Eichmann: His Life and Crimes - Hardcover

Cesarani, David.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434010561 ISBN 13: 9780434010561

Publisher: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 2004

Synopsis

A monumental and groundbreaking biography of the architect of the Nazi’s “Final Solution,” and one of the icons of evil in our age.

Adolf Eichmann was at the centre of the Nazi genocide against the Jews of Europe between 1941 and 1945. He was directly responsible for transporting over 2 million Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps. Yet he was an obscure figure until his sensational capture by the Israeli Secret Service in Argentina in 1960, and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem.

This study is the first account of Eichmann’s life to appear since the aftermath of his trial. It is a groundbreaking biography of one of the most fascinating of the Nazi leaders. Drawing on recently unearthed documents, David Cesarani shows how Eichmann became the Nazi Security Service’s “expert” on Jewish matters and reveals his initially cordial working relationship with Zionist Jews in Germany, despite his intense anti-Semitism.

Cesarani explains how new research demonstrates that the massive ethnic cleansing Eichmann conducted in Poland in 1939-40 was the crucial bridge to his role in the deportation of the Jews. And he argues controversially that Eichmann was not necessarily predisposed to mass murder, exploring the remarkable, largely unknown period in Eichmann’s career when he learned how to become a perpetrator of genocide.

About this title

About the Author

David Cesarani is Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Southampton. His publications include Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Since Adolf Eichmann's trial and execution, scholars have looked to the events of the Holocaust logistician's life to assess the depth of his guilt and to speculate on the social mechanisms that turn individuals genocidal. Cesarani aims to strip away some of the mythology that such efforts have invariably generated. His thesis--that Eichmann's evil arose not from banal bean counting but from the bureaucrat's ambitious careerism--both builds upon and pointedly rejects Hannah Arendt's visceral Eichmann in Jerusalem and will certainly attract attention for doing so. Yet Cesarani does more than simply reopen the cog-or-monster debates that surrounded Arendt's assessment. Pointing out key moments in which Eichmann overcame his own humanity--swallowing his initial shock at the sight of mass shootings and finding recovery from a "total moral collapse" in Hungary in 1944--Cesarani emphasizes Eichmann's deliberate choices, habituation to power, and gradual desensitization to mass atrocity. In doing so, he presents a compelling vision of Eichmann that comports with our current awareness of the psychological dynamics of genocide. Similarly compelling is Cesarani's fascinatingly Darwinian description of the ever-changing bureaucratic structures of Nazism to which Eichmann was continually adapting as he rose in the ranks. Few biographies, and fewer Holocaust histories, are as innovative or as nuanced. Brendan Driscoll
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Edition details

• Publisher: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0434010561
• ISBN 13: 9780434010561
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352