Unit 3 Post 1-River Meng

Hannah Arendt’s concept “Banality of Evil”

Hannah Arendt was a German Jew who moved to the United States during WWII, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1950.
Arendt reported on Eichmann’s trial for the NewYorker magazine, and her investigations eventually led to an entire book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
She discussed that the Nazis who committed atrocities during WWII were not maniacal sociopaths but rather, ordinary people who weren’t able to question their actions.
Arendt was surprised to find out that the motivations behind Eichmann’s choices during the war were shockingly banal.
Arendt believed that Eichmann was a product of a system that had somehow prevented him from thinking critically about his own actions and the results they produced for real people.
Eichmann’s evil was, she claimed, banal in the sense that it was the evil of a bureaucrat, of an office manager, rather than a devil.

Adolf Eichmann

1906-1962
Eichmann was a German Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer.
He was known as one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, referred to as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in Nazi theology.
He was tasked by Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during WWII.
Eichmann was captured by the Mossad(Israeli version of CIA) in Argentina in 1960 and was executed by hanging in 1962.

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt seeks to explain why European were amenable to totalitarianism in the 20th century and to identify what factors distinguish modern totalitarian regimes.
As a Jew who escaped Nazi Germany, this book is Arendt’s attempt to better understand the tragic events of her life.
Arendt argues that anti-semitism, race-thinking, and the age of new imperialism from 1884-1914 laid the foundation for totalitarianism in the twentieth century.
Arendt argues that the origins of totalitarianism in the twentieth century have been too simplistically attributed to nationalism, and totalitarianism has been too easily defined as a government characterized by authoritative single-party rule.
According to Arendt, the appeal of totalitarian ideologies is their ability to present a clear idea that promises protection from insecurity and danger. After World War I and the Great Depression, societies were more receptive to these ideas.