Chapter 6, Conclusion Summary and Analysis

Hannah Arendt was a journalist for the "New Yorker" when the Eichmann trial began. She had been incarcerated briefly at the beginning of the war but was able to flee to New York where she taught and wrote. She proposed that she cover the trial for the "New Yorker" thought she knew it would be a "personal" journey. Arendt was born into a family of affluent German Jews but said they never talked about that ethnicity. Arendt held the view that totalitarian regimes held people captive so that they would do anything ordered, even murder and torture, without questioning the orders. She also believed that the members of a totalitarian society would also perceive horrific acts as necessary. That said, Arendt took the stand that the trial should only encompass acts that could be directly linked to Eichmann. She...