust was nothing more than an unimaginative bureaucrat without ideas or initiative of his own. The virtue he held in highest regard was the fulfilment of duty. Evil was, as the book’s title suggests, banal.

Fifth revised edition