The Banality of Evil
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1750 / LESSON 7.7 ACTIVITYTHE BANALITY OF EVIL1Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “The Banality of Evil”, OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/PurposeWhen an entire nation commits a terrible crime, who is responsible? Who is to blame? The excerpts and hypotheticals below will help you grapple with the questions of guilt and reconciliation that followed atrocities like the Holocaust.Key information:Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish historian and philosopher who escaped from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She wrote a famous book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, in which she introduced the idea of the “banality of evil.” (Something is banal when it is unoriginal, boring, or commonplace.) This book was based on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann—a Nazi officer and one of the architects of the Holocaust. After World War II, Eichmann went into hiding in Argentina and was eventually captured by Israel and put on trial in the 1960s. At his trial, Eichmann did not deny his role in the Holocaust. Instead, his defense was that he was “just following orders” and was merely an “instrument” of the Nazi state. Eichmann was found guilty and executed in 1962.Process1.Review the Source Collection: The Holocaustand the article “Nuremberg Laws, Nuremberg Trials.” Then, read the following quotes by Hannah Arendt, and then respond to the questions that follow.●“When I speak of the banality of evil [this is what I mean]...Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to... ‘prove a villain.’* Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all... It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is ‘banal’... that such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.—Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil(1963) *Iago, Macbeth, and Richard III were all villains in the plays of Shakespeare.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1750 / LESSON 7.7 ACTIVITYTHE BANALITY OF EVIL2●“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”—Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)●“The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them....We have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism.”—Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)●“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”—The Life of the Mind(1977)2.Based on these quotes, in your own words, what do you think Arendt meant by the “banality of evil”? 3.Do you agree with Arendt? Explain why or why not.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1750 / LESSON 7.7 ACTIVITYTHE BANALITY OF EVIL34.The following list contains several general statements that people might use as an excuse for inaction or to excuse their own actions around an atrocity or persecution. Circle any that you think are valid excuses. Draw an Xover any you think are invalid excuses.“I didn’t want to lose my job.”“I was afraid for my family’s safety.”“It was legal at the time.”“I didn’t personally harm anyone—I just did paperwork.”“Everyone else was doing it.”“I didn’t have enough power to change anything.”“I didn’t know what was really happening.”“Refusing orders would have meant prison, or worse.”“I knew it was wrong, but didn’t think I could stop it.”“I thought the people being targeted were dangerous.”5.Review Source Collection: The Holocaust, and then respond to the following questions:●Can you identify any people in the source collection who you think should have been tried like those at the Nuremberg Trials? Explain your reasoning.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1750 / LESSON 7.7 ACTIVITYTHE BANALITY OF EVIL4●Can you identify any people in the source collection who you think had a valid excuse for what they did? Explain your reasoning.