Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

by Bettina Stangneth

  The attempts to influence public opinion by launching an alternative image of the camps were not without success, but live “demonstrations” still had more of an effect than Fiala’s pseudoreportage. Given the tightly state-controlled press in the German sphere of influence, this could only have come as a surprise to a Nazi who was certain that the foreign press was controlled by that great enemy, the Jewish world conspiracy. From the racial theorists’ point of view, the possibility that freedom of the press might actually function was unimaginable. Eichmann found other ways to sell Theresienstadt as a model ghetto, in spite of people’s initial mistrust. The first media reports from March 1942 saw what was happening there as “the martyrdom of the Jews in the protectorate,” the next step in a “diabolical scheme” that would end in extermination.123 However, a visit to Theresienstadt arranged for the German Red Cross in June 1943 managed to sway public opinion. In a masterful piece of theater, Eichmann and his colleagues managed to present an entirely different, spruced-up camp to the visitors, where conditions were peaceful and no one was being deported. The visitors’ criticisms about overcrowding and malnourishment took a backseat, and the fact that the visit had been allowed spoke strongly in the camp’s favor.124 Even if this performance wasn’t enough to offset the growing accusations of extermination and mass murder in other camps, Theresienstadt inspired sufficient doubt that even critical journalists, who were aware of the camp’s token status, allowed themselves to be seduced. As planned, they saw Theresienstadt in a more positive light than it deserved: as a “terminus” camp in relatively good condition, with standards acceptable for wartime. The detailed front-page story in the New York Aufbau of August 27, 1943, “Theresienstadt: A ‘Model Ghetto,’ ” ended with this paragraph:

  When Theresienstadt was “created,” the Nazis’ power was already in decline. Some Nazi leaders were haunted by the fear of the unavoidable retribution that the future holds for them. They started searching for alibis. Eichmann, the Hebrew and Yiddish-speaking Gestapo Kommissar who terrorized the Jewish community in Prague, must have gotten nervous. The atmosphere in Theresienstadt is in sharp contrast to the pogrom mentality of Goebbels and Rosenberg. When the day of retribution comes for the Nazi “protectors,” they will use it in their defense: “in a time of extreme despotism, we were as humane as possible. Theresienstadt is our alibi.”125

  Instead of questioning the facts with which they were presented, people doubted the Germans’ motives, thereby fundamentally underestimating the extent of their violence and lies. The idea that Eichmann and his colleagues could go to such lengths to make an entire town look presentable for just one day, only to return to gruesome normality the next, lay far beyond the outside world’s powers of imagination. It was Hannah Arendt, incidentally, who argued against the interpretation of Theresienstadt as an alibi, in a reader’s letter to Aufbau in September 1943 (the latest date at which she might have heard Eichmann’s name for the first time). However, even Arendt did not guess at the true magnitude of the crime.126 “The real reasons for Theresienstadt,” she tried to explain, lay somewhere else entirely, because even this so-called model ghetto was part of the deportation policy.127 It belonged to “a unified political line”: Jews were tolerated, and even quite well treated, only where they could either be used to stir up anti-Semitism, or where they had to be spared because there were too many witnesses around. “In Czechoslovakia and Germany, the Nazis have just tried to reassure the population once again that they intend to segregate the Jews, not annihilate them. This is the purpose Theresienstadt serves, in the middle of the protectorate, an area that the civilian population can check up on. Massacres are only undertaken in areas that are either empty of people, like the Russian steppes, or where at least some of the indigenous population can be persuaded to participate, at least to some extent.” Arendt saw this situation with astonishing clarity, even from exile. A plausible description of what was really going on in Hitler’s domain required one thing above all: “an explanation of the relationship between the persecution of the Jews and the Nazi state apparatus.” The idea of an “alibi” had no place there.

  Hannah Arendt’s voice remained an exception, however. The report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, following its next official visit to Theresienstadt in 1944, sounds so starry-eyed that it’s hard not to admire Eichmann’s PR work. The delegate from the German Red Cross claimed: “The settlement made a very good overall impression on everybody.”128 Theresienstadt’s overseers learned from the grievances raised by the first delegation, such as overcrowding. These had been resolved in time for the second visit, by the most brutal means, so that this time nothing spoiled the camp’s good impression. Eichmann and his colleagues created an illusion that rendered the horror almost invisible—and it is easier to deceive someone who doesn’t expect hell than someone who fears the worst. In 1943 and at the start of 1944, public attention was drawn to other issues, largely due to the way the war was going, but the strategy of drawing attention from the extermination of the Jews through targeted deployment of the press was hugely successful. Eichmann’s skill in this regard exceeded anything that Goebbels’s clumsy propaganda could have achieved with its rabble-rousing articles. He was even able to inveigle the “enemy press” into spreading his lies for him.

  “I Was Here, There and Everywhere”

  But even the most skilled PR work could prevent the facade from slipping only for a little while. The Nazis were slowly starting to doubt the certainty of final victory; and only their faith in victory had stopped them worrying about covering their tracks. The hope that they would have time to tidy up later gradually vanished, and those involved started to fear for their postwar reputations and their personal futures in the event of a German defeat.129

  While others were turning their thoughts to the postwar period, Eichmann’s reputation was spreading across the whole of occupied Europe and the countries adjacent to it. This was thanks not only to the “advisers on Jewish affairs” from “Eichmann’s office,” but also to the boss himself, who traveled tirelessly among them. “I was here, there and everywhere, you never knew when I was going to show up,” Eichmann would say later.130 His official travel itinerary was impressive: conferences in Amsterdam; receptions in Bratislava; negotiations on diamond trading in The Hague; diplomatic receptions in Nice and trips to Monaco; interministry meetings in Paris and flying visits to Copenhagen, alongside visits to the ghettoes, Theresienstadt, the extermination camps, and offices in the east, all the way to Kiev and Königsberg.131 “I was a traveler,”132 Eichmann always emphasized. “I was able to creep into every territory of our corner of Europe.”133 “The famous name Eichmann”134 opened doors everywhere. It was better than his red official passport—even if many of the countless people whose doorbells he and his colleagues rang came to wish later that they hadn’t been in when he called.

  But by this point, Eichmann’s career was no longer progressing as smoothly as it once had. In 1943 two incidents in particular hampered it: the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, which went completely against Eichmann’s notion of Jewry, and the successful resistance to deportations from Denmark, the failure of which he took as a personal defeat.135 The Nazis simply had no plan in place for opposition: for physical violence from Jews, who had not been thought of as willing to fight, and for sabotage by nations whose Jewish problem the Nazis were trying to solve. This turn of events posed a real threat to someone whose entire arsenal consisted of tricks, deceit, and pitting institutions against one another. Eichmann had to respond to a change in behavior from both sides: his fellow perpetrators and confidants, and their opponents. He had to maintain control on the one side and authority on the other. During this period, he fostered and spread another self-image, with help from his colleagues: this Eichmann was not only an influential man; he also had many influential friends.

  Heydrich’s sudden death in June 1942 lost Eichmann one of his most important backers, both in administrative and emotional terms. Th
e assassination of his superior was something he also had to take as a personal threat. Fearing for his own safety, Eichmann surrounded himself with bulletproof glass, traveled with a mobile arsenal in the trunk of his car, and began ensuring that no one took his photograph.136 His family’s personal security detail was increased, and his children had a bodyguard on their way to school.137 Retaining his former power proved more problematic. At first, Himmler tried to take over Heydrich’s responsibilities, but Himmler was a busy man and famously fickle, which caused some difficulties. From an outsider’s perspective, Eichmann became closer to Himmler, but in practice he was not always able to rely on Himmler’s backing. Heinrich “Gestapo” Müller, the head of RSHA’s Department IV, was not a careerist who forced himself into the public eye, which didn’t make it any easier for Eichmann to orient himself.

  Nonetheless Eichmann’s close contact with Himmler became something that he and his colleagues could parade in front of their enemies, and competitors in their own camp. The “advisers on Jewish affairs” that Eichmann sent into every occupied territory came from “Eichmann’s office” and called themselves “Eichmann’s special commando.” And as Eichmann traveled among them and negotiated with offices all over the Reich, he invoked the Reichsführer-SS. Eichmann’s real legitimation was actually much higher, since he was ultimately deployed “on the Führer’s special mission”; but in a regime governed by relationships, only personal access to someone in power carried any real influence. The backing of the Reich Chancellery might have made an impression in negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior,138 but the implication that you could report an incident to Himmler in person evidently had a greater impact. Seen from the outside, the threat Eichmann constantly repeated from 1943 onward—to fly off to see Himmler every time negotiations stalled—looks a little like a child’s “I’ll tell my mom on you.” But the National Socialist leadership was a system dependent on personalities, and the potential of this threat should not be underestimated.

  In more than one case, a single decision by Hitler or Himmler unexpectedly threw everything into confusion and ended careers that had previously appeared untouchable. In Argentina, Eichmann would claim to Sassen that in 1943 he once gave SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, Himmler’s chief of staff, a dressing-down on the telephone. This claim could just be the fantasy of a notorious show-off, but it shows how hierarchies were founded in National Socialism and how they functioned.139 Anyone with real access to Himmler had the potential to completely destabilize other people’s plans, and was therefore a powerful man. It’s important to recognize exactly what Eichmann was claiming when he said he would fly off to see Himmler about something: in the middle of the war’s final phase, with the Red Army already within earshot, and in spite of fuel and material shortages, Eichmann thought it plausible that he, an Obersturmbannführer (and even the lower-ranking Wisliceny), might have a plane at his disposal at all times and would be allowed in to see Himmler without an appointment.

  If the people around Eichmann, including close colleagues, imagined he wielded this kind of power, then all his grandstanding must have paid off. Which is by no means to say that he actually had this power, or that his conduct was in keeping with his position, but this was clearly the impression he managed to give. Eichmann was aware of the connection: it was only his colleagues treating him “with such respect” that allowed him to appear more than he was.

  Gustaf Gründgens, one of the greatest stage actors and most astute observers of that period in which SD officers, too, made a show of themselves, explained this mechanism to the actors in his company with potent simplicity: “The king is always played by others.” The powerful king himself doesn’t need to be an exceptional actor: well-played subjects can turn a shadow on the stage into a monarch through their behavior toward him. Power is a phenomenon created by group dynamics, never solely by the “powerful man.” It calls him into being. Once you have seen through this phenomenon, you can use the helpless behavior of your victims to increase the effect. Eichmann’s colleagues certainly had a talent for doing so, and he himself was very well cast for his role. He gave an impressive performance as a powerful man among the most powerful of men. Toward the end, Wisliceny (and also Eichmann, if we believe what Wisliceny said) even started claiming to be personally related to Himmler, in a final escalation of their attempts to find a foothold in this slippery network.140 And people were willing to swallow it: such claims had an impact on their victims as well as their colleagues, and finally also on postwar historians.

  The Grand Mufti’s Friend

  Eichmann also managed to claim a relationship of an altogether different sort, one that appealed to his pride as much as to his weakness for fantastical stories: his close personal friendship with the “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.”141 The idea’s public appeal can be gauged by how the story developed, even helping Eichmann to cover up his escape after the war. The way Eichmann rendered credible the lie of this friendship reveals the interplay between his boasting, his skillful handling of information, and the public’s response.

  During the 1930s Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, opened doors to all kinds of negotiations in the Middle East. A former soldier, he was granted his religious position by the British in 1921. He was a sought-after contact for trading partners, from an economic as well as a political perspective, and so he had more than one connection with the German Reich. One of these connections was via Reichert from the German intelligence service in Jerusalem to the SD’s Jewish office. Otto von Bolschwing, an undercover agent who was friends with Leopold von Mildenstein, Eichmann’s commanding officer from his early years in the SS, also played a role here. There is speculation that Eichmann and Hagen were supposed to meet al-Husseini, or at least people close to him, on their trip to the Middle East in 1937. This speculation is partly founded on Eichmann’s application for a clothing allowance. He wanted new suits and a light coat, based on the fact that “my trip [will involve] negotiations with Arab princes, among others.”142

  Shortly before the SD men arrived, al-Husseini made a hurried exit from Palestine, having incited an Arab uprising against the British occupying forces. Later people reasoned that the meeting was prevented only by this coincidence. Regardless of whether that was true, al-Husseini had sent Hitler his congratulations when Hitler gained power in 1933, and he had intensified the contact in 1937. After making his escape through Ankara and Rome, the mufti found asylum in Berlin on November 6, 1941. He remained there until the end of the war, causing a few colorful headlines and running up a vast expense account. Hitler granted him an audience on November 28, 1941, and again on December 9.143 The mufti was also active elsewhere in the Nazi Reich: on December 18, 1942, he gave a speech to open the Central Islamic Institute in Berlin; he founded the Croatian “13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar,” a multiethnic SS unit of Muslim and other soldiers; and he took a particular interest in the “Jewish question.” Hitler’s radical anti-Semitism fell on friendly ears with the mufti. He broadcast his flaming diatribes over the German radio, spreading his hatred from Cairo to Tehran and Bombay: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and the Faith.”144

  His presence in Germany brought with it exotic pictures for the press and, for the book trade, a colorful biography of a man with a henna-red beard and blue eyes.145 Al-Husseini had his own liaison officer in Department IV of the RSHA (Hans-Joachim Weise), who accompanied him on his trips around Germany, Italy, and the occupied territories and was responsible for his personal security. Werner Otto von Hentig in the Foreign Office was also responsible for his well-being. Al-Husseini’s staff took part in at least one SD training conference in summer 1942,146 and in the first half of 1942, there was at least one long discussion between al-Husseini and Friedrich Suhr, head of Subdepartment IV B 4b (Jewish and Property Affairs, Foreign Affairs) under Eichmann.147 Like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, Eichmann was deeply impressed by the foreign guest. Wisliceny (who
once again was not there) would recall the enthusiastic account Eichmann gave of al-Husseini’s visit to his office, dating it to the start of 1942. According to Wisliceny’s statement, made in prison in 1946, Eichmann told him that the grand mufti had first been to see Himmler.

  A short time later the Grand Mufti visited the Head of the Jewish Department, … Adolf Eichmann, in his offices in Berlin at 116 Kurfürstenstraße.… I happened to see Eichmann in Berlin a few days later, and he told me about this visit in detail. Eichmann had given the Grand Mufti a detailed presentation on the “solution to the Jewish question in Europe” in his “Card Room,” where he had collected statistics on the Jewish populations of the various European countries. The Grand Mufti was apparently very impressed. He told Eichmann he had already asked Himmler—who had agreed—to send one of Eichmann’s people to Jerusalem as his personal adviser, when he, the Grand Mufti, returned there after the victory of the Axis powers. During this conversation, Eichmann asked me whether I might want to do this, but I declined an “oriental adventure” of this sort unequivocally. Eichmann was very much impressed by the Grand Mufti. He told me then, and repeated it later, that the Grand Mufti had also made a strong impression on Himmler, and had an influence in Jewish-Arab matters. Eichmann saw and spoke to the Grand Mufti often, as far as I know. At least, he mentioned this in conversation in Budapest, in summer 1944.148