Adolf Eichmann: Nazi War Criminal

Adolf Eichmann: Nazi War Criminal

Adolf Eichmann was executed at Israel's Ramle Prison on March 31, 1962. He had been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, crimes for which he never denied his guilt (Weitz). However, although Eichmann was surely guilty of the crimes for which he was punished, there has been great debate as to whether he was treated fairly in a legal sense during his trial. In fact, although the circumstances surrounding Eichmann's capture, trial, and execution may give one pause, the general satisfaction with the end result clearly demonstrates one thing: Eichmann was not entirely dissimilar from those who tried and convicted him. Indeed, there is a little bit of Adolf Eichmann in every person.

During the Third Reich, it was Adolf Eichmann's responsibility to facilitate the transportation of European Jews from one European country to another in order to make possible their extermination. He has be referred to as "The Architect of the Holocaust" as a result of the skill with which he performed his assigned tasks (Browning). Eichmann was given the position of Transportation Administrator, and as such was charged with sending Jews to their ultimate demise. The fascinating thing is that Eichmann did not argue these facts at his trial. In fact, he went so far as to admit that he thought the actions of which he was guilty were deplorable (Draper). Eichmann's defense was pinioned on the argument that the Israeli Supreme Court had neither the legal right nor the jurisdiction to try him for the crimes he committed, and that the extent of his involvement in the crimes was limited to the transportation of the prisoners. The degree to which Eichmann's actions aided in the deaths of Jews, he argued, was circumstantial based upon the fact that he was merely following the orders of his superiors (Draper).

Eichmann's first point of contention seems to have legal merit. He was captured in Argentina and brought to Israel against his will in April of 1960 (Rein). He had lived in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, working odd jobs for nearly 10 years after escaping with the help of a Franciscan friar in Italy. The friar allowed Eichmann to use his connections with Bishop Alois Hudal, who had organized a postwar escape route for Axis personnel. Using the friar's connections with the Bishop, Eichmann obtained both a passport, through the Red Cross in Geneva, and a visa in Argentina, both issued under a false name (Argentina Uncovers Eichmann Pass).

Once he was discovered, the Israeli government launched a covert operation to bring him to their home soil so the man could stand trial. The secrecy of the Israeli mission was motivated by a fear that, if Eichmann was apprehended under legal circumstances, the possibility existed that he would not face the punishment that he truly deserved. Rather than allow this potential outcome to unfold, Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave the go-ahead to abduct Eichmann without notifying the Argentine government, as is the international regulation (Rein). This illegal circumstance under which he was abducted was one of Eichmann's main objections to his trial in Israel.

Eichmann also argued that Israel did not have jurisdiction to try him for his crimes because the crimes were not committed on Israeli soil. Eichmann's operations were conducted in Germany and Poland, and although they did involve Israeli citizens and descendants of Israeli citizens, the crimes themselves were not perpetrated in Israel. In addition, Eichmann contended that the laws that were broken were being retroactively enforced since Israel was not yet a State when the laws were broken (Oliver 805).

Finally, Eichmann argued that his involvement in the crimes was limited to the following of the orders of his superiors. Since he did not personally murder any Jews, simply transporting them from one place to another when following the orders of the sovereign state to which he had sworn his allegiance was a minor crime, and not the primary crime for which he was on trial. In addition, Eichmann questioned the ability of the three judges who were in charge of his case to remain objective in their decision making process. He argued that they were "psychologically incapable of judging the case objectively" (Draper).

In response to Eichmann's protests, the judges, responding logically and using sound reasoning, rejected Eichmann's appeals. They chose to sit during the trial, and they rejected the defense's appeals after Eichmann was convicted of each of the 15 counts he faced. In rejecting the initial objections and denying the appeal, the Court argued that the crimes Eichmann committed were so atrocious that they extended beyond the borders of any one country (Oliver 807). They also argued that the international laws that Eichmann broke had no international court in which they may be tried. As such, it is incumbent upon countries "to give effects to its penal injunctions and to bring criminals to trial (Oliver 808). This rational was given in response to Eichmann's argument about jurisdiction.

As it relates to Israel's right to punish Eichmann, the Courts utilized support from Hugo Grotius' book De Jure Belli ac Pacis. In the book, Grotius opines that members of a society relinquish their right to take the law into their own hands simply by joining that society. It then becomes the responsibility of Courts of Law to punish when it is necessary to punish. Eichmann was one who certainly deserved to be punished, and the Israeli Supreme Court felt fully justified in administering the requisite reprimand (Oliver 809).

Added to the legal importance of Eichmann's trial are the historical significances. Eichmann's trial was the first to deal with the crimes that were done to the Jewish people. At the opening of the trial in 1961, the Israeli Attorney General stated that the trial was necessary, "because in none of the previous war criminals trials had the tragedy of the Jewish people… been the main concern of a court of law, the veritable crux of the issue" (Hammelman 209). This is another important, relevant rationale for the trial, based on Grotius' book. Grotius states that the purpose of punishment can be for the sake of the criminal, for the sake of the victim, or for the sake of the community. While Eichmann's case certainly was not for Eichmann's sake, it is clear to see the benefit for the victims, and the community they represented.

Eichmann himself was made to stand trial for the crimes of the entire group with which he was associated. The evil of the Holocaust is clear, so it was necessary that those responsible be made to pay for their wrongdoing. But do the ends justify the means? Is it permissible that Eichmann be captured illegally, tried in a country with questionable jurisdiction by judges whose objectivity was in question from the first to the last of the proceedings? If this is permissible, are those that administered this "justice" any better than the criminal they were punishing?

Some of Eichmann's contemporaries recognized the inherently questionable nature of Eichmann's trial in Israel. Some argue that the only way in which Eichmann stands out is the degree to which he was willing to carry out his duties. Eichmann operated as a person who attempted to eradicate that which was repulsive to him. In a fundamental sense, this is very much like many other people. Some argue that, fundamentally, Eichmann was not abnormal; the abhorrence of his actions is that they were directed toward human beings.

Yet, the object of Eichmann's crimes is another point worthy of discussion. Nazi Germans did not consider the Jews to be "people" in the strictest sense of the word. The Jews were considered "vermin," something to be detested and done away with at all costs. This view is supported both by Nazi terminology and their methods. The campaign to exterminate Jews was often referred to as "the war against vermin;" and Jews were exterminated by a substance known as Zyklon B. gas, the gas used "for the disinfesting of ships and barracks, particularly for the removal of rats" (Draper).

History is filled with examples of one people devaluing another people to such a thorough degree that the former ceases to think of the latter as people at all. The detested are then reduced to beasts, or property, or, in the case of the Nazis' view of the Jews, vermin. Eichmann occupied a position of power within a government that was operating directly in line with ideals in which Eichmann believed. The fact that this operation was morally reprehensible was secondary to Eichmann. But was his view so strange? What man would not side with the government if the government's position resulted in something that directly benefited him? No citizens of the United States, for example, become disgusted and leave the country when it is revealed how what is now known as U.S. soil was obtained. Nor did other countries charge any of the founding fathers with international crimes of war.

No, Eichmann is not alone, nor is he extremely unusual. The question then becomes, not is there an Adolf Eichmann in each person, for undoubtedly there is. The question becomes, how well can people discern the difference between ideals with which they agree, and those things that are immoral; and perhaps most importantly, how effectively can people decide to do that which is morally correct even when faced with such unpopular consequences as standing out from the crowd and siding against a popular government (Alford)?

Those who held opinions that were opposed to Eichmann's trial in Israel did not wait to be heard. One notable contemporary in particular believed that the methods undertaken to achieve the trial were questionable at best. In 1961, Victor Gollancz published a pamphlet on the very trial in question. It was a plea to abstain from executing Eichmann, but it touched on issues related to the motives surrounding the trial. The Israeli Prime Minister wanted the trial to take place in Israel in particular because he wanted the young Israelis to know what atrocities the Nazis had committed, and to expose the evil of anti-Semitism. But Gollancz urges in his pamphlet that this was a psychological miscalculation by the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Gollancz indicates that, "the horrific story told by the witnesses may repel the youth, on the one hand, and stimulate, on the other, the anti-Semitic frenzy" (N.B. 87). It seems that Gollancz may have had a point because there was a flare of anti-Semitic activity in Argentina not long after Eichmann was abducted (Rein).

Another contemporary objection levied against the Eichmann trial in Israel had to do with the judges themselves. The concern stated here echoed that which Eichmann's defense had previously presented. The worry was based on the Israeli judges' ability to be impartial in a trial that related crimes directed specifically at them and their countrymen. Peter Papadatos, in his book The Eichmann Trial, shows that Eichmann's lawyers were not the only ones concerned with the way in which Eichmann was prosecuted. In addition to the concern about the impartiality of the judges, Papadatos mentions Israel's right to punish persons for war crimes, Eichmann's abduction, and questions about the retroactivity of the Israeli law as important concerns to be considered (Papadatos 198).

Part of Eichmann's defense was clearly erroneous, but does that provide for Israel the legal justification to ignore Eichmann's human rights? Eichmann claimed that he was merely following the orders of his superiors, but this is a claim that is not supported by the facts of the events. Eichmann is said to have had an obvious passion for the duties he performed. It was clear that he was not only good at his work, but he also enjoyed performing his work-related duties quite a bit. Although he claimed that he had "regret and condemnation for the extermination of the Jewish people which was ordered by the German rulers," it was in fact clear that he was "dedicated and devoted to his task" (Draper 489). Eichmann "toiled long and hard and with considerable administrative and negotiating skill to ensure that this 'planned extermination' should be thorough. If any Jews were to remain alive in Europe nobody would be able to blame Eichmann for that oversight" (Draper 489).