Bettina Stangneth

Eichmann before Jerusalem is history at its best. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, engagingly written. Bettina Stangneth confronts Hannah Arendt’s notion of the 'banality of evil' with important new evidence and nuanced insight, permitting a fresh and informed reassessment of this riven debate. Arendt would surely have applauded the Stangneth challenge

Stangneth has mined an extraordinary trove of new documentary material… Meticulous, scholarly and highly readable... A tour de force of historical revision

Thanks to this brilliant book, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued, the veil has at last been lifted [on Eichmann's role in the Holocaust]

Absorbing... Bettina Stangneth's disturbing account of Adolf Eichmann's years in exile reveals the full extent of his cynicism, inhumanity and moral self-deception

Eichmann Before Jerusalem is both an unintimidated challenge to Hannah Arendt’s glib notion of Eichmann’s insignificance and a clear analysis of the origins and enduring uses of Holocaust Denial

[Stangneth’s] comprehensive research brings the man and his circumstances firmly back into focus... no future discussion will be able to confront the Eichmann phenomenon and its wider political implications without reference to this book

No future discussion of Eichmann will be possible without this book

A brilliant, ground-breaking study

Thrilling in its purpose. There is no doubt of its importance: Stangneth’s research turns the conventional wisdom about Eichmann on its head

Stangneth has combined the talents of rigorous academic research with investigative journalism... Her efforts are nothing less than prodigious

A riveting reconstruction... Stangneth masterfully sifts through the information. A rigorously documented, essential work

[A] brilliant book, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued

Stangneth’s close readings prove richly illuminating

Ms. Stangneth, acting more like an investigative journalist than an academic philosopher, does an excellent job in tracing the odyssey of these archival records, which are scattered across various continents . . . . With her well-written and impressively well-researched book, Ms. Stangneth not only adds many new, surprising details to our picture of Eichmann before the trial but also prepares the stage for follow-on research

Extraordinary . . . At each stage, the meticulous quality of [Stangneth’s] research and her distinctive moral outrage make the journey enthralling . . . Stangneth’s book has the flavor of a detective story . . . [A] fine, important book

Stangneth uses new documents to reconstruct the post-war lives of Nazis in exile, revealing an egotistical and skilled social manipulator.

How [Stangneth] put all this complex information relative to Eichmann together in one book is astounding. Freshly sourced archives and statements are used throughout, building into a full depiction of Eichmann.

The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

A New York Times Notable Book of 2014 
 
Smuggled out of Europe after the collapse of Germany, Eichmann managed to live a peaceful and active exile in Argentina for years before his capture by the Mossad. Though once widely known by nicknames such as 'Manager of the Holocaust', he was able to portray himself, from the defendant's box in Jerusalem in 1960, as an overworked bureaucrat following orders – no more, he said, than 'just a small cog in Adolf Hitler's extermination machine'. 
 
How was this carefully crafted obfuscation possible? How did a principal architect of the Final Solution manage to disappear? How had he occupied himself in hiding? 
 
Drawing upon an astounding trove of newly discovered documentation, Stangneth gives us a chilling portrait not of a reclusive, taciturn war criminal on the run, but of a highly skilled social manipulator with an inexhaustible ability to reinvent himself, an unrepentant murderer eager for acolytes to discuss past glories and vigorously planning future goals.

Bettina Stangneth

Praise for Eichmann before Jerusalem

Eichmann before Jerusalem is history at its best. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, engagingly written. Bettina Stangneth confronts Hannah Arendt’s notion of the 'banality of evil' with importan ...

Stangneth has mined an extraordinary trove of new documentary material… Meticulous, scholarly and highly readable... A tour de force of historical revision

Thanks to this brilliant book, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued, the veil has at last been lifted [on Eichmann's role in the Holocaust]

Eichmann before Jerusalem is history at its best. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, engagingly written. Bettina Stangneth confronts Hannah Arendt’s notion of the 'banality of evil' with importan ...

Stangneth has mined an extraordinary trove of new documentary material… Meticulous, scholarly and highly readable... A tour de force of historical revision

Thanks to this brilliant book, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued, the veil has at last been lifted [on Eichmann's role in the Holocaust]

Eichmann before Jerusalem is history at its best. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, engagingly written. Bettina Stangneth confronts Hannah Arendt’s notion of the 'banality of evil' with importan ...

Stangneth has mined an extraordinary trove of new documentary material… Meticulous, scholarly and highly readable... A tour de force of historical revision

Thanks to this brilliant book, exhaustively researched and convincingly argued, the veil has at last been lifted [on Eichmann's role in the Holocaust]

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