The Banality of Evil
Morality is not something that is frequently discussed in secular scholarly works. But most people agree that the actions of the Third Reich, particularly against the Jews, was evil. It is an opinion held even by people who, in general, disagree with the concept of evil, because the events of World War II are so overwhelming that we have no other word for them. In our mind’s eye we picture Adolf Hitler’s ravening rants, and quite probably an image of malicious torturers drawing twisted pleasure from their extermination of a race. But Hannah Arendt, in her work Eichmann in Jerusalem, shows us that this image, in all its terrifying horror, is really just a fiction we’ve created to keep at bay a far more disturbing truth: The extermination of 6 million people was accomplished not by the rage of psychopaths, but by the actions, ranging from complicity to active support, of normal people. We like to think that no normal, sane person could have taken part in the horrors of the Holocaust, but in truth it was only extraordinary individuals that worked against it. The Holocaust was done not out of hatred, but out of a dozen normal motivations, ranging from petty to noble, twisted by a societal structure in which ’ordinary’ behavior took extraordinary effort. A remarkable range of questions arises from this understanding: Is it enough for people to merely condemn evil, or must they work against it? What kind of justice can be brought against ordinary people doing the jobs they were assigned? To what degree is an individual responsible for the actions of his society?
According to Arendt, many of those prosecuted at Nuremburg for war crimes claimed they were “inwardly opposed.”1 They claimed that they made efforts from the inside to lessen the impact of something they knew was wrong.2 But in the eyes of the Nuremburg judges, that did little to change their guilt in what they had done. Many of the Jewish leaders assisted the Nazis under the theory that by helping the Nazis take the majority of the Jews, they’d be able to help some of them.3 As a result, the Nazis almost never had trouble finding the Jews, and were able to collect astonishing millions of people for extermination. And when they took these Jews from their communities, did their neighbors do anything? Have you, the reader, ever seen something happening that you felt you should stop, but decided it was someone else’s problem? Even the Jews themselves were complicit, peacefully lining up to be shipped to the camps, and even running the death machines.4 It raises a significant moral question: Is complacency with evil, evil itself? Is it enough to not participate in evil? Is it enough to be outraged? Or must we, in the words of Mario Savio, “put our bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels” and make the machine stop?5
Adolf Eichmann killed millions with pencil and paper
And if, morally, complacency is enough to condemn someone, then what legal ramifications might there be? In Adolf Eichmann’s case, going along with a corrupt system brought him the death penalty. Eichmann never killed anyone. His job consisted mostly of making sure the trains ran on time. He was efficient and effective at his work, and since no one he encountered seemed to mind that the trains were carrying Jews to extermination camps, neither did he. He was a normal person, doing a normal job, in a society in which ‘normal’ was the eradication of an entire culture. Though the trial that condemned him found him guilty of other crimes, Arendt does a solid job of refuting each of these claims. But the fact remains that we as societies can not abide even passive complacency in such a terrible system as Nazi Germany. Malicious intent is not necessary, in other words, when the outcome is so malignant.6
The ruling in the Eichmann trial sets the precedent that paper pushers can be held just as liable for the ultimate results of their actions as the men that actually pull the trigger. Indeed, in Arendt’s work one can find condemnation against even those that said nothing, that failed to actively work against the Nazi regime. If we hold such an opinion, it has significant ramifications for entire socio-political systems. It means that we the people, not our leaders, not even those that influence decisions through the political system (e.g. lobbyists, voting blocs) are responsible for the actions of our nations. It means that everything George Bush has done in the last four years is not only the responsibility of the 32.3% of the population that voted for him, but also of the 36.2% of the population that did not vote, and even all the rest of the population that has not actively worked against him.7 By not making our voices heard, we let people like Eichmann delude themselves into thinking that nothing is wrong with their actions. Men like Eichmann care only about advancement and climbing the social ladder.8 It is the responsibility, therefore, of the society to ensure that advancement by atrocity is not possible. It is tempting to feel that resistance is futile. Each of us might think of ourselves as too small or unimportant to make a difference. But atrocities like the Holocaust can happen because millions of people are sitting at home thinking that they are just one person, incapable of making a difference. We can not submit to being led without holding the responsibility for what our leaders do.
The notion of the Nazis as sociopathic lunatics, as sheer evil beings bent on destruction, is really a comforting one. Because the truth is much harder to swallow. The truth is that such an evil was, and must be, the responsibility of perfectly normal individuals that find their own, banal reasons to go along with it. This is a disturbing truth because it means we can’t simply pat ourselves on the back for having declared war on the right people. It means that we must constantly watch ourselves and our governments for signs that things are amiss. It means that we must not allow ourselves to be complacent. It means that we must get off our couches and speak and act out against atrocities in our own age, lest we become the banal evil of future textbooks.
- Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Group, 2006), 126.
- Arendt, 128.
- ibid, 91.
- ibid, 118.
- Mario Savio. “Free Speech Movement: The ‘Machine’ Speech” (Protest, Sproul Hall, December 2, 1962) via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOPuUlpp238&feature=related.
- Arendt, 36-55,249-250 .
- U.S. Census Bureau, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2004,” http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p20-556.pdf. Office of the Clerk. “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November, 2004,” http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/2004/2004Stat.htm .
- Arendt, Eichmann, 50.
