The Holocaust
The main focus of Eichmann in Jerusalem is the systematic murder of over six million Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany during the Second World War. (It is worth noting that, though Arendt acknowledges other victims of the Holocaust, like homosexuals, and Roma, she sees it as a crime perpetrated primarily against the Jewish people.) Arendt returns to the Holocaust again and again as an act that is beyond comprehension, because it was carried out by a highly civilized and cultured society, using orderly bureaucratic means, with the complicity of tens of thousands of people. Consequently, Arendt believes that the Holocaust shatters all pre-existing categories of moral and political philosophy, requiring a totally new approach to the question of why it happened.
Banality
Eichmann in Jerusalem is famous for introducing the phrase the "banality of evil." Arendt uses "banality" to describe Eichmann, a man who is utterly devoid of original ideas or feelings, and whose only worry in life is his career, and what his superiors will think of him. Eichmann's "banality" is meant to be a counterpoint to the more distinctive and extreme evil of the Nazi high command, who are characterized here as fanatics. Arendt believed it was Eichmann, and not Hitler, who presented the greatest moral questions of the twentieth century, since virtually every country was filled with "desk murderers," who would always claim that they were only following orders. But it is also a counterpoint to the stark moral judgments of the Israeli prosecution. The word "banal" has no moral connotation: it connotes a failure of style or substance: to be commonplace to a fault. Arendt believes that Eichmann exists in a realm beyond ordinary moral judgments.
Evil
The flip-side of Arendt's controversial use of the term "banality" is her use of the term "evil" to describe Eichmann. Arendt is, after all, at a trial, where the legal categories of "guilty" or "innocent" are more appropriate; Arendt herself is a trained political philosopher who frequently draws on Aristotle and Karl Marx to derive her political concepts. (The Marxist philosophy of Arendt's time argued that fascism was simply the most aggressive form of capitalism.) For Arendt, what was unique about the second half of the twentieth century—the part ushered in by the Nazis—was the shift from the "ordinary" cruelties of war to brutalities carried out against civilian populations—against the weakest and most powerless. The tension between this new evil on the one hand, and the "banality" of the people carrying it out on the other hand, constitutes the heart of her portrait of Eichmann.
The Law
Because Arendt is following a trial, the legalities of Eichmann's situation also give the work narrative and philosophical structure. Throughout the trial, Eichmann repeatedly claims that he was simply following the law: that to disobey orders to implement the Holocaust would simply have been illegal. Arendt notes that international law is meant to prevent precisely this defense, making it illegal for soldiers to perform "unconscionable acts." But she argues that the very nature of Nazism was to destroy anything beyond its own way of thinking—indeed, to destroy the very difference between legality and illegality itself. The Nazis claimed to be enacting the laws of nature on earth. Accordingly, the legal structure was less a tool of stability and conscience than it was of perpetual destruction and reordering of society, used to facilitate murder, rather than shield people from it.
Jewishness
Throughout Eichmann, Arendt evinces a subtle attitude towards the Jewish people. Unlike many commentators on the left, who would speak about "the victims of fascism" to include union leaders, Communists, and Social Democrats, Arendt stresses that the Holocaust was directed above all against the Jews. Within the Jews themselves, Arendt subtly distinguishes between "Germanized" Jews, Jews who, like Arendt herself, were educated, Westernized, and assimilated, and "Eastern Jews," who spoke Yiddish and carried on Jewish traditions. (At the same time, Arendt chides the Jews of Holland for allowing the Nazis to play on the distinction.) Arendt subtly favors the former over the latter.
Arendt further distinguishes European Jews from Israelis—Jews now possessing a state. Arendt is highly critical of Israel, from its extradition of Eichmann (which she refers to as a kidnapping), to the way its own ethnic nationalism disturbingly echoes that of the Nazis. She is further critical of the "use" of the Holocaust as a justification for Israel's existence. Arendt's very particular sympathies frequently shape the way she treats the historical events and individual figures in Eichmann's trial, leading many commentators to observe that she appears more contemptful of the Israeli prosecution than of Eichmann himself.
The Jewish Councils
One of the most sensitive themes of Eichmann in Jerusalem is the role played by Jewish councils—administrative bodies within the Jewish community—in facilitating the Holocaust, rather than resisting it. Arendt places the Jewish leadership front and center in the second half of the book, a decision that caused a furor when the book was published. Throughout, Arendt is less than sensitive to the plights of these councils, which were often misinformed about what fate awaited the Jews, and who, unlike the Danish or Italian governments, faced terrifyingly credible threats of brutal reprisal if they were to resist. At the same time, Arendt includes the Jewish councils because she wants to explore the total moral collapse that the Nazis were able to effectuate, convincing their victims to facilitate their own murders by arguing that they were inevitable. Arendt believed that convincing their populace that at any moment they could be called upon to be either the victim or the murderer—and that the two roles were fundamentally interchangeable—was a central aspect of totalitarian governments.
Free Thought
Throughout Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt repeatedly characterizes Eichmann as someone who failed to think. To think, Arendt believes, means to be in conversation with oneself, in a core of private existence unreached by any ideology. Arendt believes that those people who were able to maintain this core of private existence were able to retain sufficient moral judgment to resist the Nazis, even despite their threats of brutal reprisal. Arendt believes that the task of philosophy is to preserve this private existence against the forces seeking to penetrate into it and destroy it.
