Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

by Bettina Stangneth

  But the story of Eichmann and Korherr is more than a cynical redating game played in Argentina. The statistician’s name was a synonym for one of the greatest embarrassments of Eichmann’s career. On January 18, 1943, Heinrich Himmler wrote an angry letter to Heinrich Müller, officially relieving Eichmann of the responsibility for providing murder statistics, which he had been doing until that point: “The RSHA … has no further statistical work to do in this area, as the statistical documents produced thus far lack scientific exactitude.” Instead, Himmler appointed Richard Korherr as the sole official statistician, the inspector for statistics in the office of the Reichsführer-SS. Korherr was granted direct access to all the data from Department IV B 4, where he was also given an office—right in the middle of Eichmann’s empire.45 In the period that followed, Eichmann had to help Korherr compile the figures. A career-minded man like Eichmann would not simply forget or mix up such an experience.

  It is all the more remarkable, then, that in 1956 Eichmann arrived at a completely different body count: fewer than a million victims. His text inflates the emigration quotas and the number of survivors and stresses that a large proportion of Jews must have died during the Allied air raids. This kind of numbers game is hard to stomach when it comes to murder statistics. And in Eichmann’s case, it is unbelievably shameless. This was the man who took pride in showing visitors the “card room” in his office, the walls of which were plastered with diagrams representing his own “successes” and those of National Socialism as a whole. This was the man whose deputy pinned deportation charts on the wall behind his desk for all to see, the way a hunter displays antlers.46 And this was the man trying to tell us that it wasn’t worth it for his department to expend effort over the murder quotas? Eichmann, of all people, who was looking at numbers of between five and six million in 1944–45 (which, as we now know, were an exact representation of the facts)? And yet here he manages to play down the perverse pride he took in his “work” to such an extent that the National Socialist extermination program becomes a regrettable footnote to history. This piece of denial is so far-fetched, we can only marvel that Eichmann thought for a second that anyone would believe it. Even among the knowledge dodgers in Argentina, this distortion didn’t hold water for long. Eichmann’s figures chimed perfectly with the project that Sassen and his colleagues were working on, but unfortunately, the Korherr Report was one of the documents in Léon Poliakov and Josef Wulf’s sourcebook, which the Sassen circle had in front of them. Debates about victim numbers consequently occupied a large part of the discussion group’s time.47

  But the greatest barrier to anyone believing Eichmann was actually one he had erected himself, in the image of himself he had presented to his colleagues at the end of the war. He knew that if he wanted to avoid suspicion, he would have to confront this issue, and on the last page of “Re: My Findings” he takes the bull by the horns. “The war was drawing to an end. In that final period—I almost want to say the final hours—I said to a few lower-ranking officers: ‘… and if it must be, I will leap joyfully into the pit, in the knowledge that around48 five million enemies of the Reich have been killed along with us.”49 He made this statement, Eichmann adds by way of explanation, in a mood shaped by the war’s end and the destruction it brought with it. And the “highest number of enemy victims” had been the “standpoint” of the enemy as well. Eichmann firmly denies he said anything about “Jews,” a story he ascribes to Wilhelm Höttl and Dieter Wisliceny. To make sure there is no misunderstanding, he then repeats: “It is not true!” For the life of him, he cannot explain how the two of them could have happened upon such an absurd misrepresentation.50 Although he faced probing questions on this point from the Sassen circle, Eichmann defended his version of events, and it was another five years before he admitted that, of course, he had not said “enemies of the Reich.”

  Today, it’s easy to recognize Eichmann’s lies: fifty years of research have given us the arguments we need to resist him, and we can see the facts behind the fiction. We can spot his intentions before his words can have any influence on us. But in 1956 the danger of falling into his traps was incomparably greater. All the more interesting, then, to take a closer look at the methods of obfuscation and manipulation that this man employed. After all, this text is Eichmann’s first postwar statement, and his first attempt to claim the sovereign right to interpret history. A few telltale details in this first draft reveal how he developed and refined his methods.

  The text of “Re: My Findings” quivers with an inner tension that stems from several dilemmas in his falsification of history. The first relates to Eichmann’s image of Hitler. On the one hand, he claims that the Führer expressly ordered the complete extermination of the Jews in the German-occupied territories; on the other, he claims a very low murder rate. In order to do both at once, he has to explain how the head of a totalitarian state could give an order that had so little effect. Either the Führer’s word was not as binding as Eichmann suggests (which weakens his “just obeying orders” argument as a justification for his own actions), or his figures are too low (meaning his own crime was greater than he is trying to claim). Eichmann simply says that Himmler was “not in too much of a hurry to carry out the Führer’s order,” because he still believed in “a halfway favorable outcome for the war.”51 And at least to start with, Germany’s reliance on forced labor (“the workforce”) was so great that the Economic and Adminstrative Head Office had not complied with the Führer’s extermination order. But this explanation reveals a conspicuous weakness in Eichmann’s “rounded” picture of history. He would go on to use the Sassen circle discussions, and the books, to come up with a better design.

  The second structural flaw in Eichmann’s argument had to do with the people he was addressing, and his own self-image. The Dürer circle had sought him out because they wanted a man with as much knowledge as possible and a fundamentally National Socialist outlook. Consequently, the Adolf Eichmann of 1956 had far fewer problems saying “I” than the Eichmann who appeared in Jerusalem. In “The Others Spoke,” with a combination of vanity and sporadic bursts of honesty, he provides his readers with evidence of his qualifications as an indispensable witness and a legitimate member of the Sassen group. His text reads a little like a job application. It might overemphasize things he believed would show him in a positive light, but this is still Eichmann presenting himself as the successful and respected National Socialist he had really been. He includes explanatory notes for any negative aspects with which he does not wish to be associated. Eichmann was proud of his “lifetime achievements for Führer and people,” but he also knew he had to defend himself, and this tension would make him vulnerable later on.

  The third basic problem he faced in giving this version of history was gauging the extent of his potential readers’ prior knowledge. Anyone setting out to manipulate and deceive needs not only superior knowledge but also an intimate acquaintance with the actual and hypothetical knowledge of his audience. In a historical context, we would call such knowledge the body of source material. But in 1956 the only thing Eichmann knew about the recently published books was their titles. Unlike Eberhard Fritsch and Willem Sassen, he had to rely on the book reviews in the press to help him parry critical questions. Having “been there,” Eichmann’s knowledge of events may have been superior, but he also had one worry that the others didn’t: in contrast to them, he knew exactly what horrors might come to light. Authors of fantasy literature have free rein when they create their narratives, but a liar does not: he has to make sure people will believe what he says. And this becomes more difficult when his audience’s background knowledge might expand at any moment, without warning. Sassen recognized the small advantage this fact gave him and tried to play it out against Eichmann.

  The fourth dilemma Eichmann faced in this draft was founded in the fundamental evil behind his crimes: his radical anti-Semitism. In order to exonerate himself, and the Nazi regime as a whole, he stresses that he had an ex
cellent relationship with his Jewish “negotiating partners.” Their dealings were harmonious on both sides, as they worked toward a mutually agreeable solution. But this emphasis stands in irreconcilable opposition to Eichmann’s belief in the necessity of a “final victory” of one race over another. The goal of National Socialist anti-Jewish policies had ultimately been the “Final Solution of the Jewish question,” and Hitler’s plans for world domination would not even have allowed space for Jews on the moon. There was no middle ground between the gentlemanly diplomat negotiating with “world Jewry,” and the fundamentalist taking on the “enemy race” in the struggle for world domination. This disparity causes Eichmann some difficulties when he attempts to reconcile the two. Not wanting to confess to the criminal extermination plans, he has to talk about his political, nonviolent negotiations with the “Jewish representatives.” But this tactic made him an object of suspicion to other, dedicated racial anti-Semites like Sassen and Fritsch.

  If Adolf Eichmann really wanted to create a “rounded picture of history,” he had to obliterate the tensions contained in his first draft of 1956: they were the weak spots in his ideal vision. By the time he reached Israel in 1960, he would have a wealth of experience to fall back on, gained during intensive discussions over the months following the writing of this draft. The basic problems may have been insurmountable, but by then he would have had a frightening amount of practice in addressing them. With this “clear and factual” account of events, and the hours he then spent in discussions, Adolf Eichmann would be much better prepared for his return to the public eye than the defendants at Nuremberg or any of the other people who were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. As always, Eichmann seized the chance to profit from a difficult situation. This time it may also have had something to do with the fact that in Buenos Aires in 1956, the limelight of publicity was becoming an increasingly realistic option for Eichmann once more.

  An Open Letter to the Chancellor

  I do not wish to court the limelight of publicity in any way. I have no ambition.

  —Eichmann, Sassen discussions52

  The original manuscript of “The Others Spoke” reveals something that the poor-quality copy from File 17 at Eichmann’s trial obliterates. Eichmann’s “findings” were planned as an open letter to the West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Above the title, Eichmann’s handwritten note (which was later crossed out) reads: “The pencil additions apply only to the ‘open letter’ to the Chancellor.”53

  In the 1950s, open letters were a popular genre among far-right publications. They were usually published under a pseudonym, the content being more “open” than the authors’ willingness to be called to account for it. Anyone believing that this sort of self-promotion in the name of free speech is a present-day phenomenon will be set straight by a glance through the publications in question. As with “reader’s letters,” the advantage of “open letters” was that an editor could publish them in the name of freedom of expression, while at the same time distancing himself from them by declaring that their content was the author’s personal opinion and not necessarily endorsed by the magazine. This trick allowed publications like Der Weg, Nation Europa, Der Standpunkt, and Reichsruf—which for obvious reasons were under constant threat of being banned and having their stock confiscated—to write whatever they wanted without fear of prosecution: officially, these words were someone else’s. The inclusion of letters from “Jewish” readers was particularly perfidious, and the most crudely anti-Semitic hate speech was labeled as “readers’ opinions.” Eichmann had seen Sassen use one of these reader’s letters to cause President Eisenhower some considerable trouble. And now Eichmann was writing an open letter himself. This casts the work that the Dürer circle and Adolf Eichmann were planning in an interesting light. On the one hand, Eichmann could never have published such a text by himself without recklessly endangering his cover; he needed middlemen with the right connections. On the other, this plan demonstrates that the project he was undertaking with Willem Sassen was not simply meant for posterity. The first opportunity to have an impact with an open letter to Konrad Adenauer would have been the upcoming elections, in the fall of 1957. It seems particularly likely that the men taking a timeout in Argentina planned to take this opportunity, as they were still dreaming of toppling Adenauer’s government. Eichmann clearly wasn’t satisfied with the idea of writing a book that would be published after his death—and he was prepared to take a huge risk in order to have his say. Even published anonymously, the content of this letter would inevitably lay a trail to the door of the Adviser on Jewish Affairs, and it was provocative enough that someone might consider calling its author to account. Eichmann was too certain that he had unique insider knowledge to believe that a pseudonym would afford him any kind of protection, and placing this piece in Der Weg would have led the Nazi hunters directly to where he was hiding. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Eichmann accepted the risk as part of the deal. It is even conceivable that he had a more or less conscious desire to be discovered.

  In 1952 Eichmann had told his wife he wanted to stand trial in Germany, and he repeated this intention to his family over the years that followed. “He considered handing himself over to an international tribunal in Europe,” his son remembered later. “He was pretty clear that he wouldn’t get off without punishment, but he didn’t think he would get a harsh sentence. He thought he might even be released in four to six years.”54 Considering how the law was applied in West Germany in the mid-1950s, Eichmann’s expectation wasn’t all that far from reality. A man of fifty, he must have told himself, would still be able to spend his twilight years with his family, under his real name, in the country of his birth. But this action would also have brought him closer to another dream: achieving prosperity for his family. The project with Sassen was partly a moneymaking scheme, and he was well aware that the market value of a book by Adolf Eichmann would go up rapidly if there were a trial.55 Being arrested and going before a court would be a service to his family, whose future he was always trying to safeguard. What would a few years matter? Eichmann’s son recalled: “He told Mother: ‘you can live without me for that long, it will be ok.’ ” And afterward everything would be right with the world once more—at least, it would have been, if Eichmann’s name had not been too inextricably linked with millions of murders for him to simply return to normality in West Germany.

  But however Eichmann managed to shield himself from this reality, his plan to write an “open letter to the Chancellor” shows without doubt that he and his associates weren’t just fooling around with these ideas to fill the dull weekends of their Argentine exile. All of them, Eichmann included, had concrete political ambitions. They weren’t working quietly for the benefit of the history books, or to have their efforts consigned to the desk drawer; they wanted to make a difference, to get back to Europe and involve themselves in West German politics. From a distance, this plan looks insane, but it was based on Eichmann’s empirical experience. Fifteen years previously, his plans and suggestions had been passed on to Reichsführer-SS Himmler and, above him, all the way to Hitler. Hermann Göring and Reinhard Heydrich had made speeches and given lectures from Eichmann’s drafts,56 and the things he initiated—the central offices, re-education camps, and death marches—had allowed him to put his stamp on world history. All these murderous projects, beyond anything the civilized world could imagine, were schemes Eichmann pushed through with his superiors. Small wonder then that the Obersturmbannführer (retired) had the self-confidence to believe that, using this historical sketch, he could accomplish something similar with Konrad Adenauer’s office. His version of events would put an end to these tiresome questions of guilt, which was something a lot of people in Germany desperately wanted. In theory, a simple explanation of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies, from a professional source, would have been an interesting offer. Argentina wasn’t the only country that was home to old comrades with familiar dispositions. Eichmann’s pen
could well have been driven by a desire to provoke an opportunity for his return to Germany; people of a similar persuasion might even have welcomed him back to his homeland. He knew there were still one or two people in the German government who would have found his ideas just as familiar and seductive as the former Adviser on Jewish Affairs did.

  What About Morality?

  The drive toward self-preservation is stronger than any so-called moral requirement.

  —Eichmann, “The Others Spoke,” 195657

  Once Eichmann had laid out his “factual and clear,” “rounded” conception of history in the second part of “The Others Spoke, Now I Want to Speak!” with all its relativization and misdirection, he turned, as promised, to a question pertinent “today” (i.e., post-1945). Apparently, this was a question nobody had ever asked before: “Guilty or not guilty?”58 Anyone familiar with Eichmann’s self-portrayal in Jerusalem might expect this Argentine chapter to display a similar mixture of lachrymose self-pity and grim disillusionment with his former superiors. In Jerusalem, the defendant’s explanation followed an endless loop as he tried to convince the world (and apparently himself) that although he had been obliged to witness and involve himself in all this misery, he had been against it from the start. But in Argentina, surprisingly, Eichmann said something fundamentally different. Even in this chapter of “The Others Spoke,” he presents us with his irrefutable truth in an accusatory tone, with the self-assurance of a demagogue.