Member-only story
Hannah Arendt Changed My Way of Thinking with an Off-Hand Comment
What does it mean to be civilized?
Hannah Arendt’s classic Eichmann in Jerusalem expanded on articles she had written for the New Yorker while covering Obersturbannfuhrer SS Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. Arendt described the effectiveness of SS deportations of Jews and other Untermenschen in various German-occupied or allied countries. She found that a nation’s pre-existing anti-semitism influenced SS efficiency at rounding up Untermenschen for transport.
Italy was a particular chore for the SS. Italian authorities tended to be dilatory in responding to quotas set by the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA). Orders and documents were frequently misplaced, signatures lacking, names failed to match census data, and addresses were often out-of-date. It was, by German standards, a miserable showing. In response, the SS sought to inculcate Italians with the level of exterminationist anti-Semitism that poisoned German society and that of many occupied countries in the East. They mounted a vigorous propaganda campaign depicting Jews as scheming, unpatriotic, responsible for Italy’s many reversals in the battlefield, and…
