There's a Lot We Can Learn from Adolf Eichmann -- Really

Adolf Eichmann is the iconic extreme of the government bureaucrat. Not that any of us will hopefully ever be given orders like the ones he was given, but his simply following orders makes anyone question his or her own simply following orders.

There’s a lot more about government ethics that can be learned from Adolf Eichmann, I found from reading Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). When one sees acts that are often done without any thought, that seem so normal, done in a different, frightening context, these acts look grotesque, and we can start to question what we take as normal and natural.

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Following the Law
Eichmann did not just follow orders, he followed the law and he was loyal to lawgivers, just as every government official swears to do and be. And when there was any conflict between orders, he followed the ultimate law: the words of Hitler. He makes us remember that not only orders can be wrong, but also laws.

Middle Management
Eichmann wasn’t just any sort of bureaucrat, he was a middle-level manager. As such, he never ordered anyone’s death. These orders were given from above or below. For him, not ordering made him not responsible, except in terms of aiding and abetting. He didn’t create the policy, nor did he directly carry it out. He turned the policy into action and guided the action, and yet his hands felt clean. It is much easier for a middle manager to tell himself he is not really responsible for bad things that are done. Hence, a middle manager needs to remind himself that he is not just a conduit, but an important actor, probably the most important actor, because he is the only one who is aware of the entire process, the only one who has access to the top and the bottom of the hierarchy, the one who can best throw a wrench into a system.

Career Advancement Uber Alles
What fascinates Arendt most about Eichmann is the way he was incapable of putting himself into another person’s position. His thoughts revolved around himself, more specifically around his career. When he was caught and interrogated, twenty years after the war, he spoke primarily about his promotions (and failures to be promoted), his problems with other departments and with certain individuals, the frustrations he felt in accomplishing what he was ordered to do. In short, his mind was the mind of any bureaucrat caught up in his work. Only his work was a bit different. That was the banality of Eichmann’s evil. He was not a monster. He was normal, exceptionally normal. He just wanted to do his job, and do it right.

When Eichmann was ordered to stop trying to deport Jews out of the country, and instead send them to their death, he said that “I now lost everything, all joy in my work, all initiative, all interest.” Work wasn’t fun anymore, it was simply work. But he continued doing it, just as any bureaucrat faced with an unfavorable change of leadership.

The inability to put oneself into another’s position sounds like a personality defect, but it is also an ethical issue. How can anyone serve the public interest when he thinks foremost of himself and his career? How can someone like this ever show the moral courage necessary to not only think ethically, but also to act ethically?

Administrative Language
Eichmann’s greatest protection was provided by language, language that was always objective. He didn’t talk about concentration camps, but about administration and economy. Gassing was referred to as a medical matter, because it was prepared by physicians. There was resettlement, evacuation, special treatment, and labor in the East. Language, the same sort of objective, professional language used in every government organization, became an essential form of self-deception. Even in our peaceful world, government employees need to watch out that objective, professional language does not protect them from thinking about the true repercussions of their actions.

Conscience and Values
Eichmann was not without clear values. In fact, the reasons he gave for not refusing to do as he was told showed what his values were. Doing such a thing was “inadmissible. ... Nobody acted that way.” Loyalty, honor, professionalism, these were his values. They are good values, but they should not be one’s principal values. Loyalty to whom, one must ask oneself. Honor to what, professionalism directed toward what goals?

Eichmann did not have to give up his conscience to do what he did. He truly cared about Jews, at least about German Jews. The trick that Himmler, his superior, used was to direct his staff’s feelings of pity away from the victims and toward themselves. Arendt wrote, “So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulder.” And how tough one was to bear such an enormous weight, and how loyal!

Ethical Environment
The turning point for Eichmann was the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, when the undersecretaries of every department met to discuss the Final Solution. Eichmann watched them fighting amongst themselves for the honor of taking the lead. Not one spoke out against the murder of millions of people. “At that moment,” Eichmann said, “I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of guilt.” Who was he to question all these people in a higher level of the bureaucracy? If all those senior to him accepted the task at hand, why shouldn’t he?

Eichmann also said, “Nobody came to me and reproached me for anything in the performance of my duties.” A manager who depends on his performance appraisals to determine his ethics can be in trouble if he performs in an unethical environment.

The ethical environment of an organization is all important. It is difficult to act ethically in an unethical environment, and this goes as well for environments that simply place private interests above the public interest. There are more temptations to act unethically (or to wait silently until you can be one of those who gets some of the spoils), and it takes a great deal more moral courage to differ privately, not to mention speak out publicly.

Leadership
Leadership too is important. A manager should look up to those in charge, but respect should not be automatic. Here’s what Eichmann said about Hitler: “The man was able to work his way up from lance corporal in the German Army to Führer of a people of almost eighty million. ... His success alone proved to me that I should subordinate myself to this man.”

Who You Work With
Bureaucrats, like anyone, work with those they know and feel comfortable with. But is this always best for the public interest? Eichmann did this, too, but in a way that shows how frighteningly automatic this can be. After the Wannsee Conference, when Eichmann went from helping Jews emigrate to helping them be killed, one of his first steps was to appoint his old Jewish associates from his emigration work as Jewish Elders in the Terezin concentration camp, the people who would decide who would stay and who would be sent off to the death camps.

Rules and Their Exceptions
Arendt points out an often overlooked aspect of enforcing unethical rules. All rules have exceptions, and managers are in the business of making exceptions. In an ethical environment, this is good. But in an unethical environment, this system corrupts everyone, because it puts everyone the rules are applied to in the position of seeking exceptions for themselves, their family and friends and associates. And by doing this they effectively accept the unethical rules as valid. They are valid, only not toward those who matter to them. Even community leaders who seek to save those who depend on their leadership are put in the position of putting their personal interest, or at least the interest of their family or small community, ahead of the public interest. In effect, citizens become just like unethical bureaucrats. And they support the bureaucrats in their belief that what they are doing is right. Arendt wrote of these bureaucrats, that “they must have felt, at least, that by being asked to make exceptions, and by occasionally granting them, and thus earning gratitude, they had convinced their opponents of the lawfulness of what they were doing.” Eichmann certainly felt this way, although he made very few exceptions.

Two Kinds of Corruption
One ironic situation involved the relationship between Eichmann and Kurt Becher. Becher was the ultimate unethical bureaucrat. For him, the Final Solution was an incredible way to make lots of money. People would pay a great deal to be excepted from the rules, to be saved. But, as Arendt wrote, “the one thing that stood in his way was the narrow-mindedness of subordinate creatures like Eichmann, who took their jobs seriously.” So the rule-breaking Becher, who turned his back on the public interest in favor of his financial interests, saved lots of Jews, while the rule-following Eichmann, who cared nothing for his financial interests and who considered Becher corrupt (because of his greed as well as his following Himmler over Hitler), did not. This makes one wonder why most ethics codes limit conflicts of interest to situations where money is involved. Money is not the only thing that makes the world go round.

Transparency
Transparency also appears as an issue in the Holocaust. For Eichmann, being a protector of secrets was one of his most important responsibilities. And this ongoing coverup extended to nearly all countries in Europe. Only Denmark’s government openly defied the German masters. When asked to give Danish Jews a yellow badge, the Germans were told that the King would be the first to wear it and that all government officials would immediately resign. Even other governments who protected their Jews, such as Italy and Bulgaria, did so clandestinely. If government officials had acted openly, their opposition would have spread.

And here again we can see the value of an ethical environment. When riots broke out in Danish shipyards in August 1943, the Germans imposed martial law, and Himmler thought this was the time to handle the Jewish question. However, Himmler discovered that German officials living in Denmark for years had changed. They refused to even issue a decree requiring all Jews to report for work. Germans in Bulgaria became “unreliable” as well.

Victimization
Eichmann had something interesting to say about this at his trial: “the subject of a good government is lucky, the subject of a bad government is unlucky. I had no luck.”

To the end, Eichmann considered himself an unfortunate victim. As most of us do when things go wrong. All he did was keep things going smoothly, running effectively. That is the goal of all government managers. But is it enough?

The only thing Eichmann sought for himself was promotion. Not money, not glory, not power. Seeking promotion is a legal and moral prerogative of government bureaucrats. Following the law is their responsibility. And yet he is a personification of evil. He is in some ways more frightening than Hitler, because none of us can imagine ourselves in Hitler’s place, but we can imagine ourselves in Eichmann’s.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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