Death of Adolf Eichmann
End of the Third Reich and the Nazi Leaders
What happened to the leading figures of the Third Reich? How and when their stories come to an end? And what kind of an end it was?
Adolf Eichmann
Head of Gestapo Section IV B4, which was responsible for Jewish affairs.Obersturmbannführer in the S.S.
Date of death: 1962-06-01, age 56.
Cause of death: Hanged - In Israel after sentenced to death.
He was largely responsible for the logistics of the Final Solution. He organized the identification and transportation of people to the various concentration camps. Eichmann even defied his chief, Himmler, who at the end of 1944 commanded the killing to stop.
In hiding in Argentina in the mid 1950s, Eichmann recorded on tape his recollections of these final days. "I called my men into my Berlin office ... and formally took leave of them. 'If it has to be', I told them, 'I will gladly jump into my grave in the knowledge that five million enemies of the Reich have already died like animals.'" This statement gives a clue to how Eichmann's mind worked. The Jews were the enemy. He had nothing against them personally, but in war the enemy has to be destroyed. Eichmann did not kill a single Jew with his own hands and he was often courteous towards Jewish leaders who did his bidding.
Escape - In late 1945, Eichmann fled Hungary an returned to Austria. There, he tried to have Ernst Kaltenbrunner hide him, but he was refused. He was captured soon after by the US Army, but he claimed that his name was Otto Eckmann. Not realizing his true identity, the Army put him in a POW camp, but he managed to escape in 1946. He moved all around Germany, hiding wherever he could. In 1948, he decided to get a permit to land in Argentina. He traveled to Italy, posing as a refugee named Ricardo Klement. With the help of an unknowing monk, he obtained a passport from the Red Cross and an entry visa for Argentina. He departed immediately and landed on July 14, 1950. In Argentina he moved to Buenos Aires and remained in hiding for 10 years.
Captured - He was spotted by a bounty hunter, who notified professional Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal. His location was also revealed by a Jew who had formerly stayed in one of the camps and was living in Buenos Aires at the same time. The Mossad, an Israeli Intelligence Agency, organized an operation to capture Eichmann and successfully apprehended him on May 11, 1960. He was flown back to Israel on May 21, 1960. After some secrecy, the Israeli government announced his capture and put him on trial on April 11, 1961.
One analysis of Eichmann came from political theorist Hannah Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany before Hitler's rise. Arendt concluded that, aside from a desire for improving his career, Eichmann showed no trace of anti-Semitism or psychological damage. She called him the embodiment of the "banality of evil," as he appeared at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality, displaying neither guilt nor hatred.