The Eichmann Trial

by Deborah E. Lipstadt

  Time believed Eichmann had been “a good witness.” The Observer, though convinced that “he would do it all again,” believed he proved himself a “cleverer man” than the Israelis had assumed. Haim Gouri reacted to Eichmann’s testimony with astonishment: “Not anger. Not pain. Not hatred. Just amazement.” In his testimony, Eichmann had gone from a “logistics officer … to sergeant … to clerk, a mere secretary who passed on letters and telegrams from his superiors to his subordinates and from his subordinates to his superiors, up, down and sideways.”7 Gouri was unconvinced by this transformation. Others, foremost among them Hannah Arendt, saw things quite differently. She saw an automaton who was just passing on information and who failed to understand that what he had done was wrong.

  Eichmann’s loquaciousness infuriated the judges. Landau had to admonish him repeatedly to keep his answers short. “It is clear to us that, in German, the predicate comes at the end of the sentence, but it takes too long to reach the predicate.” Matters did not improve. The judges complained about his tendency to give incomprehensible answers, deliver “speeches” rather than answers, and include irrelevant material. Even from a distance of nearly fifty years, Eichmann’s testimony remains maddening. In response to Servatius’s question about his insistence that foreign Jews wear the yellow star, Eichmann began a discourse on police regulations for official correspondence and interministerial rivalries. Exasperated, Landau interrupted and instructed him, “You were not asked to give a general lecture.… You were asked a specific question.” Ignoring Landau’s reprimand, Eichmann continued with a discourse on the procedure for drafting letters for the department chief’s signature, including what the different-colored inks signified. Using German to ensure that Eichmann understood, an exasperated Landau lectured him: “You are asked specific questions and you must give specific answers.… Do you understand?”8 Eichmann may have assumed that, by larding his answers with bureaucratic detail, he would project the image of an operations officer accused of acts well beyond his ken. If this was his plan, he enjoyed some success. The New York Times was struck that Eichmann did not appear “sullen or defiant,” just “dull.” Their coverage described him as a man who “reveled in bureaucratic phrases” and was not even “worth hating.”9 Yet some observers saw another side. As the examination proceeded, Servatius often stumbled, mixed up documents, and could not locate the proper reference. On occasion, Eichmann corrected him or passed him a document from his booth so he could make a particular point. When this happened, one observer noted, “Eichmann’s voice sharpened: the cold snarl, the bark that many of the witnesses remembered was there, one tone beneath what we heard.” The prominent French journalist Joseph Kessel described Eichmann’s reaction when the prosecution read from depositions by his former SS colleagues that implicated him. Kessel felt the “passion and rage” emerging from beneath the “hollow mask.” This, he declared, was the “true Eichmann.”10

  After Servatius concluded his examination came the long-awaited confrontation—“the battle of wits”—which the spectators who packed the courtroom had been anticipating: Hausner’s cross-examination. The exchange—described by one observer as a “duel”—turned ugly from the outset. Hausner wanted yes or no replies to his questions. Instead, he got labyrinthine, expansive nonresponses. The attorney general’s attempts to cut Eichmann off were to no avail. As the answers grew maddeningly more evasive, Hausner became increasingly frustrated. “The Accused was asked a question and he must answer it.… But he must not give replies in the form of lectures.” When that did not help, Hausner began to hector and shout. At one point, just as Eichmann uttered the word “because,” which was usually a precursor to one of his convoluted discourses, Hausner emphatically cut him off: “I don’t want to hear any ‘because.’ I want an answer.” Eichmann, seemingly oblivious to the attorney general’s demand, plowed on. An exasperated Hausner exploded: “Without ‘but,’ I want an answer!” Landau immediately admonished Hausner that Eichmann must be allowed to finish. Though Hausner’s combative style seemed beneath the dignity of both his office and this case, his frustrations were understandable. His plan was to build an evidentiary web around Eichmann and to box him in with one of two choices: either acknowledge what the evidence indicates you did, or deny it. If Eichmann did the former, he would be admitting his guilt. If he did the latter, particularly in light of evidence that so clearly implicated him, he would be exposing himself to the judges as a liar rather than the “honest defendant” he insisted he was.11

  If Hausner was annoyed by Eichmann’s evasive style and meandering nonanswers, he was incensed by Eichmann’s assertion that he sought to help, not persecute, Jews. What documents, Hausner sneered, proved that “Jewish functionaries asked you to send Jews naked and penniless to Nisko?” Eichmann painted an idyllic portrait, one that was in stark contrast to the testimony offered by Nisko survivors. First Eichmann claimed that the Nisko plan had a benevolent motivation. He wanted to enable Jews to live “among themselves and not under the conditions of stress to which they were subjected in their previous localities.” He spoke as if the “stress” was an inherent condition in which he had no role. He had done the same thing when he expressed his “horror” that Captain Less’s father had been deported from Berlin and murdered in Auschwitz. His description of Nisko bore little relationship to reality: “Rivers, villages, markets, small towns … It would benefit all concerned.” Hausner challenged Eichmann’s bucolic description by observing that “even Polish farmers were unable to cultivate” land there, and no one drank the water because of fear of toxins. Eichmann, defending it as “not the worst,” contended that it was “not that certain” that the waters were poisoned. At the most they “might cause typhoid.” Eichmann described himself as being “enthusiastic” about finding an area to “be allocated for these Jewish needs.” Had Hausner stopped at this point, the absurdity of Eichmann’s claim would have stood on its own. Instead, he pushed further. “All you have related here … is a pack of lies.… You knew that the Jews in the Generalgouvern[e]ment were facing extermination.”12 Now it was Hausner who had gone too far. He was wrong: At the time of the Nisko plan, Jews were not facing systematic extermination. Many of those brought to Nisko died from the harsh conditions. If more would have been sent, they, too, would have died. But this was not yet the Final Solution, the deliberate destruction of European Jewry. Hausner made the same mistake when he insisted that 1939 meetings regarding the Final Solution constituted planning sessions for genocide. At that point, the Final Solution did not yet mean purposeful murder.

  Sometimes Eichmann scored small but direct hits. Hausner contended that, according to the Nuremberg documents, Julius Streicher had devised the Madagascar plan. Eichmann countered that Hausner had it wrong: the Nuremberg documents indicated that the Madagascar idea had been mentioned in Streicher’s paper, Der Stürmer, but not that he had devised it. A small matter, but Hausner could not have been happy to be corrected by Eichmann on a document’s factual content. A few seconds later, Hausner suffered a more significant blow. When Eichmann claimed that reading Herzl’s The Jewish State inspired him to propose creating a Jewish territory, an overwrought Hausner exploded: “You do not mention names of persons whom you are not fit or worthy of mentioning.” Landau admonished Hausner for his inappropriate remark. Then Hausner continued to sink deeper into a morass of his own making. For some inexplicable reason, he again insisted that Eichmann had gotten the idea for Madagascar from Der Stürmer. Eichmann protested: “I was not a reader of the Stürmer.” Hausner, his voice laced with cynicism, responded: “You did not read the Stürmer? Your Führer used to read it every week.” This kind of comment prompted the Washington Post to note, “The more Eichmann was needled by Hausner, the more dignity Eichmann displayed.” Eichmann was hardly on trial for reading this anti-Semitic newspaper. And here, too, Eichmann may have been truthful. Eichmann’s SD superiors considered Streicher’s propaganda undignified, vulgar, and unproductive.13

 
Hausner soon suffered another public blow. As he was jousting with Eichmann, Servatius rose to object. Hausner turned to him and rather derisively said, “I would ask the Counsel for the Defense not to interfere in the course of the cross-examination.” Landau immediately interceded: “Mr. Attorney General, you do not know yet what Counsel for the Defense wants to say.” Then, sounding as if he were explaining courtroom procedure to a novice, he added, “This occurs in trials every day.” Even though the judges rejected Servatius’s objection, it was not a good moment for Hausner: he had won on content but lost on stature. It is hard to explain his outburst, given that even novice courtroom-watchers knew that such interruptions occur in a trial. Hausner may have unconsciously considered himself as more aligned with the judges than appearing before them. In fact, giving the lie to any notion that this was a “show trial,” throughout the proceedings the judges clashed with Hausner. They had a far more traditional perception of the structure and limitations of the trial. Hausner wanted to tell the entire story of the Final Solution. They wanted a narrowly constructed judicial proceeding that focused on Eichmann’s misdeeds, whereas Hausner wanted a broad educational exercise. They thought they were in charge; sometimes Hausner acted as if he was. This was not a result of Hausner’s limited courtroom experience. It was a reflection of two conflicting perspectives on the goal of the proceedings. The judges’ primary objective was to conduct a scrupulously fair legal proceeding that would win the respect of the world. Hausner’s goal was to tell the story of the Holocaust in all its detail and, in so doing, to capture the imagination not just of Israel’s youth and world Jewry, but of the entire world. Landau’s frequent admonitions of Hausner and Eichmann’s refusal to capitulate illustrate just how much of this case was out of the Israeli government’s—read Ben-Gurion’s—control.14

  Hausner soon regained his footing. Eichmann had insisted that the notation “im Auftrage” (“by order of”), which appeared on each of his letters, demonstrated that “I had received the order … [and] was acting … on behalf of someone else.” Hausner pointed out that Gestapo protocol stipulated that all correspondence include “i.A.”—a required formula, it signified nothing. Then, yet again, Hausner pushed too far. He introduced a letter Heydrich had written shortly after Wannsee. “Since happily now the basic design has been established with regard to the practical implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question … I would ask you to instruct your official in charge to contact my Specialist Officer responsible for this matter, SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.” Did this not demonstrate, Hausner asked, that Heydrich gave Eichmann a “free hand … to run Jewish affairs as he saw fit …?” Once again Hausner overplayed his hand. Eichmann was Heydrich’s “Specialist Officer” and, as such, handled many aspects of the Final Solution, but certainly not all of them, and, contrary to Hausner’s contentions, he did not run Jewish affairs as he saw fit.15 The documents in Hausner’s hands proved that and nothing more.

  Hausner was at his strongest when he maintained a steady pace and did not let himself be drawn into extended exchanges. A report submitted to Ribbentrop regarding the fate of Italian and Greek Jews began with the words “In the opinion of the Reich SS Leader—SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.” Hausner asked Eichmann to explain this. After claiming that the Foreign Office wanted him to provide “a concrete expression” of Himmler’s wishes, Eichmann tried to segue into a discourse on the transmission of information. Hausner stopped him. “Look at the document—this does not refer to any concrete expression of wishes.” Rather lamely, Eichmann tried to shift the discussion to the deportation of Greek Jewry and argued that he had had no hand in that. Hausner stayed on point. “In an official document, which dates from the time of the War, at a time when no one could have intended to shift any blame on you, an official body describes you in a document submitted to Ribbentrop as the Reich SS Leadership [sic] in Jewish Affairs. How can you contest it?” Abandoning his claim that the Foreign Office wanted a “concrete expression” of Himmler’s views, Eichmann contended that he did not need to contest the report because it was a “mistake and erroneous.” A somewhat skeptical Judge Landau asked for clarification. If the attorney general was wrong, “then how and why does your name appear in the document?” Now Eichmann, rather lamely, claimed that this was a matter of “bureaucratic sloppiness.” He had “passed on the information”; hence his name was mentioned. Hausner, having made his point, could have stopped here. Instead, he began to taunt Eichmann. Did he expect people to believe he was just “a messenger boy, a megaphone when the Foreign Ministry called you Reichsführung-SS?” It was Judge Halevi who, without taunts or sarcasm, cut to the heart of the matter. He called Eichmann’s attention to one word. The document did not say, “According to information from the Reich SS Leadership; it says ‘In the opinion of’. How do you explain this?” In what seemed like a reflexive action, Eichmann blamed Rademacher, the Ministry of Justice official who had dictated the document: he was a “very slipshod bureaucrat.”16

  Some court watchers kept waiting for Hausner to elicit from Eichmann an unambiguous admission of guilt and contended that because he never did, he failed. They thought that Hausner should “give up” because Eichmann was besting him.17 In fact, these exchanges revealed Eichmann to be both a wily and a desperate man, ready to pile excuse on top of excuse. As I read them, I was reminded of David Irving’s behavior at my own trial. When my barrister presented him with a document that conclusively demonstrated that he had misrepresented the truth—that is, lied—he would initially try to reinterpret it. When that failed, as it invariably did, he would cite other documents to try to prove his point. When they, too, contradicted his version of events, he would try yet some other avenue of escape. When all had failed and he was completely boxed in by the evidence, he would turn to the judge and, with a shrug of his shoulders, declare, “I made a mistake.” He repeatedly engaged in this dance. Every author makes mistakes, but this, we pointed out to the court, was different. Rather than move, as genuine mistakes do, in numerous directions, Irving’s so-called mistakes always moved in one direction: denial of the Holocaust, exonerations of the Third Reich, and implication of the Jews. As these putative mistakes piled up, it became clear to all—except possibly to Irving—that they were hardly inadvertent. It certainly was evident to Judge Gray, who, in his lengthy judgment, declared that Irving’s “falsification of the historical record was deliberate.” So, too, with Eichmann. The more Eichmann piled one excuse on top of another—“it was a mistake,” “this is a forgery,” or “this is the work of a sloppy bureaucrat”—the more he sounded like a drowning man grasping at straws, and the more it must have been clear to the judges that this man would say anything if he thought it would clear him.

  Hausner kept the pressure on. One document spoke of Eichmann as “the person who could have given me details about the persecution of the Jews.” Yet another mentioned, “There was a special apparatus for all extermination … matters.… And the Chief of the operation was SS Obersturmführer Eichmann.” Finally, after having laid out an array of such documents in which high-ranking Nazis referred to his “special assignment” regarding Jewish matters, Hausner asked whether these high-ranking Nazi officials “are all lying and only you are telling the truth.” Eichmann’s response—“I am basing myself on the documents”—sounded rather unpersuasive. Hausner scored again when he challenged Eichmann’s claim that his subordinates stationed in other countries took their orders from the German officials there. Eichmann contended that if they did have a hand in murderous activities, responsibility rested with their superiors in the particular country, and not with him. Why, then, Hausner wondered, had he referred in various documents to “my office in Paris,” “my office in Oslo,” and, regarding The Hague, “my office”? Why, Hausner asked, all these “my office”s if he did not decide anything? With that simple exchange, yet another of Eichmann’s claims collapsed.18

  Without digressing or engaging in histrionics, Hausner kept
the interrogation moving at a steady pace. In September 1943, the Foreign Office asked Eichmann about the status of a Jewish woman then interned in the Netherlands. She was married to an Italian Catholic, and the Italians wanted her returned to Italy. Eichmann responded that, given Italy’s recent withdrawal from the war, there was no reason to agree. “I have therefore instructed my office in The Hague to transfer the Simons woman immediately to the East.” Hausner observed that Eichmann had simply been asked about her status. Yet he had responded by having her deported. Hausner next took note of the dissonance between Eichmann’s claim that he was an officer of low rank, and a 1942 request by SS officials in Paris that he “induce” the Wehrmacht’s High Command to instruct its officers in France to supply army escorts for deportations. Why would SS officials assume that he could influence high-ranking army officers? What, Hausner asked, did that have to do with you? Eichmann began a discourse on the French deportations. Hausner cut him off. “But why to you?” Eichmann claimed they had asked him because it was a “transport matter.” Yet, Hausner reminded him, he had earlier denied any connection to the escorts who accompanied the deportations. Why did they come to him? “Why you of all persons?” Hausner offered yet another example that seemed to belie Eichmann’s claims of lowly status. At the end of September 1943, the Foreign Office approached him regarding the refusal of the senior commander of German forces in Denmark to permit his forces to assist in operations against Jews. (The reasons for his stance are open to some debate.) Hausner, clearly aware that he was drawing blood, asked, “How did you influence the High Command of the Armed Forces?” In Belgium, the military governor, an army officer who disliked Nazi extremism, initially refused to introduce the obligatory wearing of the Jewish badge. Eichmann was instructed to break down the military governor’s opposition. How, Hausner asked, did he “get the military to bend, to go along with you?”19 Eichmann’s answers were all variations on a theme: I was just passing along requests. The more he repeated it, the less persuasive it sounded, and the less he looked like a low-level bureaucrat.