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A review by brendcurran
Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb
4.0
This story of Eichmann's uncovering, capture, and deportment from Argentina is a fun read that resembles something like a spy novel. It can be hard to render a gripping story when everyone knows what the ending will be, but the author was mostly successful in keeping the tension high.
The thing I'll probably think the most about in the years to come is the excellent depiction of Eichmann himself. Nazis are pretty fucking hard to humanize, especially, you know, the one who architected the final solution! Of course no reasonable reader would ever find Eichmann sympathetic, but the author devotes a fair amount of time to his postwar escape. It is here where the reader gets to inhabit his mind a little bit, and hear him reflect on his legacy.
Here we see a man struggling to divest himself of responsibility. The argument that he was "just following orders" is of course at the core of this, but he also makes some curious and revelatory claims. For example, Eichmann claimed to have never seen a Jew killed, nor to have ever set foot in a death camp. He also claims to have been a "friend" to the Jews.
None of these things are true, of course. How could they be, for such a high ranking officer in the SS, tasked with overseeing the entire Final Solution? And more importantly, how could Eichmann have even thought anyone would believe this to be true? Was he being duplicitous, or was he fully able to convince himself of this absurd rationalization? If the latter, was this the kind of powerful detachment from reality that assisted him in behaving so viciously towards the innocent?
There's a harrowing scene when one of the agents tasked with capturing Eichmann decides (against consensus) to try and understand the man, by taking off his goggles (which acted as a blindfold), pouring the former SS officer a glass of wine, and asking him "Why did you do it?" This man had lost his entire family to the Nazis, and he wanted to understand how the frail, befuddled old man before him could have perpetrated these crimes. He tries his best to bestow a graciousness that wouldn't have been reciprocated, in the hopes that some clarity will emerge. It doesn't, of course.
In the wake of the Holocaust, its many causes have been unpacked and examined. We know how, from a detached academic perspective, all of this could have happened. That's certainly a valuable way to try and understand this historical event, but it's not comprehensive. There's great power in wading through the empty, unfeeling silence of moments like the one described above.
How far we are from understanding ourselves.
The thing I'll probably think the most about in the years to come is the excellent depiction of Eichmann himself. Nazis are pretty fucking hard to humanize, especially, you know, the one who architected the final solution! Of course no reasonable reader would ever find Eichmann sympathetic, but the author devotes a fair amount of time to his postwar escape. It is here where the reader gets to inhabit his mind a little bit, and hear him reflect on his legacy.
Here we see a man struggling to divest himself of responsibility. The argument that he was "just following orders" is of course at the core of this, but he also makes some curious and revelatory claims. For example, Eichmann claimed to have never seen a Jew killed, nor to have ever set foot in a death camp. He also claims to have been a "friend" to the Jews.
None of these things are true, of course. How could they be, for such a high ranking officer in the SS, tasked with overseeing the entire Final Solution? And more importantly, how could Eichmann have even thought anyone would believe this to be true? Was he being duplicitous, or was he fully able to convince himself of this absurd rationalization? If the latter, was this the kind of powerful detachment from reality that assisted him in behaving so viciously towards the innocent?
There's a harrowing scene when one of the agents tasked with capturing Eichmann decides (against consensus) to try and understand the man, by taking off his goggles (which acted as a blindfold), pouring the former SS officer a glass of wine, and asking him "Why did you do it?" This man had lost his entire family to the Nazis, and he wanted to understand how the frail, befuddled old man before him could have perpetrated these crimes. He tries his best to bestow a graciousness that wouldn't have been reciprocated, in the hopes that some clarity will emerge. It doesn't, of course.
In the wake of the Holocaust, its many causes have been unpacked and examined. We know how, from a detached academic perspective, all of this could have happened. That's certainly a valuable way to try and understand this historical event, but it's not comprehensive. There's great power in wading through the empty, unfeeling silence of moments like the one described above.
How far we are from understanding ourselves.