27. Juni 2011

Der Eichmann Prozess in internationaler Perspektive - Vorträge

The Eichmann Trial in international perspective - Lectures

 

Inhaltsverzeichnis - Index:

1. On the Reception of the Eichmann Trial in Arab Countries (E)
   Gilbert Achcar
2. Eichmann and Zionism:  From acquaintance to opportunism, vengeance to justice (E)
   Michael Berkowitz
3. Eichmann TV (E)
   Steven Allan Carr
4. The Implications of Eichmann’s Conviction for Contemporary State Criminals (E)
   Gerd Hankel
5. The Eichmann Trial and the Prosecution of War Crimes in Germany (E)
   Jürgen Matthäus
6. Der Eichmann-Prozess und die Adenauer-Republik (D)
   Annette Weinke

 

On the Reception of the Eichmann Trial in Arab Countries

Gilbert Achcar

This presentation will assess the reaction to the arrest and trial of Adolf Eichmann in Egypt’s Al-Ahram, the most central and prestigious Arab daily newspaper of the 1960s. Nasser’s Egypt was in that period the key force setting the tone with regard to Israel for the majority of Arab public opinion, while Al-Ahram was the Nasser regime’s key mouthpiece. The Eichmann affair was mostly depicted in the Egyptian daily as an act of “international piracy” (Eichmann’s abduction from Argentina) as well as a propaganda stunt on the part of Israel (the trial). The range of comments published during that period, whether on the Eichmann affair or on Zionism more generally, is a good indicator of the range of views that coexisted within Nasserite nationalism––from confused pronouncements verging on anti-Semitism to emphasis on the distinction between Israel and the Jews, along with a denunciation of Zionism as a racist enterprise similar to Nazism. 

Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, where he is based since 2007. Trained in philosophy and social sciences in Beirut, he holds a PhD in social history from the University of Paris-VIII. After teaching at the American University of Paris and the University of Paris-VIII, Prof. Achcar moved in 2003 to Berlin where he was offered a senior research fellowship at the French-German Centre Marc Bloch. He has published widely on politics and international relations in general, and the Middle East and North Africa in particular. His recent books include The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (2006), Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy (co-authored with Noam Chomsky, 2007), and The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010).

 

 

Eichmann and Zionism:  From acquaintance to opportunism, vengeance to justice

Michael Berkowitz

The fiftieth anniversary of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem is an opportune moment to reflect on the complex relationships between the history of the Jews and the history of the Holocaust,[i] and more specifically, the real and imagined connections between the attempted annihilation of European Jewry, the Zionist movement, and the young state's struggle to deal with its immediate past.  One of the chief characteristics that made Eichmann, well, Eichmann, was his contention that he knew more than the average German, or even SS-man, about the Jews.[ii]  Eventually, he came to learn, or at least absorb, a fair amount.   We are well aware that Eichmann professed to be a "Jewish expert," that he fancied himself as possessing unusual insight about where Jews had been, their current state of affairs in the 1930s and 40s, and where they were headed.  A large part of the rationale for this mishmosh of belief, bluster, and frankly, bullshit--which Eichmann succeeded in mobilizing to his advantage, up to a point--was that he knew a thing or two about Zionism in particular.  Hannah Arendt noted, in one of her cryptic, ironic statements that is often taken out of context, that among the few books Eichmann claimed to have read in its entirety, one was Herzl's brisk founding polemic that launched the Zionist movement, Der Judenstaat of 1896, and the other, Adolf Boehm's  Die zionistische Bewegung, a sympathetic account of the movement's development by one of its stalwarts.   She was bemused that Eichmann had read just a couple of books, and that he did not even possess a clear recollection of two of them--often confusing Bohm's quasi-historical work with Herzl's pamphlet.[iii]  Arendt, though, was not simply being ironic--but ventured into grosteque terrain by alleging that reading Herzl's Judenstaat had "converted" Eichmann "promptly and forever to Zionism."[iv]  My talk will deal mainly with the reception and afterlife of this remark.  I believe that an illumination of the juxtaposition of ‘Eichmann and Zionism’ is not only a chance to correct Arendt and later distortions.  It provides an opportunity to knit together, in an intelligent way, the history of the Jews and the history of the Holocaust.   Zionism, was, in fact, significant in both the making and un-doing of Adolf Eichmann.

     In earlier work I argued that the Nazis, including Hitler himself, were more interested in Zionism than many scholars had assumed.  This persisted through the course of the Second World War and even influenced a concerted attempt to explain away the Holocaust.[v] The Nazis made a deliberate effort in June 1944 to portray Zionism as the world's most venal conspiracy, which had been distinctly threatening to Germany--thereby causing the Nazis to take what they described as lethal but appropriate action.[vi]  Eichmann may have contributed in some small way to this, with the report he filled with Hagen, upon his trip to Cairo in 1937 (about which I will elaborate later.)  Richard Evans, some years ago, began wrestling with the problem of Nazism’s imagination of Zionism when he explored the charges regarding Chaim Weizmann's so-called 'declaration of war' against the Nazis, which surfaced in the context of the Historikerstreit.[vii]  More importantly, the scholarship of Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers has shown, conclusively, that if the Nazis had had the means, they would have slaughtered all the Jews of Palestine.[viii]  The point here is that the work of several scholars should have put to rest the charges of a long-term, meaningful Zionist 'collusion' with Nazism,[ix] even when acknowledging exceptions--such as 'Transfer Agreement' and the temporary stay given to the 'youth aliyah' program in Germany, as discussed by Brian Amkraut.[x]  Although it is possible to discern or speculate on the reasons behind the recurrent charge of "collusion", there is little doubt that part of the reason why this phantom of 'Zionism and Nazism' continues to reappear stems from the legacy of Eichmann, and Arendt's canonical treatment of the trial.

     An ironic, apparently bizarre aspect of Eichmann's defense, while in the dock in Jerusalem, was his claim that he had been in some sense a Zionist.  One of the formulations of this insipid argument was that if he had been ordered to carry out the evacuation of Jews to Palestine, he would have happily done so.  In effect, Eichmann crudely conflated his partial and distorted knowledge of the Zionist movement, and the fact that he had dealt with a number of Zionists--in some cases facilitating their emigration to Palestine--with the claim that he adhered to Zionism as a legitimate cause.  This was an absurd, even offensive tack.  But there was a germ of substance to this notion--at least in Eichmann's own mind, and in the trajectory of his career--in seeing a distinctive confluence with Zionism.  Indeed, his inconsistent and marginal encounters with Zionists and Zionism contributed to his being eagerly sought by the State of Israel.  His brushes and engagements with German-speaking Zionists also helped to assure that he would be subject not only to vengeance, but to a public, judicial procedure.[xi]  One of the points I wish to underscore in this presentation is that although it was important that Eichmann had become known to a number of Jews and those in positions of authority, in diverse settings, it was especially important that he was familiar to a small but influential segment of German and Austrian Zionists who later would become establishment figures in Israel.  He became known to the exactly a cohort who were likely to be influential figures in the security and judicial apparatus of the young state.

     Zionism was part of the limited proof that Eichmann would have been able to muster for his self-definition as a "Jewish expert."  Allow me to be very clear:  he was no Jewish expert, and he was no Zionist, or Zionist sympathizer by any conventional standard.  It was always a means of emigration.  He was never, as has been expressed or insinuated by some who have written on the relations between the Nazis and the Zionists, in some type of cahoots with the movement.  There is no reason to take seriously, say, Leni Brenner's accusation that David Cesarani whitewashed the reputed collusion between Eichmann and Zionism.[xii]  I do not believe that we have read the same book.  There are scores, if not hundreds of comments on the internet, that likewise do not merit our extensive attention.  In several of these the work of Tom Segev, concerning Eichmann's mission to Palestine, has been wrenched out of context.[xiii]  But perhaps we would be wise to dwell for a moment on the thought of Slovo Zizek on "Eichmann and Zionism", as Zizek is one of the notable cultural critics of our day,  published by reputable, even prestigious presses. 

     Zizek and others are confident, even proud of such remarks because they cast them as consistent with Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, and some believe, Tom Segev.  In The Parallax View (2007), Zizek avers that the "stain of injustice", which forever marks Israel as deserving a status beneath the comity of nations, is encapsulated in Eichmann's attempted mission to Palestine, which had been thoughtfully analyzed by several scholars.  Zizek boldly contends that the date September 26, 1937, should be inscribed as particularly important to anyone concerned with anti-Semitism.  Why?  Because "on that day Adolf Eichmann and his assistant boarded a train in Berlin in order to visit Palestine.  Heydrich himself gave Eichmann permission to accept an invitation from Feivel Polkes, a senior member of the Hagana (the Zionist secret organization), to visit Tel Aviv and discuss the coordination of German and Jewish organizations to facilitate the Jews' emigration to Palestine.  Both the Germans and the Zionists wanted as many Jews as possible to move to Palestine.  The Germans wanted them out of Western Europe, and the Zionists themselves wanted the Jews in Palestine to outnumber the Arabs as quickly as possible.  (The mission failed because due to some violent unrest the British blocked access to Palestine.  But Eichmann and Polkes did meet days later in Cairo, and discussed coordination of German and Zionist activities.  Is not this weird incident the supreme case of how Nazis and radical Zionists shared a common interest--in both cases, the purpose was a kind of 'ethnic cleansing,' that is, to change fundamentally the ratio of ethnic groups of the population?"[xiv]

     No, this is not "the supreme case of how Nazis and radical Zionist shared a common interest."  Zizek is wrong, or at least misleading, on several counts.  On the most basic level, Eichmann was dedicated to 'relentlessly' removing Jews from German-held territory--no matter what their destination.   In addition to scholars who have focused primarily on Eichmann, this is seconded by historians writing about specific contexts of his activity, such as Jonathan Steinberg, writing on Italy, and Mark Mazower, on the Balkans.[xv]  In addition, we know that the policy of legally allowing Jews into Palestine was superceded by the directive for their mass murder.   The Jews of Palestine, too, were slated for execution by the Nazis in the expected aftermath of the Nazi conquest of the Middle East.  Zizek's claim is misleading, as well, because he takes no notice of a cardinal belief among many Zionists, and even many observers of the movement, that 'Palestine was the land without a people for a people without a land.'  In fact, there was an item with precisely this vacuous slogan in the Zionistische Rundschau, the short-lived newspaper 'sponsored' by Eichmann himself,[xvi] to which I will refer later.  I myself have interrogated this myth.  Still, it was widely and sincerely held.  For those, however, who were more sophisticated or had had actual experience with Palestine, other competing strategies, even among Zionists, were common.  Many assumed that Zionism would be able to be accommodated with the Arab population of Palestine.  Even more popular, however, was the notion that the Zionists would actually be welcomed by the indigenous population as the bearers of modern culture, especially the benefits of technology, education, public health, and medicine.   Those familiar with the history of Zionism know that the form of the movement originally favored by Ahad Ha-Am was the fostering of a small, distinctly non-conventional 'national' cultural center in Palestine.  But the discourse of Zionism since the so-called Uganda project or scheme of 1903 was that Zion and Zionism might serve as a means of refuge, a 'night-shelter' to those in immediate distress or danger.  Interestingly, Bruce Saposnik has brilliantly argued that this way of thinking about Zionism--distinctly favorable to the "Uganda" plan---was embraced most enthusiastically among the Zionists actually living in Palestine.[xvii]  Although there is no need to accept the pious delusions of the early Zionists, it is nevertheless important to recall that as opposed to a naked Jewish/Arab struggle, the greatest obstacles, historically, to the fulfilment of the Zionist project seemed to be the physical environment of Palestine, and the recalcitrant, ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist population on the country.[xviii]

     Zizek insinuates that given a choice between "Zionism" and the annihilation of the Jews, Eichmann--echoing Eichmann himself--would have choosen Zionism.  There was, in fact, at least one instance where Eichmann did face precisely that choice.  This was present in the trial in the deposition of Max Merten--one of the Nazis in the Balkans,[xix] but it remains to be fully explored by scholars.  I would now like to turn to a document that I believe can illustrate what Eichmann did when he was confronted with such a decision--of "Zionism" or mass murder.  Most of us are aware that that Richard Breitman's book, Official Secrets, was mainly concerned with illuminating the extent the which the unfolding of genocide, particularly in the sweeps of the Einsatzgruppen, were known to the British though their interception and decoding of Nazi secret communications.[xx]  One of these messages can also help us to understand Eichmann's role in the course of the Holocaust. 

    Eichmann was complicit, and perhaps personally responsible, for a decision to quash a deal that had been negotiated--which would have allowed Jewish women and children in Salonica, and possibly those who had found refuge in Italian territory, to be transferred--by boat--to Palestine.  (Eichmann’s role vis-à-vis Salonica is succinctly illustrated in one of the exhibition panels highlighting the Jewish communities he helped to destroy.)  Rene Burckhardt of the International Committee of the Red Cross made a plea, and apparently had set arrangements for this plan.  This complements the account in The Red Cross and the Holocaust by Jean Claude Favez.  Favez writes that "as the ICRC's assistant delegate in Salonika he was not content with sending reports and arranging food supplies, he protested.  On 13 March [1943], as the first trains left for Auschwitz, he sent to his collaborator, the head of the German administration for food supplies to Macedonia, a telegram for Geneva, which he trusted would be forwarded via the German Red Cross.  It read:  'Please telegraph the ICRC at Geneva headquarters.  Start of deportation of 45,000 Jews from Salonika almost decided.  Urgent examination [sic] needed with governments involved.  Deportation [sic] women and children to Palestine indispensable."[xxi]  The intercepted German communications suggest that Burckhardt had gone even further, actually having set a plan in the works.  What is not stated, though, by either Favez or any other historian, is that responsibility for the demise of this deal, the pressure to have Rene Burckhardt replaced--ironically, by someone with the same last name, Carl Jacob Burckhardt--had come from Eichmann and Dieter Wisliceny.[xxii]  So when the situation did indeed arise where Eichmann made a choice between Palestine or murder, he chose extermination.  In addition to undermining the humanitarian effort of Rene Burckhardt, the message also shows Eichmann's culpability in neutralizing the attempt of the Archbishop of Greece, Damaskinos Papandreou, to have mercy on the Jews.[xxiii]

     I would like to shift our focus back to the pre-war period.  As opposed to our distinguished colleague Zizek's prized date of September 27, 1937, I wish to draw attention to approximately two months earlier.  I shall revisit a little different version of an incident, involving Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902-1988), which has been related by David Cesarani and others.[xxiv]  "Toward the end of 1936," Prinz wrote in his memoir, "[Otto] Kuchmann, a Gestapo friend, came to inform me officially, in the name of Adolf Eichmann, that I was herewith expelled from Germany.  I would soon learn that the man in charge of the State Police, a certain Dr. Flesch, had the rather strange notion to recruit me to become a spy for the Gestapo after my arrival in America.  I told him what he wished to hear:  that I would be very happy to write to him from time to time."[xxv] "On the evening of June 26, 1937," as Allan Nadler recently wrote, "thousands of Berlin Jews packed the city's grand Brüdervereinhaus to bid farewell to Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who had been ordered by the Gestapo to leave Germany immediately or face an almost certain death sentence for political subversion.  Prinz had been the most popular, outspoken, and inspirational champion of Jewish national rights and Zionism in the dark years since the Nazis' rise to power, preaching to overflow crowds at Berlin's most important temples about the need to leave Germany and immigrate to Palestine."[xxvi]  This complements Michael Brenner's astute analysis of Weimar Jewish culture, in which he describes Prinz as challenging and captivating thousands in his courses and occasional lectures on Jewish historical subjects.[xxvii]  "By the summer of 1937, [Prinz] had already been arrested a dozen times by the Gestapo," but because of the express warning from Kuchmann, he decided to make his break.  A sponsorship by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in New York provided the opportunity.  "Among the uninvited guests at Prinz's farewell," Nadler reminds us, was Adolf Eichmann.  Benno Cohn, among the most important German Zionists, recalled that "the large hall was packed full.  The public thronged to this meeting.  Suddenly, as chairman of the event I was called to the door and my office clerk told me, 'Mr Eichmann is here.'   I saw this same man, for the first time in civilian clothing, and he shouted at me.  'Who is responsible for order here?  This is disorder of the first degree . . .'  I watched him the entire time from my place in the chair."[xxviii]

      Prinz later wrote that "The fact that [Eichmann] attended my last speech became very important.  For legal reasons it was necessary to identify Eichmann when he was tried in Israel.  Until such identification was made he was only purported to be Adolf Eichmann.  My friend Benno Cohn, a judge who had dealings with Eichmann in Berlin, was asked to identify him legally and in the presence of witnesses.  Cohn said to Eichmann at the trial, 'I am glad to see you here.  The last time I saw you was at the farewell speech that Rabbi Fried delivered.'  This was an attempt to elicit from Eichmann a correction of the name.  Eichmann fell for it and said immediately, 'This was not Rabbi Fried but Joachim Prinz who delivered the speech.'  These words legally identified him as Adolf Eichmann.'"[xxix]

    Our colleague David Cesarani is rather generous to Eichmann, giving him the benefit of the doubt that his brusque treatment of Cohn resulted from him being jostled by the unruly Jewish crowd.[xxx]  My main point, however, is not to quibble about how Eichmann behaved with Jews--even though Segev takes pains to show how polite, or not, he was to Teddy Kollek in Vienna.  I wish, instead, to raise the issue of familiarity, or more precisely, imagined familiarity.[xxxi]   It is not surprising that Zizek and others choose to see any interaction between Nazis and Zionists as collusion.  Scholars such as David, Frank Nocisia, Hans Safrian, Jonathan Steinberg, and others have shown infinitely more sophistication in appreciating that dealing with the Nazis often involved play acting--as Prinz so clearly spells out in his 'promise' to be a Nazi spy.[xxxii]  It is important to remember that Eichmann was at that grand meeting, hoping not be noticed, because he was trying to gain an upper hand--to further immerse himself in Jewish matters, and to hone his supposed expertise.  Certainly, it is plausible that he became upset when his presence became an issue.  The fact that he was the leading Nazi official at this event which was attended by "several thousand people" probably became legendary to thousands of others.  Although Eichmann may not yet have been a household name, he became usually prominent in the minds of German Jewish Zionists.  German Jews, again, as we know well, would play an extraordinarily large role in the hunt for, and prosecution of Eichmann.  Germany Jewry was no stranger to a rather developed sense of entitlement, and it is no surprise that the Zionists among them ardently sought to bring Eichmann to justice, according to what they regarded as proper procedure.

     There are two other strange Zionist interludes concerning Eichmann that I would like to briefly mention.  The first is related, but not actually discussed by Arendt.  She writes that Eichmann had "protested against desecrations of Herzl's grave in Vienna, and there are reports of his presence in civilian clothes at the commemoration of the 35^th anniversary of Herzl's death."[xxxiii]  The year before, there was an even more bizarre instance in which Eichmann might have believed that he was somehow taking on Herzl's mantle.  David, Hans Safrian, and others inform us that Eichmann had planned to establish a Zionist newspaper, the Zionistische Rundschau, and in a letter to Herbert Hagen, he stated:  "In a sense it will become 'my' paper."[xxxiv]  (He was, however, probably little more than a censor.)  Yet no matter how much Eichmann desired to hasten the emigration of Jews to Palestine, he never had any sense of Herzl's fundamental desire to foster honor for and among Jews.  That Eichmann evolved into a murderer meant that he had absolutely no connection, at all, with anything men like the newspapermen Herzl or Boehm had ever written or thought.

     To conclude, I would like to return to Zizek--or what Zizek sees as his rightful appropriation of Hannah Arendt, as well as his self-perception as the inheritor of Walter Benjamin's legacy.  Let me begin with a story.  A fourteen year-old was thrown out of a local school this past year.  He would not recognize that some of things that are said by black comedians and rappers, and the way that black people refer to themselves, has a different meaning when expressed by someone who is not black.  I think that part of the problem with the way Arendt has been received stems from a problem of in and out-group language and behavior.  This is a double, even triple irony due to Arendt's own obsession with the dissolution between the public and private spheres.  Likewise it is shocking sometimes, to my students, when they read the diaries of Victor Klemperer and confront Klemperer associating Theodor Herzl and Adolf Hitler.[xxxv]  His attack on the Zionists is as sharp as he can make it.  But this was his private view, secreted in his diary.  Such an impulse and expression is, in part, what was behind Arendt's infamous, poor decision to refer to Rabbi Leo Baeck as the "Fuehrer" of the Jews in her original New Yorker report.[xxxvi]   This insensitive, if not sickening, Jewish/Nazi pairing also was revealed in a taped conversation between Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, when Kissinger pledged that it wouldn't move him even if Soviet Jews were thrown into ovens.[xxxvii]  Although by no means do I wish to argue for censorship of any kind, I think that scholars especially might be more aware of the slippery use, and long history of inner-group tensions and bitter criticism that are not uncommon in Zionist discourse.  Chaim Weizmann, after the First World War, accused Louis Brandeis of using ‘poison gas’ against him—this is disgusting, but can be seen as how Weizmann chose to express himself.[xxxviii]  We do not have to go as far as Gershom Scholem, admonishing Arendt for a paucity of love for the Jewish people.  But we might at least hope for our colleagues to be somewhat more diligent and dispassionate, rather than glib, in the all too automatic twinning of Zionism and Nazism.  This too often occurs in the guise of a historical or Arendtian rendering of Eichmann.  What is conveniently forgotten, by Zizek and his ilk, is that even Hannah Arendt agreed that in trying, and then hanging Eichman, justice was done.   This, too, is part of the legacy of his engagement with Zionism.

     Zizek is obviously neither a fool nor an anti-Semite.  Of course there was something of a numbers game afoot.  Certainly there were forms of Zionist nationalism emerging in the 1930s that did, in some respects, reflect right-wing movements in Europe.  Yet Zizek’s version is a lousy guide for figuring how the Arab/Zionist conflict in Palestine developed as it did.  Zionism itself was weak and fragmented.  Its ‘Arab policy’ did not necessarily correspond to a left/right axis, and there was the persistent question of how it could be implemented.  What Zizek fails to see, though, is that Zionism—as unflattering as it sounds—was fundamentally driven by anti-Semitism.  Like so many debates about the Holocaust we sometimes lose sight of what is most crucial:  the energy and the effort that the Nazis devoted to persecuting, and then murdering the Jews.   Palestine for Jews was an option—not necessarily a favored one.  The conflict with the Arabs did not contribute, as Zizek infers, to enthusiasm for Zionism—but it more likely detracted from it.  There was a decided lack of passion for Zionism among many German Jews who made their way to Palestine through the ‘transfer agreement.’  In so many respects it was a bittersweet or sad story. 

     I would argue that the “Britishness” of Mandate Palestine, even as the government’s commitment to the Balfour Declaration was deteriorating, was a much more attractive incentive to Zionism.  Many perceived Palestine as a means of eventually getting to Britain or America.  The Zizek “Eichmann to Zionism” line of argument is as absurd as the hackneyed “Luther to Hitler” tack—which no one in this audience would take seriously. 

 

 

Eichmann TV

Steven Allan Carr

In his chapter on contemporary responses to the Holocaust, German historian Dieter Pohl concludes that with the stabilizing influence of the European Union, the leveling of political and social disparities may ultimately “globalize memory” of the Holocaust and its aftermath.  This heightened awareness, Pohl argues, is part of a worldwide process transforming the way in which both Germany and Eastern Europe choose to remember the Shoah (Pohl).  This globalization of memory appears to come from outside Europe, driven in particular by the forces of American popular entertainment.  That the Americanization of the Holocaust has become the synechdoche for discussions concerning the globalization of the Holocaust should come as no surprise, then, particularly in light of a widespread understanding of globalization as a process of domination and influence, described by critics such as Herb Schiller involving one-way flow exporting American popular entertainment (Schiller).

While American entertainment enjoys a lopsided influence in shaping worldwide memory of the Holocaust, this influence is not the only dimension to globalization.  Rather than a recent imposition of progressive and linear influence, one can view the globalization of Holocaust memory as a process described by Ian Baucom that is “an eternal recurrence, a continual stopping and resetting of the clock of history” (Baucom).  The globalization of Holocaust memory thus exists not solely as an imperial memory newly thrust upon weaker cultures.  This globalized memory may in fact be an elongation, acceleration, and fragmentation of the same ongoing processes that have operated for decades if not centuries, and that the more recent globalization of the Holocaust simply sets into relief a set of fitful and spasmodic shifts away from a single authorial arbiter determining the meaning of the Holocaust for a mass audience.

If the globalization of Holocaust memory reveals a set of processes that have existed for much longer period of time than perhaps even the postwar era, the choice to look at television coverage of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann and its reception as an instance of globalization may seem a bit arbitrary.  Why not study the reception of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (Universal, 1993), or the 1978 NBC television mini-series Holocaust, particularly when it aired in Germany?  Why not consider the reception of atrocity footage?  Indeed, each of these would make excellent subjects for a deeper analysis of audience reception of Holocaust representations in an era of globalization[SC1] .

The televised trial of Adolf Eichmann lends itself particularly well to a study of the globalization of Holocaust memory.  Early on it establishes many of the same problems concerning the globalization of the Holocaust now receiving attention.  In addition to bearing seeds of problems noticed later, the 1961 broadcast and its subsequent controversy confounds many of the traditional arguments made with regard to globalization and the so-called Americanization of the Holocaust.  These problems include concerns over the authenticity of the mediated image, the role of technology in reaching a global audience, and the fragmentation of this global audience across temporal and geographic boundaries.  Finally, Eichmann TV is an intriguing historical interstice, where old and new characters and institutions intermingle at the threshold of modern Holocaust memory.  If Eichmann TV were a movie, it indeed would have a strange cast of characters, including a digitally-enhanced documentary; a blacklisted filmmaker, Leo Hurwitz, working for the future media conglomerate Capital Cities Broadcasting; and a young Masters candidate named Ted Koppel writing his thesis on what would become one of the earliest audience studies of the trial and press coverage of it.  More on these cast members later[SC2] .

Footage from the Eichmann trial serves as a pretext for larger concerns over globalization.  Over time, discussions of the trial have gone through a series of phases, from the positive - awareness of genocide as a global problem, the power of modern communication technology in disseminating the trial to a worldwide audience – to the dystopic.  The latter includes both the concern that the proliferation of mediated representations of the Holocaust has cheapened Holocaust memory.  Another strand of this negative view addresses the rise of media conglomerates and interlocking directorates.

Dennis Mazzocco typifies this view in his discussion of Capital Cities Broadcasting.  In the 1994 book Networks of Power, he details the rise of Capital Cities from a mom-and-pop business owning foundering UHF and AM stations in Albany, to a media conglomerate powerhouse that engineered the merger with the ABC television network in 1985.  Mazzocco interprets the exclusive contract Capital Cities received from the Israeli government to make footage available to other U.S. networks as a portent of how commercial broadcasting would serve “U.S. interests in the Middle East.”  He argues that Capital Cities rose “to prominence as a U.S. media power” by “serving as Israel’s public relations arm” and “spinning” the Eichmann trial “for profit.”  For Mazzocco, the profit was more than just economic, but a growing influence of interlocking directorates that included ultra-conversative political interests such as former CIA Director under President Reagan, William J. Casey, who was an investor and partner in the company (Mazzocco).

In terms of the globalization of Holocaust memory, however, authenticity long has been a focal concern in discussions of representation.  This concern, in turn, reflects deep-seated anxieties that the Holocaust no longer holds a special place in popular discourse.  In 2003, a New York Times headline asked “Holocaust Documentaries: Too Much of a Bad Thing?”  Annette Insdorf, chronicler of the Holocaust film in her book Indelible Shadows, noted that there had been 69 documentaries since 1990, which the Times calculated to be one every two months.  This proliferation raised a troubling question for the Times: “are too many Holocaust documentaries being made?  Has supply outstripped demand”(Gewen)?

While the article arguably skirted the edges of glibness, the questions repackaged similar objections that other critics and intellectuals, such as Elie Wiesel, already had raised with regard to mediated representations of the Holocaust.  Anxieties over how popular entertainment trivialized the Holocaust, over how mediated representations would eventually supplant survivor testimony, or over how atrocity footage had desensitized the popular response to the Holocaust all had received much public attention.  Concern over the rate of Holocaust documentaries being released was just another iteration of larger anxieties over a yawning gap between unmediated Holocaust actuality and mediated Holocaust representation[SC3] .

This crisis of authenticity in Holocaust representation came amid increasing popularization of the Holocaust.  The scarcity of Holocaust imagery once bestowed cultural capital upon middle- to high-brow texts.  That scarcity retained an emotional power that could trump rules and standards, such as when NBC aired Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in its entirety, despite Senator Tom Coburn’s protestations that the network airing was “an all-time low” for network television to allow “full-frontal nudity, violence, and profanity” that was “polluting the minds of our children” (Carmody).  Within a few years of the New York Times article, the Holocaust was being invoked to gain credence for everything from the war in Iraq to the campaign against animal slaughterhouses (Schorr; Snaza).

Coverage of the Eichmann trial indicates a number of larger paradoxes that current discussions of globalization and the Holocaust fail to address.  How does one discuss an influential broadcast that no one ever saw?  A global audience that encountered media coverage of the trial via very different media?  As Jeffrey Shandler persuasively has argued, a template for how popular media represents the Holocaust and shapes Holocaust memory resulted in large part from television coverage of the Eichmann trial in spring and summer of 1961.  As Shandler notes, the trial “provided the first opportunity for television networks to deal with the Holocaust in the context of reporting a major news story.  In fact, American television audiences are most likely to have first heard the word Holocaust [orig. emphasis] used to describe the Nazi persecution of European Jewry during broadcasts of the trial” (Shandler).  Yet from the start, this template was itself both highly mediated and selective.  Shandler notes the theatrical setting for the trial [SC4] in Beit Ha’am, a large public theater in Jerusalem.  The auditorium featured state-of-the-art technology, including closed-circuit television and videotape recording, and reserved 474 out of its 756 seats for journalists.  The trial became a bellwether for the relatively new Israeli state, where the proceedings effectively would perform the legitimacy of the new state’s rule of law (Shandler).  In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt derided the proceedings as pure theater.  “Whoever planned this auditorium in the newly built Beit Ha’am . . . had a theater in mind, complete with orchestra and gallery, with proscenium and stage, and with side doors for the actors’ entrance.  Clearly, this courtroom is not a bad place for the show trial . . .” (Arendt).

That the trial was highly mediated created a scarcity of accounts over which journalistic authority in turn could exert a great deal of control in explaining Holocaust and genocide to a general audience.  Thus, while reports of the trial proliferated, most audiences saw these reports in highly fragmented form.  Except for a closed-circuit television broadcast, no Israeli could watch the proceedings on television because Israel had no television broadcasting infrastructure in 1961.  Instead, the Israeli encounter with the Eichmann trial took place over transistor radios. The Israeli government allowed only one company, Capital Cities Broadcasting, an exclusive contract to cover the trial with four hidden cameras set up in the hall.  Rather than watch this coverage live, American audiences saw the Eichmann trial via breaking news bulletins, and videotape and 16mm footage Capital Cities shipped from Jerusalem in hour long segments.

This proliferation of controlled and fragmented imagery from the trial helped stir a kind of aura for this representation, which still required institutional authority to interpret a preferred and dominant explanation of the trial’s significance.  In the 30 minute compilation distributed by Capital Cities after the trial had ended and the judges deliberated their verdict, Verdict for Tomorrow offered what would become the standard narrative for how to understand the Holocaust.  The prologue to this program, as Shandler notes, offers what would become the archetypal “capsule summary” of Nazi anti-Semitism (Shandler).  Narrated by Lowell Thomas, who himself reported on Kristallnacht for American radio in November 1938, this prologue uses Thomas’ broadcast and archival footage to establish a historical trajectory toward atrocity footage taken at Liberation and the penultimate Final Solution.  “The last chapters of this unforgettable nightmare,” intones Thomas, “are being written . . . by newsmen in Beit Ha’am” (Verdict for Tomorrow)[SC5] .

Embedded within this “capsule summary” where journalism became the voice of authority is an unintended and arguably unnoticed crisis of authenticity for the mediated image.  To[SC6]  support its visual evidence for Kristallnacht, the documentary does not distinguish in this brief montage between actuality and staged footage.  One brief sequence from this montage shows a man dressed in a uniform painting a Jewish star on a shop window.  The shot originated with the controversial March of Time documentary Inside Nazi Germany (RKO, 1938).  When the producers deemed original footage smuggled out of Germany after Kristallnacht not dramatic enough, they hired anti-Nazi German-Americans living in Hoboken, New Jersey to re-enact various scenes, complete with multiple takes and camera set-ups (Fielding).  Documentary-like, the staged re-enactment of painting a Jewish shop window since has become part of the Holocaust lexicon for American audiences[SC7] .

Over 40 years later, this crisis of authenticity emerged again and more fiercely with Eyal Sivan’s 1998 documentary The Specialist, which edited some nine (9) months of trial footage down to a little over two (2) hours.  In 2005, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the head of the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive Hillel Tryster had conducted a close study of the film and concluded that the film “was almost entirely a perverse fraud, ranging from radical editing, to artificial dialogues that never took place.”  Sivan responded by noting that the six years the Archive took “to point out presumed defects in the film . . . indicates the extent of the archive’s efficiency.”  Noting that much of the footage used in the documentary was discovered in a law school faculty bathroom at Hebrew University and did not come from the Spielberg Archives, Sivan flatly insisted “we made a film.”  In addition to acknowledging editing and digitally inserting reflections of the spectators in the bullet-proof glass booth surrounding Eichmann during the trial, Sivan emphasized the cinematic nature of the work.  “All the materials we used underwent treatment.  We added lighting.  We touched up the picture” (Pinto).

Debates over authenticity over these images reveal deep schisms and already extant contradictions within an increasingly globalized memory of the Holocaust.  The proliferation of images in digital formats, plus the affordability of an increasing palette of digital effects almost guarantees that traditional Holocaust imagery will be wrenched free of traditional meanings.  As Frances Guerin notes, though the film uses Arendt’s book to guide the viewer through the performative aspect of the trial, the documentary exists in its own right.  “To understand The Specialist as a straightforward translation of Arendt's book into images,” Guerin argues, “irresponsibly overlooks the film's sophisticated analysis on the nature of visual, in particular, documentary representation of such significant historical events” (Guerin).

The opening of the film clearly sets out the demarcated boundaries between video footage, digitally manipulated to include such effects as reflections of the crowd, and the grainy, black and white newsreel footage of prosecutor Gideon Hausner delivering his opening statement[SC8] .  At the same time, it is hard to separate the film’s self-conscious and distancing strategies from an increasingly literate mass audience with growing facility and expertise in interpreting a variety of accounts, including Arendt’s.  As Gil Raz notes, the Hebrew translation of Arendt’s book did not appear until 2000, a year after the release of Sivan’s film.  Raz attributes this 40 year delay to controversial questions Arendt raised, including those that questioned whether Eichmann was indeed “a blood-thirsty antisemitic monster” who even should be tried in Jerusalem (Raz).

If The Specialist fractured the institutional account of the Eichmann trial in controversial ways, one might be tempted to view Leo Hurwitz’s 35-hour live-on-tape broadcast as the coherent and preferred version of events[SC9] .  To the contrary, the broadcast that was not a broadcast is full of globalized contradictions.  Few if any audiences have seen that version in its entirety.  Contemporary press accounts of the trial suggest that the reception of television coverage already showed an indifferent audience as curious about the debut of new television technology in Israel as they were about “the awful account” of Nazi anti-Semitism.  A New York Times story already had noted the elusive nature of capturing the trial live on tape via a multiple camera setup.  The notion of a blacklisted filmmaker concealed from view and engaged in surveillance of the trial is in itself rife with ironic overtones.  More interesting still is the absence from these accounts of any identification of Hurwitz as a blacklisted filmmaker.  Instead, the Times focused on Hurwitz’ technique in capturing the trial:

He continuously is directing his four camera men here, studying the pictures each one relays from his particular hidden niche in the courtroom, and selecting first one and then another of the pictures for the continuous record that goes onto the videotape.

"You can't follow mechanically," Mr. Hurwitz says. "You can't simply follow a witness all the time he speaks and then put the camera on Eichmann when his name is mentioned. You have to have a sense of the event, a sense of following the case as it is built up against Eichmann. It helps to know that someone is watching" (Fellows).

The article proceeds to note that this technique provokes different reactions from different audiences:

[Eichmann] has been a disappointment especially to the audiences in Germany, who are anxious· to see his reactions. They also want to see the look of Israeli faces in the crowd.  The Germans are understandably a bit more self-conscious than are, say, the British, who prefer a straight reporting job without complicated interrelations. The American audiences have been quiet, apparently pleased with the mix they have been getting from Mr. Hurwitz (Fellows).

While the the Eichmann trial clearly “provided the first opportunity for television networks to deal with the Holocaust,” the contested footage offers no clear indication of what, how, or by whom this nascent representation of the Holocaust was seen.  Influenced by the two-step flow model, Edward James Koppel’s Masters Thesis for Stanford University calls upon the work of Edward Klapper to conclude that press coverage of the trial “does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects,” instead “functioning among and through a nexus of mediating factors and influences” (Koppel).  Given the unique nature of the trial, a broadcast that was not a broadcast, consumed by different audiences in very different ways and with different responses, any consideration of the globalization of Holocaust memory would do well to return to the actual conditions of reception for this significant if fragmented moment in the public understanding of the Holocaust.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.

Baucom, Ian. "Globalit, Inc.; or, the Cultural Logic of Global Literary Studies." PMLA 116.1 (2001): 158-72.

Carmody, John. "The Tv Column." The Washington Post 1997: D.04.

Fellows, Lawrence. "Tv Makes Its Israeli Debut with a Tragedy." The New York Times 2 July 1961. 1961: X9.

Fielding, Raymond. The March of Time, 1935-1951. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Gewen, Barry. "Holocaust Documentaries: Too Much of a Bad Thing?". New York Times (1857-Current file) 2003: AR1.

Guerin, Frances. "The Perpetrator in Focus: Turn of the Century Holocaust Remembrance in 'the Specialist'." Law/Text/Culture 10 (2006): 167-93.

Koppel, Ted Feb. "Attitudinal and Informational Changes Precipitated by Local Newspaper Coverage of the Eichmann Trial." iv, 161 l. tables. Dissertation: Thesis (M.A.)--Dept. of Speech and Drama, Stanford University.

Mazzocco, Dennis W. Networks of Power : Corporate Tv's Threat to Democracy. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1994.

Pinto, Goel. "The Specialist Is Almost Entirely a Perverse Fraud." Haaretz 31 Jan. 2005. 2005.

Pohl, Dieter. "Contemporary Responses to the Shoah in Germany and Eastern Europe."  Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust. Eds. Konrad Kwiet and Jürgen Matthäus. Praeger Series on Jewish and Israeli Studies. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. 19-36.

Raz, Gal. "Actuality of Banality." Shofar 24 (2005): 4.

Schiller, Herbert I. Information Inequality : The Deepening Social Crisis in America. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Schorr, Daniel. "Does 'Appeasement' Fit into the Iraq War Debate? ; Donald Rumsfeld Warned against Repeating the World War Ii Mistake of 'Appeasement.'." The Christian Science Monitor 2006: 09.

Shandler, Jeffrey. While America Watches : Televising the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Snaza, Nathan. "(Im)Possible Witness: Viewing Peta's "Holocaust on Your Plate"." Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal 2.1 (2004): 1-20.

Verdict for Tomorrow. Visual Material. New York : The League, 1981.

 

 

The Implications of Eichmann’s Conviction for Contemporary State Criminals

Gerd Hankel

1. I would like to begin by clarifying the title of my talk. Unfortunately the English version of the program refers to “criminals against the state” rather than “contemporary state criminals”. There are, of course, criminals who perpetrate crimes directed against the state, for example, by committing treason or terrorist acts. But my contribution to the conference today does not deal with this type of criminal. Instead, I will focus on perpetrators who, while wielding state power and acting in the name of a state, commit crimes. These kinds of crimes could not be perpetrated without access to some form of state power apparatus, which means that their specific dimension or intensity is hardly comparable to crimes by non-state actors. This category includes war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide; and as we all know, such crimes have been perpetrated in various parts of the world in the period since Adolf Eichmann was tried and found guilty.

What was the message that the Eichmann trial sent out to influence positions internationally on these crimes? And what has been the response to that message in the interim?

 

2. Generally speaking, and from a legal perspective, there are three possible responses to crimes that are perpetrated with the help of state power:

a) The accused must stand trial before the courts of the state upon whose territory the crimes were committed. The prerequisite for this course of action is that political power has changed hands, from one regime to another, in the country in question, and there is now agreement that in those responsible for the crimes must be prosecuted.

b) An international legal authority such as the International Criminal Court or a court that is established ad hoc in the specific context prosecutes and tries the accused. This kind of initiative is often motivated by the feeling that the crimes are so severe that they cannot remain unatoned, if the international community of states, no matter how heterogeneous those states may be, does not want to risk betraying its elementary moral principles.

c) The accused are put on trial before a court or courts in third-party states. In other words, even though neither the accused, nor the victims of the crimes are citizens of a specific state and even though the crimes were not committed on that state’s territory, the state’s courts take on the task of seeking justice, one might say as the representative of the international community. This third course of action is referred to as the application of the universality principle, which means that the one state aims to assert universal values and principles in lieu of the international community. Perpetrating mass crimes such as crimes against humanity or genocide is no longer considered to be an internal affair of a single state.

 

3. If we recognize the validity of the universality principle for crimes that pertain to humanity as a whole, then we must conclude that the trial against Adolf Eichmann was a logical application of that principle. And what is more, the trial was a milestone in that it reactivated a principle that had long fallen into disuse. Since the end of the classic era of piracy in the eighteenth century, there were no longer crimes—or, to be more precise, no longer an awareness of crimes—that induced one state acting on behalf of a group of states to put a so-called hostes humani generis (enemies of humanity) on trial. This awareness was reawakened under the impression of the crimes of the National Socialists. As a result, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 stipulate that in the case of grave breaches of the individual provisions of the agreements, all nations that ratified the conventions are obligated—independent of where, by whom, and against whom the violations occur—to either themselves prosecute alleged criminals or extradite them to another state that will try them (aut dedere aut iudicare).

Now we all know that legal provisions are one thing, whereas their application may be another thing altogether. This is especially true, when, as is often the case internationally, there is no authority with a power monopoly, when the sites of the crimes are far away, and when, as has been true for decades, global political and economic inequalities lame attempts to seek justice for massive violations of human rights in the form of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Where your criminal is my ally, there is no room for the principle of universal jurisdiction—unless, we might add, that principle is implemented with the use of force, as in the case of Eichmann’s capture by Israel.

 

4. The meaning of the universality principle first became clear to the international public in October 1998, when the former Chilean president and dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London, where he was being treated in a hospital. Spain had applied to the United Kingdom to have Pinochet extradited so he could be tried for various crimes committed against Spanish citizens in Chile while he headed the military dictatorship there. Pinochet was detained in the United Kingdom for nearly two years, and when he was finally released, it was because of his illness, in other words, for humanitarian reasons. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that political expediency influenced the decision, Pinochet’s arrest and the subsequent investigation demonstrated that state power has its limits and that while it may take time for justice to assert itself, it does so with great, revealing power.

 

5. Pinochet’s arrest and the increased awareness for the necessity of punishing perpetrators of mass crimes that it stimulated would not have been possible without the establishment, in 1993 and 1994, of the ad hoc courts for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. These courts drew attention to law as a possible response to mass crimes committed by the state. These crimes should no longer be another name for politics; instead be considered what they in fact are: violations of moral standards that, despite their international context, should not be treated differently than crimes in the neighborhood must be treated in an individual state.

Laws that, for example, penalize genocide were part of the criminal code in numerous states (in Germany, this was § 220a of the penal code), but these were virtually forgotten paragraphs that play no role in actual practice.

That changed, as I’ve said, in the early 1990s. Belgium, for example, expressly penalized violations of international humanitarian law in 1993 and extended the laws to include crimes against humanity and genocide in 1999. At about the same time, France declared that the jurisdiction of its courts also extended to the crimes listed in the statutes of the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Netherlands also expressly formulated laws on breaches of international humanitarian law and later added paragraphs criminalizing torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity. In Germany, the Code of Crimes against International Law went into effect in 2002; it covers genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and § 1 states: “This Act shall apply to all criminal offenses against international law designated under this Act, to serious criminal offenses designated therein, even when the offense was committed abroad and bears no relation to Germany.”

The first case prosecuted under the provisions of the Code of Crimes against International Law was brought to trial one month ago in Stuttgart. The accused are two Rwandan citizens, who are charged with having ordered others to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity (murder, rape) in 2008 and 2009 in the Democratic Republic of Congo) or having failed to deter others from perpetrating these crimes, although they were in a position to have done so. And at the beginning of this year, another trial began in Frankfurt am Main against a former Rwandan mayor who is suspected of being involved in the murder of at least 3732 people in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide against the country’s Tutsi population.

To date, European courts alone have found more than one dozen people guilty of crimes based on the principle of universal jurisdiction; included in this group are people from Argentina, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Serbia.

 

6. If we can thus assert that the sentencing of an individual like Adolf Eichmann far away from the site of the crimes he committed and without regard for the nationality of the perpetrator and the victims (at the time the crimes were committed, there was no state of Israel, as you all know) did not remain a singular case, another aspect is apparent: the people who become the targets of state investigators and later find themselves in the dock are all citizens of states that are not especially powerful or influential. That is not to say that citizens of states like the United Kingdom, China, Israel, Russia, or the United States have not been suspected of committing crimes against international law. There have been and still are a number of cases in which charges were raised against people from these countries, from state presidents and ministers (including former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, former US President George W. Bush, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) right down to the accessories to such crimes without whom mass crimes that were tolerated, approved of, or initiated by the state would not be possible. But all these charges remained unsuccessful. They were either ignored (as in the case of the charges raised in 2005 in Germany against Uzbekistan’s Minister of the Interior Almatov following a massacre perpetrated against demonstrators; in the fall of 2005, Almatov was treated in a German hospital, but the German authorities choose to demonstratively ignore his presence) or the charges were struck down because of purported inadmissibility. For example, the German Code of Crimes against International Law expressly states that there is, on one hand, an obligation to prosecute according to the universal jurisdiction principle. But on the other hand, the German Code of Criminal Procedure does not exclude the possibility that prosecution can be waived if the accused is currently not in Germany and there is no reason to expect that he will be, or if another court, such as an international tribunal or a court in the accused’s own country, can be expected to bring the case to trial. Similar provisions can be found in the codes of other countries; in some instances, for example in Belgium, they were added at a later date.

 

7. Of course, when the principle of universality is applied, there is a danger that this concept will be instrumentalized for political motives. And it is also clear that a court that can take up a case in close proximity to the site of the crime is generally better equipped to do the task than others.

That said, what consequences can be drawn? That investigations involving high-ranking state representatives might just as well not be begun, since they will almost always provoke charges of bias or instrumentalization? That courts far from the site of crimes are unable, or only able with the greatest of difficulties, to administer justice in cases involving crimes against international humanitarian law, so they should instead stick to their normal areas of jurisdiction? Answering these questions in the affirmative would ultimately be tantamount to advocating a double standard: prosecution for the little fish, state receptions for the big ones.

It would be an exaggeration to conclude from what I’ve just said that the universality principle is no longer useful. If prosecution of a specific crime is not possible on an international level, that is, the level of the International Criminal Court, then prosecution on the national level can lead, on the one hand, to considerable diplomatic irritations. But on the other hand, these are the most severe crimes known, that often have lead to the death of hundreds or thousands of people. To do nothing, to allow these acts to disappear into a dark corner of politics, may seem admissible in the current early phase of developments; we might console ourselves by pointing to the fact that the accused at least now generally face considerable negative international media attention. But if the impression that high-level perpetrators get away scot-free, an impression that is backed up by empirical evidence, is confirmed, then in the long run we may face an erosion of justice, which cannot be staved off by prosecuting and punishing the less important criminals.

In other words—what was missing in 1961 when the Eichmann trial took place, namely, an international awareness that it was essential that these kinds of crimes be penalized, is now much more widespread. But actually implementing that kind of penalization has proven to be quite difficult. For the moment, it remains unclear to what extent it will be realized and what the results of this development will be.

 

 

The Eichmann Trial and the Prosecution of War Crimes in Germany

Jürgen Matthäus

1. Before the Eichmann Trial

On May 24, 1960, one day after David Ben-Gurion had announced Eichmann’s capture to the Knesset and the world, the West German parliament (Bundestag) was having a debate that we now know was to end in a decision ensuring that the majority of Holocaust perpetrators would never be persecuted. To be sure, at the time the issue under discussion seemed more narrowly defined, namely whether manslaughter committed during the Nazi era should fall under the 15-year statute of limitations set down in the German penal code or remain adjudicable after May 1960. In West German legal understanding, Nazi crimes presented a huge yet finite challenge: already in 1955, crimes like theft and robbery had expired, and a 20-year term limit for murder was expected to take effect on May 8, 1965.

When Walter Menzel, legal expert from the opposition Social Democractic Party, took the floor to call for a four-year extension of the impending term limit, he referred directly to the news from Jerusalem, reminding his fellow parliamentarians that if Nazi era manslaughter would no longer be punishable, all those who helped Eichmann in his goal of achieving the “Final Solution” would go free – a scandal not only domestically, but also in terms of foreign relations. Menzel did not mince his words – he referred to the culprits as “Massentotschläger” -, but his arguments had no effect.[1] There was no need, countered Federal Justice Minister Scheffer for the Bundestag majority, to adopt the extension, for there was sufficient time left to deal with the real crimes, namely murder. In addition, the minister said, the head of the Federal Republic’s most reputable and active agency involved in the investigation of Nazi crimes, Erwin Schüle and his Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, was also opposed to extending the term limit for manslaughter.

Let’s be clear about the consequences of not extending the statute of limitation for manslaughter. With Menzel’s initiative dead on arrival in the Bundestag, German politicians had taken, as Marc von Miquel argues in his highly insightful study titled Ahnden oder Amnestieren, the “most momentous decision regarding the adjudication of Nazi-era crimes.”[2] This is indeed no overstatement as the expiration of manslaughter in 1960 pulled the rug from underneath all investigations in cases in which the prosecutors saw no chance to prove murder under the German criminal code. There can hardly be a more obvious indication for the lack of impact the spectacular announcement of Eichmann’s arraignment had on Germany’s dealing with the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

No surprise here, one might say, in view of both the fact that the Eichmann trial was yet to take place, and the poor record of West German investigations in the early to mid-1950s. After the end of the war, the shock of the Allied-enforced confrontation with the crimes of the Nazi era had swiftly worn off among the German public. It was replaced by a sense of normalcy in which the recent past appeared as an ill-fitting episode in the nation’s history and the war as a source of suffering for all affected, including Germans. The greatest challenge ahead was to establish a functioning political system and economy; the adjudication of Nazi crimes seemed to endanger integration unless – as in the emerging GDR – the issue seemed suitable for propaganda purposes in the attempt to outshine the West by posing as the better, more de-Nazified Germany. To the majority of Germans, the Nuremberg trials appeared as a symbol of shame, not as a model to be replicated in German courts once they had regained their jurisdiction. The more the Cold War produced second thoughts regarding the punishment of Nazi criminals including those sentenced in Nuremberg, the stronger the support for calls by West German politicians, church representatives and jurists to restrict legal culpability for the Third Reich’s crimes to the top Nazi leadership most members of which were, by that time, safely dead.

In 1954, the number of Nazi crimes cases opened dropped to its lowest number (183) and hovered around an annual average of 240 until 1957; the conviction figures showed a similar decreasing trend. In the GDR, the picture wasn’t all that different: after the notorious Waldheim trials of 1950 (April to June) with their more than 3,400 accused and summarily sentenced, the number of verdicts dropped to 332 one year later and until 1959 had declined to 6.[3] At that time, the GDR had shifted its efforts from the legal sphere to beating the propagandistic drum against former Third Reich officials living in the Federal Republic, and Bonn was certainly offering their Communist critics sufficient propaganda ammunition in the form of high-ranking officials within the Bundesrepublik’s ministerial bureaucracy (Globke, Oberländer) as well as in the justice system.

But towards the late 1950s, things started to change in the West, both in terms of adjudication and public perception. Among the most active German jurists at that time was Fritz Bauer, General prosecutor in the state of Hesse, a former persecute of the Nazis as Social Democrat and Jew. Bauer played a crucial role by pursuing a number of important court cases, most notably the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial held from December 1963 to August 1965, and by pushing for getting the broader issue a higher priority on the political and public agenda. He also facilitated the capture of AE as he passed on the decisive information on Eichmann’s whereabouts in Argentina to Israeli authorities (without knowledge of German judicial or intelligence agencies).[4] According to Bauer, a greater sense of urgency emerged at that time as a result of publications, particularly Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution first published in 1953, and translated into German in 1956. Bauer does not mention, but one should add Léon Poliakov’s and Joseph Wulf’s Das Dritte Reich und die Juden published in 1955 and also Gerhard Schoenberner’s photographic history Der Gelbe Stern. Die Judenverfolgung in Europa 1933 bis 1945 published in 1960, both stirring some controversy in Germany.[5] These books, Bauer said in 1963, came „into the hands of our young people who simply asked: what is the truth and what are we going to do about it?“ These questions that the older generation had prematurely labeled as already answered now came back with unexpected potency.[6] Of course, to complement Bauer’s emphasis on the younger generation’s reading list we would want to sketch in a broader process of liberalization that accelerated in the last third of the 1950s, and that was to affect attitudes and mores on a wide range of subject. There is not time to go into that now, but it does reinforce the impression that change was underway well before Eichmann testified in Jerusalem.

If there is an annus mirabilis in the story of West German adjudication of Nazi crimes, it would be not the year of Eichmann’s capture or trial, but 1958, marked by two well-known key events that took place against the background of broader transformations: the Ulm Einsatzkommando Tilsit trial, and the founding of the Zentrale Stelle Ludwigsburg (ZSL). Still, in early 1960s, vast parts of the murder apparatus had not yet been touched by prosecutors, partly as a result of the whitewashing by former officials like in the case of the German Order Police, partly due to the ZSL’s limited resources and competences. Even such a crucial institution as the Reich Security Main Office remained uninvestigated, and in the late 1960s the chief prosecutor at the Berlin Kammergericht who by then had collected information of thousands of former members of the RSHA, claimed that he and his colleagues had simply „forgotten“ to investigate Eichmann’s extended office until prompted to do so from abroad in 1963. However, we know from the work of Annette Weinke and others that the first steps were indeed taken as part of the West German PR-campaign in the run-up to the Eichmann-trial.[7]

2. The Eichmann trial and its immediate perception

1961 was internationally perceived as a crisis year characterized by an escalation of the Cold War, increasing decolonization problems and growing concerns over the future – such grave concerns that sympathetic German commentators felt “other news” would push the Eichmann trial from the title pages of newspapers.[8] At the opening of the trial in April, one journalist mused in the liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung that “Eichmann had caught the right moment. First the rocket man Yuri Gagarin, then the invasion adventure in Cuba, followed by an uprising in Algeria.” And that was even before the wall came up in Berlin separating the two German states in August 1961. From our perspective, with the Cold War itself safely history, we tend to overlook the anxieties felt by people at the time, and their perception of the Holocaust as a problem of history. “Don’t we have to fear”, the April newspaper article continued, “that the shock that could emanate from the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem will be neutralized by these world events? The only ones who cannot escape it […] are the Israelis for it is their fate that is the subject of the Jerusalem proceedings. For the Jews, Eichmann is not past, but present, the origin of pain still felt in almost all families.”[9]

Yet, a set of parallel initiatives with regard to Nazi crimes had emerged in West Germany since the late 1950s, primarily based on the work of a few prosecutors and even fewer historians who operated in a changing, though still largely hostile environment. As member of the West German observer team at the Eichmann trial, Dietrich Zeug, German prosecutor of Jewish descent[10] who since May 1959 had worked at the ZSL, was uniquely positioned to compare the proceedings in Jerusalem with the status of the German investigative efforts. Tasked with looking out for evidence that could be of relevance for the ZS, Zeug sent altogether 29 reports back home; Bettina Birn recently published an article about his impressions. Starting with Hausner’s opening speech, Zeug felt that Israeli police and prosecutors lacked the knowledge he and his West German colleagues had accumulated; at the same time, Zeug understood that his own work was severely discredited by what he called “the negligent handling of outstanding cases against prominent felons”[11] - like the one against the Auswärtiges Amt-”Judenreferent” Eberhard von Thadden that lingered on and was finally closed in 1965, or against former SS-General Reinefarth who had been involved in the extraordinarily brutal suppression of the 1944 Warsaw uprising before becoming mayor of a town on the German holiday island Sylt and member of the state parliament.[12]

More than aware of the deficiencies of the West German approach towards Nazi criminals, Zeug noted a number of severe shortcomings built into the Jerusalem proceedings and presented a much more thorough though less polemic critique than Hannah Arendt’s later verdict while at the same time displaying a sophisticated grasp of the “Final Solution” many historians at the time could not muster. Four points stand out in his analysis: first, the Israeli police investigators of Bureau 06 had not consulted with their fellow policemen whom West German state prosecutors had learned to rely on to identify witnesses. Second, the Israelis had built the case with much less documentary material than their German counterparts; Less’ men of Bureau 06 even admitted that they didn’t know about the Berlin Document Center and its massive holdings. Third and most importantly, Zeug felt Hausner and his team did not understand the structural characteristics of the apparatus involved in bringing about the “Final solution” and the role of different agencies at different stages in the process. This lack of historical expertise and perception tied in with – fourth – the prosecution’s over-interpretation of Eichmann’s importance, going far beyond the evidence Bureau 06 had compiled. Obviously, Eichmann and his RSHA-office controlled the deportation part of the process in many countries; but in regard to the Generalgouvernement and the occupied parts of the Soviet Union, their authority ranged from limited to nonexistent.

Zeug’s assessment of the Jerusalem proceedings attests to the depth of understanding German prosecutors had reached regarding the functioning of the Nazi system in general, and particularly of the relative importance of what we now are used to call “the center” compared to “the periphery”. German officials deployed in the East had, as the evidence showed, not just followed orders; instead, the absence of clear-cut directives from above prompted the men on the ground to be creative in using their authorities and competences to the utmost degree in order to ensure implementation of what they regarded as the fundamental goals of German policy. This insight far transcended, in fact collided with, the conventional wisdom prevailing among mainstream historiography not only at the time, but well into the 1980s. It resulted as much from the procedural need prosecutors were facing in proving murderous intent required by German law as it emerged from a close reading of a critical mass of archival sources. Zeug and his colleagues observed a genocidal process largely driven by the dynamics of interaction between officials within and across hierarchies and regions, leaving the responsibility for the murder of the Jews, as Zeug observed, “diffused and fragmented over several dozen German institutions”. The Jerusalem proceedings presented the reverse image, with the center in Berlin determining, based on long-held plans, what went on in the far reaches of the Nazi empire – an image, however, that matched the picture historiography had so far painted of the “Final Solution”.

3. The long-term impact of the trial

Indeed, Zeug and his colleagues faced huge challenges in Germany in their attempt to bring Holocaust perpetrators to justice. The Eichmann trial did not help; in fact, outside the opaque area of media representation, it was irrelevant for the trajectory of adjudicating Nazi crimes in the Federal Republic. Bettina Birn claims that, with the exception of a few isolated cases, the Jerusalem proceedings had no direct impact on German judicial undertakings.[13] The West German investigations, she concludes, “followed their own dynamic”, a dynamic, I would add, generated in the late 1950s and fueled after 1961 partly by the experience gathered in the course of the investigative work, but to a much larger degree by broader political and societal developments. We know the results: massive efforts by a few prosecutors that led to major courts cases like the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial (1963-65) and the Düsseldorf Majdanek court case (1975-81) ending in depressingly inappropriate verdicts. Most frequently, however, investigations got reduced to a mere handful of defendants as a result of the “cold amnesty” enacted in 1968 for any but clear murder cases, thus making the punishment of all “desk perpetrators” practically impossible. This includes the highly ambitious Berlin investigations since 1963 against thousands of former members of the RSHA – had trials of that magnitude taken place in Germany, they would have confronted the Holocaust with unprecedented intensity and forced the German public to confront the interplay between “bureaucratic murder” and outright killings.[14] On a similarly speculative note, had Eichmann not been sentenced in Israel in 1961 and instead been tried in Germany after 1968, given the way German law was interpreted and applied he would have had a good chance of getting away with a slap on the wrist or no sentence at all, just like his fellow-officers in the RSHA or officials in the Reichsbahn and in the administrative apparatus of the occupied Eastern territories.

The obscure but by now notorious “Ergänzungsgesetz zum Ordnungswidrigkeitengesetz” passed by the Bundestag in March and taking effect in October 1968 in conjunction with the BGH-ruling of May 1969 let all those whose involvement in the FS seemed indirect, that is to say removed from the actual killings, off the legal hook. How was this possible in view of the lively, engaged and sensitive debates inside and outside the German parliament that took place simultaneously in the run-up to the extension of the term limit for murder, and the societal upheaval epitomized by the student protests? Despite good intentions on the part of some, things had gone wrong - Bundesjustizminister Heinemann called the result an “accident/Panne”. Yet based on the findings by Marc von Miquel and Annette Weinke, it seems clear that the impulse and main building blocks for the legal chain reaction leading to this “cold amnesty” had come from a small group of former Nazis and their supporters in the Bonn bureaucracy and the legal system, and thus was no accident.[15]

However, beyond the plotting and behind-the-scenes wire pulling, there was a general sense in the late 1960s that, while German memorial culture had been transformed by events of the preceding decade to better address the negative aspects of the Nazi past, the adjudication of WWII criminals had run its course. The “cold amnesty” of the late 1960s, I would suggest, marks both the end of the prevalence of the old Nazi rearguard in German society and the beginning of a growing dichotomy in the German discourse about the Third Reich: on the one hand, an increasingly eloquent, yet mostly symbolic acknowledgment of Nazi crimes and German historical responsibility; and on the other hand a declining willingness to engage the subject’s practical ramifications, some relating to court proceedings, some closer to home in the form of family memory. If German sensitivity and rhetorical engagement grew over time, so did the reluctance towards actually confronting Nazi murderers while they were alive. Consider just two examples: in polls conducted in 1961/62, almost all questioned said they had heard about the trial in Jerusalem, yet 53% agreed and only 33% disagreed with the statement that it would be best „to forget the whole matter and focus on the future.“[16] Subsequently, media coverage of German trials remained dominated by the notion that they were a thing of the past, an aberration, expressed by the recurring claim that a current trial would deal with „the last Nazi“. Second, the fact that the abolition of the statute of limitation for murder finally enacted in 1979 after much rhetorical and media ado, had an absolutely marginal legal effect (Miquel refers to just two cases in which the Bundestag-decision was relevant)[17] while hundreds if not thousands of “desk murderers” got off scot-free as a result of the “cold amnesty” implemented ten years earlier, effectively terminating the systematic adjudication of Nazi crimes in the Federal Republic.

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[17] Miquel, Ahnden, 328.

Der Eichmann-Prozess und die Adenauer-Republik

Annette Weinke

I. Einleitung

Ende der sechziger Jahre befand Ralf Dahrendorf, wenn in Deutschland von der „deutschen Frage“ die Rede sei, seien damit zumeist Themen wie die Oder-Neiße-Linie, die „sogenannte“ DDR oder die deutsche Stellung in der Welt gemeint. Der liberale Denker wollte die „deutsche Frage“ aber anders verstanden wissen: Als eine Form der Selbstbefragung nämlich, die den Zustand der deutschen Gesellschaft, deren soziales Gefüge und Mentalität in den Blick nimmt. Unter den vielen möglichen Versionen der „deutschen Frage“ habe an erster Stelle zu stehen: „Wie war Auschwitz möglich?“ Weder Hannah Arendt noch der Jerusalemer Eichmann-Prozess hätten darauf eine Antwort gefunden. Auch die Auschwitz-Prozesse vor westdeutschen und österreichischen Gerichten seien dazu nicht in der Lage gewesen. Einen Vorwurf wollte der Soziologe daraus gleichwohl nicht ableiten. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass die Auschwitz schlichtweg „unerträglich“ sei, könne man sich diesem Problem vorerst nur mit Metaphern der Jurisprudenz oder Psychoanalyse nähern.[1]

            Dahrendorfs Bemerkungen, veröffentlicht auf den Höhepunkt der studentischen Unruhen von 1968, sind ein typisches Beispiel dafür, wie der Jerusalemer Eichmann-Prozess nicht nur in seiner Zeit, sondern noch lange darüber hinaus wahrgenommen wurde. Das Verfahren gilt bis heute in erster Linie als Fenster zur Geschichte des Dritten Reichs. Man verspricht sich davon nicht nur wichtige Aufschlüsse über die Voraussetzungen, Abläufe und Folgen der „Endlösung“, sondern hoffte auch, mehr zu erfahren über die Persönlichkeit, die Motive, Interessen und moralischen Dispositionen eines führenden Täters. Es ist dieses funktionale Prozessverständnis, das die Rezeption des Eichmann-Prozesses in der Bundesrepublik – nicht zuletzt bedingt durch eine spezifische Deutung von Hannah Arendts berühmtem Eichmann-Buch  – bis in die heutige Zeit stark beeinflusst.[2] Dabei hätte gerade die Argumentation in „Eichmann in Jerusalem“ dazu anregen können, das Verfahren unter ganz unterschiedlichen Aspekten zu diskutieren. Denn neben den darin enthaltenen Reflexionen zur Durchführung des Judenmords, die immer wieder durchbrochen werden durch Kommentare zur juridischen Form der Aufarbeitung, finden sich in Arendts Essay auch eine Fülle von Betrachtungen, die sich mit den möglichen Folgen des Gerichtsprozesses für die Bundesrepublik beschäftigen. Insofern stellt der Text einer der seltenen Versuche dar, Bezüge herzustellen zwischen den in Jerusalem verhandelten historischen Sachverhalten und der gesellschaftspolitischen Situation der Bundesrepublik in der dritten Amtsperiode Konrad Adenauers.

            Angesichts der überaus umfangreichen Eichmann-Literatur fällt auf, dass wir über die Verflechtungen dieses Verfahrens mit der deutsch-deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte nur wenig Substantielles wissen. In jüngeren Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Bundesrepublik wird der Prozess zwar in der Regel als bedeutsames Ereignis eingeschätzt, auf eine breite empirische Forschung kann sich dieses Urteil jedoch nicht stützen.[3] In der DDR-Historiographie spielt das Verfahren hingegen so gut wie keine Rolle. Und obwohl zentrale Aktenbestände schon seit längerer Zeit zugänglich sind, richtet sich das Forschungsinteresse vorwiegend auf die vielfältigen erinnerungskulturellen Repräsentationen,[4] während die Haltung von Politik, Justiz, Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit noch nicht einmal ansatzweise untersucht worden ist. Im Rahmen meiner Mitarbeit an der Studie „Das Auswärtige Amt und die Vergangenheit“, die im Herbst letzten Jahres erschienen ist, hatte ich Gelegenheit, mich intensiver mit den regierungsamtlichen Überlieferungen zum Eichmann-Prozess zu beschäftigen. An diese Vorarbeiten soll mein heutiger Beitrag anknüpfen. Ich möchte mich darin der Frage nähern, welche Handlungsstrategien entwickelt wurden, um den öffentlichkeits- und vergangenheitspolitischen Herausforderungen dieses Verfahrens zu begegnen. Was unternahm man auf Seiten der Bundesregierung in den Monaten zwischen Festnahme und Verhandlungsbeginn, um unerwünschte Folgen des Prozesses abzufangen?

 

II. „Waning confidence in Germany’s rehabilitation“. Das gespaltene Krisenmanagement der bundesdeutschen Außenpolitik

Gagarins Weltraumflug, die Kuba-Krise, das Wiener Treffen zwischen Kennedy und Chruschtschow und schließlich die Zuspitzung der Berlin-Frage im August 1961 – eigentlich hätte das an Dramatik wahrlich nicht arme Jahr 1961 genügend außenpolitische Anlässe geboten, um den seit dem 11. April in Jerusalem laufenden Eichmann-Prozess aus den Schlagzeilen zu verdrängen. Dass dies dennoch nicht geschah, dass Eichmann und mit ihm die Bundesrepublik vielmehr während der gesamten Prozessdauer im Fokus der internationalen Medienberichterstattung verblieben, das stellte so manchen Journalisten vor ein unlösbares Rätsel.[5] In der Bonner Bundeshauptstadt beobachtete man dieses Phänomen anfangs mit einem Gefühl der Ungläubigkeit, in das sich allerdings schon bald ein gehöriges Maß Nervosität und Unruhe mischte. Eine Ursache für die emotionalen Schwankungen waren nicht zuletzt die Plötzlichkeit und Massivität, mit der dieses für viele völlig unerwartete Ereignis im Frühjahr 1960 über die Bundesrepublik hereingebrochen war. Ein anderer Grund war, dass in der Selbstwahrnehmung der bundesdeutschen Außenpolitik zunächst alles dafür sprach, dem Verfahren mit Gelassenheit entgegenzusehen, ja es sogar als Ereignis zu betrachten, das die Interessen der Bundesrepublik vermeintlich nicht unmittelbar berühren würde. Warum diese eher selbstzufriedene Haltung dann jedoch binnen weniger Monate in einen Zustand höchster Erregung kippen sollte, dies möchte ich im Rahmen meines heutigen Vortrags etwas näher ergründen.

            Obwohl die verschlungene, von vielerlei Zufällen begleitete Vorgeschichte des Prozesses mittlerweile hinreichend bekannt ist, ist man als Historiker dennoch versucht, dieses Ereignis als eine Art Fluchtpunkt zu deuten, in dem sich verschiedene Entwicklungsstränge der späten fünfziger Jahre trafen. Denn bereits zehn Jahre nach Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs hatte sich der geschichtskulturelle Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus in mehrfacher Hinsicht zu wandeln begonnen. Zwar dominierte auch weiterhin eine heroisierende Sicht auf das Kriegsgeschehen, bei der das strategische Geschick einzelner Feldherren, die Ereignisse auf den verschiedenen militärischen Kampfschauplätzen und die Widerstandsbewegungen in den von Deutschland besetzten Ländern im Vordergrund standen. Unterschwellig bahnte sich aber in den meisten westlichen Demokratien schon zu dieser Zeit eine allmähliche Transformation der Erinnerungskulturen an. Diese wurden nicht nur zunehmend pluraler, sondern wandten sich auch verstärkt den Opfern von politischer Verfolgung und genozidaler Politik zu. Drei Faktoren beförderten diesen Wandel in besonders nachhaltiger Weise:

-  Erstens unternahmen eine Reihe jüdischer Überlebender und Historiker den Versuch, die Dominanz der nationalen „Meistererzählungen“ zu durchbrechen, indem sie sich in dezidierter Weise mit der Geschichte des Antisemitismus und der Judenvernichtung befassten.[6] Ein gemeinsames Merkmal dieser frühen Werke zum Holocaust war zum einen, dass sie sich erstmals näher mit den Opfern beschäftigten, die in der akademischen Geschichtsschreibung bis dahin kaum eine Rolle gespielt hatten.[7] Zum anderen wurden die Verbrechen der „Endlösung“ konkret fassbar gemacht, indem – zumeist unter Berufung auf Nürnberger Beweisdokumente  – Täter namentlich genannt und deren Mitwirkung minutiös beschrieben wurde. Vor allem in der Bundesrepublik, wo bis dahin jede genauere Auseinandersetzung mit den Verantwortlichen der Massenverbrechen unterblieben war, bedeutete dies einen beispiellosen Tabubruch gegen gesellschaftliche Sagbarkeitsregeln. Ein großer Teil der westdeutschen Zeitgeschichtsforschung begegnete dieser Art von „dokumentarischer“ Geschichtsschreibung daher mit besonderer Vorsicht: Während man sich selbst auf das „Pathos der Nüchternheit“ berief, wurde den jüdischen Autoren pauschal emotionale Befangenheit unterstellt. Ihrer Popularität außerhalb der Fachwissenschaft tat dies indes keinen Abbruch – eher war das Gegenteil der Fall.

- Ein zweiter Faktor war, dass es seit Ende der fünfziger Jahre in der Bundesrepublik zu einer zeitlich und inhaltlich begrenzten Wiederaufnahme von Strafermittlungen wegen nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen gekommen war. Aus regierungsamtlicher Perspektive galt die NS-Strafverfolgung neben der Wiedergutmachungspolitik als zweites Standbein eines aktiven und selbstbestimmten deutschen Umgangs mit der NS-Vergangenheit, die es schon auf mittlere Sicht ermöglichen sollte, sich von den damit verbundenen politischen Belastungen und Zwängen zu befreien. Im Gegensatz zu den Nürnberger Prozessen, die sich zumeist gegen Angehörige der in Berlin ansässigen Partei- und Reichsbehörden gerichtet hatten und deren Fokus weniger auf Genozidverbrechen als auf dem Vorwurf des Angriffskriegs lag, beschäftigten sich diese Verfahren vorwiegend mit den Geschehnissen des Judenmords im Generalgouvernement und in den besetzten sowjetischen Gebieten.[8] Somit rückten durch die Strafverfolgungsaktivitäten vor allem diejenigen Täter in den Vordergrund, die an den Erschießungsgräben gestanden oder als SS-Wachleute in den Konzentrationslagern gearbeitet hatten. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass man bei der Durchführung dieser Verfahren vielfach auf die Rechtshilfe israelischer und amerikanischer Behörden angewiesen war, formierten sich internationale Netzwerke von NS-Ermittlern und -Kriminologen. Es ist daher kein Zufall, dass der israelische Geheimdienst von einem deutschen Strafverfolger auf Eichmanns Spur geführt wurde: Fritz Bauer, selbst ein ehemaliger NS-Verfolgter, hatte den bundesdeutschen Behörden so sehr misstraut, dass er sich stattdessen an seine israelischen Kollegen wandte.[9]

- Damit wäre ein dritter und letzter Faktor angesprochen. Schon einige Jahre vor Beginn des Jerusalemer Prozesses hatten die Ostblock-Staaten mit ihren „antifaschistischen“ Propagandakampagnen gegen die Bundesrepublik ein gesellschaftliches Klima geschaffen, in dem der beachtliche Wiederaufstieg eines Großteils der alten NS-Funktionseliten, darunter Diplomaten, Juristen, Industrielle und Wissenschaftler, mit wachsendem Misstrauen verfolgt wurde. Durch einen beträchtlichen Aufwand an Propagandagetöse war es vor allem der DDR gelungen, eine kritische Teilöffentlichkeit in der Bundesrepublik zu mobilisieren. Auch das westliche Ausland hatte man für das Kontinuitätsproblem sensibilisiert. In monotoner Weise hatten die SED-Strategen dabei die ewig gleiche Propagandalosung wiederholt, die Bundesrepublik stelle einzelne nachgeordnete Täter vor Gericht, um die „Mörder mit den weißen Handschuhen“, die in Bonn schon längst wieder amtierten, vor Strafverfolgung zu schützen. Obwohl bundesdeutsche Politik und Justiz bestrebt waren, das Sperrfeuer zu ignorieren, konnten sie nicht verhindern, dass sich zahlreiche westliche Medien an den Entlarvungsaktionen beteiligten. Allerdings führten die Enthüllungen über hochrangige westdeutsche Funktionsträger mit brauner Vergangenheit zu keinen nachweisbaren personalpolitischen Konsequenzen, sondern hatten stattdessen berufliche Schwierigkeiten für die verantwortlichen Journalisten zur Folge.[10]

Alles in allem hatte sich also bereits vor der Ergreifung des früheren RSHA-Judenreferenten ein öffentlicher Resonanzraum entwickelt, der sich für die geschichts- und identitätspolitische Agenda der israelischen Anklagevertretung empfänglich zeigte und der es ermöglichen sollte, dass sich der Jerusalemer Eichmann-Prozess zu einem transnationalen Medienereignis entwickeln konnte. Anders als noch ein Jahrzehnt zuvor waren zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre in den westlichen Ländern kritische Teilöffentlichkeiten entstanden, die sich für die lange verdrängte Geschichte des Judenmords interessierten. Darüber hinaus beschäftigten sich die Medien – in nicht geringem Maß gerade auch die expandierende Boulevardpresse – zunehmend und vielfach in skandalisierender Weise mit den Biographien untergetauchter NS-Täter.

Als der israelische Regierungschef Ende Mai 1960 die Festnahme Eichmanns bekannt gab und die Meldung von dem bevorstehenden Prozess um die Welt ging, gab sich die Bundesregierung nach außen relativ unbeeindruckt. Ein Sprecher des Außenamts erklärte am 25. Mai der Presse, in Bonn herrsche allgemeine Erleichterung darüber, dass es gelungen sei, Adolf Eichmann in seinem argentinischen Versteck aufzuspüren. Bereits zu diesem frühen Zeitpunkt erging außerdem die Ankündigung, die Bundesregierung werde voraussichtlich keinen Antrag auf Auslieferung Eichmanns stellen, weil kein entsprechendes Abkommen bestehe.[11] In dieser Argumentation, die offenbar ohne Abstimmung mit dem Bundesjustizministerium erfolgte, schwang die unausgesprochene, aber doch hinreichend deutliche Botschaft mit, dass die Adenauer-Regierung Israel zwar bei der Durchführung dieses schwierigen Verfahren behilflich sein wollte, daraus aber weder politische noch moralische Verpflichtungen ableiten wollte. Das entsprach im Wesentlichen der pragmatischen Haltung, die der Bundeskanzler erst wenige Wochen zuvor in den Verhandlungen mit dem israelischen Ministerpräsidenten David Ben Gurion eingenommen hatte. Während des ersten gemeinsamen Treffens im New Yorker Waldorf Astoria Hotel hatte man eine Intensivierung der Wirtschafts-, Militär- und Geheimdienstbeziehungen vereinbart; gleichzeitig war bei dieser Gelegenheit ein größeres Kreditprogramm beschlossen worden, das Tel Aviv zur Finanzierung von Industrieprojekten nutzen sollte.[12] Die Frage diplomatischer Beziehungen, die mittlerweile nicht mehr nur von der israelischen Regierung, sondern auch von der SPD und breiten Kreisen der deutschen Öffentlichkeit ausdrücklich gewünscht wurde, hatte Adenauer hingegen mit dem Argument umschifft, er sei angesichts des schwelenden Ost-West-Konflikts von den Amerikanern gebeten worden, derzeit keine Schritte zu unternehmen, die die bestehenden Spannungen verschärfen könnten.[13]

In den Sommermonaten hatte man in den Ministerien des Äußeren und der Justiz alle Hände voll zu tun, um sich auf eine einheitliche, auch völkerrechtlich akzeptable Rechtsposition zu verständigen. Dass dies nicht unproblematisch war, stellte sich bereits wenige Tage nach Ben Gurions Knesset-Erklärung heraus. Nachdem sich das Gerücht bestätigt hatte, dass Eichmann keineswegs – wie ursprünglich vom israelischen Regierungschef behauptet – von früheren KZ-Häftlingen gekidnappt worden war, meldete das Bundesjustizministerium plötzlich „erhebliche Bedenken“ gegen die avisierte Rechtshilfe für Israel an.[14] Auch über den Punkt eines möglichen Auslieferungsgesuchs bestand Klärungsbedarf. Bereits während der Bundestagsdebatte vom 24. Mai, also einen Tag nach dem Bekanntwerden der Festnahme, hatte Bundesjustizminister Fritz Schäffer (CSU) spontan die Forderung erhoben, Eichmann müsse unverzüglich an die Bundesrepublik ausgeliefert und vor ein deutsches Gericht gestellt werden.[15] Nachdem auch die SPD-Opposition mit ihrer „Kleinen Anfrage“ vom 10. Juni dafür gesorgt hatte, dass die rechtspolitischen Implikationen des Falls ausführlich in der Öffentlichkeit diskutiert wurden, machte der Bundeskanzler von seinem Weisungsrecht Gebrauch. So stellte er zum einen klar, dass die Bundesregierung alles vermeiden würde, was eventuell als Einmischung in die israelisch-argentinischen Beziehungen hätte gedeutet werden können. Zum anderen legte er fest, dass es auch im Falle einer „Rückgabe“ Eichmanns an die Argentinier kein westdeutsches Auslieferungsgesuch geben werde.[16] Außenminister Heinrich von Brentano (CDU), der Adenauers Linie einer möglichst weitgehenden Distanzierung von dem Verfahren uneingeschränkt befürwortete, setzte sich über die Auffassung seines Staatssekretärs und seiner Rechtsabteilung hinweg, indem er – in Abweichung zu der sonst üblichen Praxis – kurzerhand verfügte, dem Beschuldigten Eichmann werde vom westdeutschen Staat kein Rechtschutz gewährt.[17] Diese Entscheidung dürfte nicht unwesentlich dadurch beeinflusst worden sein, dass sich immer stärker herauskristallisierte, welche dubiose Rolle die deutsche Botschaft in Buenos Aires in dem dortigen Geflecht aus polizeilich gesuchten NS-Tätern und deren Unterstützern aus Politik, Publizistik und Wirtschaft gespielt hatte. Ob Brentano allerdings bewusst war, dass er mit seiner Weisung das außenpolitische Ansehen der Bundesrepublik erst recht beschädigte, darf eher bezweifelt werden. Denn nunmehr blieb es dem Staat Israel überlassen, für die Bundesrepublik einzuspringen und für Eichmanns Verteidiger Dr. Robert Servatius aufzukommen. Wie Willi Winkler glaubt jetzt herausgefunden zu haben, bezog der Kölner Anwalt offenbar darüber hinaus finanzielle Unterstützung von dem Schweizer Bankier und Nazi-Sympathisanten Francois Genoud – vermittelt wurde dieses Geschäft mit Hilfe des Genoud-Vertrauten Hans Rechenberg, ein früherer Pressereferent von Reichswirtschaftsminister Walther Funk und Informant des Bundesnachrichtendienstes.[18]

Obwohl sich lange vor Prozessbeginn die Anzeichen verdichteten, dass die Adenauer-Regierung nach den Skandalen um die antisemitischen Schmierereien im Dezember 1959 auf ihre zweite vergangenheitspolitische Großkrise binnen eines Jahres zusteuerte, gab es keine größeren Initiativen, um den absehbaren Imageschaden abzufangen. Vielmehr wurden anfangs ausschließlich die Botschaften in den arabischen Staaten mit konkreten Sprachregelungen versorgt, welche die Befürchtungen über eine deutsch-israelische Kooperation bei der Verfolgung Eichmanns entkräften sollten.[19] Ernstlich besorgt über diese Entwicklung scheinen zu dieser Zeit im Wesentlichen nur zwei Experten in den USA gewesen zu sein: Der eine war Georg Federer, ein früherer Mitarbeiter im Reichsaußenministerium des Dritten Reichs und Ex-NSDAP-Mitglied, der seit 1958 das Generalkonsulat in New York leitete.[20] Der andere war Julius Klein, ein ehemaliger amerikanischer General, der in Chicago und Frankfurt am Main eine PR-Agentur betrieb. Bereits im Herbst 1960 sah sich Federer erstmals veranlasst, dass Außenministerium vor den erwarteten Rückwirkungen des Prozesses zu warnen. In den folgenden Wochen wurden seine Meldungen dann nicht nur immer umfangreicher, sondern nahmen auch einen zunehmend insistierenden Grundton an. In einem vierseitigen Bericht, den Federer Ende Oktober an die Zentrale sandte, verwies er darauf, dass in den New Yorker Medien- und Kultureinrichtungen bereits eine Eichmann-„Konjunktur“ eingesetzt habe. So habe CBS vor einigen Tagen zur Prime Time einen Fernsehfilm mit dem Titel „Ingenieur des Todes“ ausgestrahlt, der neben dokumentarischem Material über KZ-Gräuel auch Spielfilmszenen enthalten habe, in denen Eichmanns Festnahme durch den Mossad nachgestellt worden sei. Einen positiven Aspekt dieser filmischen Inszenierung sah allenfalls Federer darin, das sie sich eindeutig gegen die Person Eichmanns, nicht aber gegen die Deutschen als solche gerichtet habe. Dies könne als Ansatzpunkt dienen, um der erwarteten Zunahme von Veröffentlichungen zur Judenverfolgung entgegenzuwirken. Zweifellos werde die Bundesrepublik durch den Prozess erheblichen neuen Belastungen ausgesetzt sein: „ Die gerade in Emigranten- und Verfolgtenkreisen zum Teil noch recht schmale Brücke des Vertrauens wird vor eine Zerreißprobe von noch unbekanntem Ausmaß unterworfen werden [sic]“.[21] Einige Wochen später verband der Diplomat seine Warnungen mit der konkreten Forderung, die Wiedergutmachungspraxis zu forcieren, um die Bundesrepublik vor der erwarteten Zunahme anti-deutscher Ressentiments zu schützen: „In New York, dem Nervenzentrum der Wiedergutmachung“, werfe der Prozess bereits seinen Schatten voraus. „Wenn ich mir vergegenwärtige, welche Beträge die Bundesrepublik für die sogenannte Öffentlichkeitsarbeit im vergangenen Jahr und in Zukunft bereitgestellt hat bzw. bereitstellen wird, frage ich mich ernstlich, ob nicht ein kleiner Teil dieser Mittel besser für eine Beschleunigung der Wiedergutmachung eingesetzt würde.“ [22] Insgesamt zeichneten sich Federers Ratschläge durch kaum auflösbare Widersprüche aus. Während er einerseits einräumte, dass es vermutlich kaum Zweck haben werde, gegen die unerwünschten Wirkungen des Prozesses anzukämpfen, hielt er es andererseits für möglich, den germanophoben Elementen den „Wind aus den Segeln“ zu nehmen. Auch im Hinblick auf die Rolle der amerikanisch-jüdischen Organisationen blieb er unentschlossen: So mischten sich bei ihm Versatzstücke der „Kalter Kriegs“-Rhetorik mit traditionellen antisemitischen Stereotypen, wie etwa die Vorstellung einer von der Sowjetunion beeinflussten jüdischen Intelligenzia.

Auch der unermüdliche Julius Klein sah dem bevorstehenden Prozess mit düsteren Vorahnungen entgegen. Seit Ende der vierziger Jahre war der mit Adenauer und Ben Gurion gleichermaßen gut bekannte PR-Experte zu einer Schlüsselfigur in den westdeutsch-amerikanisch-jüdischen Netzwerken aufgestiegen.[23] Seine exzellenten Geschäftsverbindungen zu führenden westdeutschen Konzernen wie dem Chemieriesen I.G. Farben i.L., Mannesmann, Daimler Benz und Flick verdankte der ehemalige Kommandant der Jewish War Veterans of America nicht zuletzt der Tatsache, dass er diese Firmen in den fünfziger Jahren erfolgreich bei der Abwehr von Entschädigungsforderungen der Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) beraten hatte. Auch in den Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik und Israel hatte Klein hinter den Kulissen als Strippenzieher gewirkt. Einen besonders engen Draht pflegte er zu Adenauers Kanzleramtschef Hans Globke.[24] Über viele Jahre hinweg sorgte er dafür, dass dem ehemaligen Mitkommentator der Nürnberger Rassengesetze die vergangenheitspolitischen Attacken, die auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks gegen ihn erhoben wurden, nie ernsthaft gefährlich werden konnten. Seit 1960 war der emsige Spin doctor dann damit beschäftigt, Konrad Adenauers Washington-Besuch im Frühjahr 1961 vorzubereiten. Eine Notwendigkeit dazu war durchaus gegeben, denn seit dem Rückzug des amerikanischen Außenministers John Foster Dulles im April 1958 und dem Wahlsieg John F. Kennedys war es um die deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen nicht zum Besten bestellt. Adenauer und seine Berater befürchteten nicht zu Unrecht eine amerikanisch-sowjetische Annäherung – und in Verbindung damit – einen deutschlandpolitischen Kurswechsel der USA. Speziell beim Kanzler regte sich zu dieser Zeit erneut der alte „Potsdam-Komplex“.[25] Angesichts der Wolken, die sich über dem transatlantischen Himmel zusammenzogen, hielt Klein es für angebracht, seinen Landsleuten die Bedeutung der Bundesrepublik als Bollwerk im Kampf gegen den Kommunismus in Erinnerung zu rufen. Zusammen mit Globke wandte sich der Lobbyist deshalb an den demokratischen Senator Thomas Dodd aus dem Bundesstaat Connecticut und bat diesen, öffentlich zum Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Stellung zu nehmen – eine Problematik, deren Virulenz nach den Hakenkreuz-Schmierereien für jedermann offenkundig geworden war. In seiner Rede „Anti-Semitism, the Swastika Epidemic, and Communism“, die er im März 1960 vor dem amerikanischen Senat hielt, bezeichnete der ehemalige Nürnberger Ankläger den Antisemitismus als „Instrument einer kommunistischen Verschwörung“. Gleichzeitig bestritt er nachdrücklich, dass von der Anwesenheit ehemaliger nationalsozialistischer Funktionsträger in den Reihen der Bundesregierung eine Gefahr für die westdeutsche Demokratie ausgehen würde. Für Personen wie Globke hätte das Wirken im Dritten Reich eine permanente „Gewissensqual“ bedeutet. Sie hätten damals in vielen Fällen segensreich gewirkt und würden heute in der westlichen Allianz gegen den Kommunismus dringend gebraucht.[26]

Konfrontiert mit der Nachricht von Eichmanns Entführung und der bevorstehenden Gerichtsverhandlung, erkannte Klein blitzschnell, dass dieses Ereignis den Kanzler-Besuch im Weißen Haus ernsthaft belasten konnte. Als „hard-core Republican“ (S. Jonathan Wiesen) und eingefleischter Kalter Krieger war er allerdings überzeugt, dass die eigentliche Gefahr nicht etwa aus dem Westen, sondern aus dem Osten drohte. Vor dem Hintergrund der seit 1958 schwelenden Krise um den Vier-Mächte-Status von Berlin ging Klein davon aus, dass die Sowjetunion und deren Verbündete den Fall Eichmann nutzen würden, um die Bundesregierung und ihr politisches System in der Weltöffentlichkeit zu diffamieren. Von dieser Einschätzung, die sich durch Hintergrundgespräche mit den Israelis weiter verfestigen sollte, suchte er im Sommer 1960 offenbar nicht nur Adenauer, sondern auch einige einflussreiche Persönlichkeiten der westdeutschen Industrie und Wirtschaft zu überzeugen.[27] Dass der Kanzler seinen Außenminister über die Korrespondenz mit Klein erst gar nicht in Kenntnis setzte, hing möglicherweise mit dem Umstand zusammen, dass sich bezüglich des Umgangs mit kompromittierten Personen wie Globke und Oberländer mittlerweile ein erhebliche Kluft zwischen beiden Politikern aufgetan hatte: Während Adenauer die Peinlichkeit der Hakenkreuz-Schmierereien mit dem üblichen Verweis auf angebliche kommunistische Drahtzieher aus der Welt schaffen wollte,[28] sah Brentano die Dinge inzwischen weitaus realistischer. So hatte ihn eine Umfrage bei den deutschen Botschaften darüber belehrt, dass die antisemitische Welle dem bundesdeutschen Ansehen bereits „erheblich geschadet“ habe und dass dabei die NS-Vergangenheit prominenter Persönlichkeiten eine nicht unerhebliche Rolle spiele. Immerhin hatte die Umfrage aber im Hinblick auf den avisierten USA-Besuch des Kanzlers insofern Entwarnung geben können, als die heftigsten Ausschläge in Großbritannien verzeichnet worden waren, während die Stimmung in den USA insgesamt eher ruhig geblieben war.[29]

Erst Anfang 1961, wenige Monate vor der Prozesseröffnung in Jerusalem und Adenauers Visite bei Kennedy, gab die Bundesregierung schließlich ihre selbstverordnete öffentlichkeitspolitische Zurückhaltung auf. Die entscheidenden Anstöße dazu kam wiederum von außen: Vor allem die großen jüdisch-amerikanischen Organisationen, allen voran die gemäßigte Anti-Defamation League (ADL) der B’nai Brith, die erst kurz zuvor unter dem Eindruck der Hakenkreuz-Krise ein westdeutsch-jüdisches Austauschprogramm aufgelegt hatte, machten gegenüber dem Auswärtigen Amt verstärkt Druck. Deren Vorsitzender Benjamin Epstein warnte davor, dass sich der Eichmann-Prozess zu einer schweren Belastung für das deutsch-amerikanische Verhältnis auswachsen könne.[30] Aufgrund dieser Initiative wurde das Bundesjustizministerium aufgefordert, ein „Weißbuch“ zur NS-Strafverfolgung zu erstellen. Und auch die Ludwigsburger Zentrale Stelle spannte man nun für die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit des Bundes ein. Um dem Vorwurf entgegenzuwirken, man habe etwa selbst nicht genug für die Ergreifung und Bestrafung hochrangiger NS-Täter getan, wurde ein Vertreter der Zentralen Stelle damit beauftragt, für das Bundesjustizministerium den Jerusalemer Prozess zu beobachten. Um dem Eindruck entgegenzuwirken, die Bundesrepublik könne etwa besondere Gründe für die Entsendung eines Beobachters haben, hatte sich die Zentrale Rechtsschutzstelle eigens dafür eingesetzt, dem betreffenden Staatsanwalt keinen offiziellen Auftrag zu erteilen.[31]

Angesichts der anhaltenden Medienberichterstattung begannen sich aber nun auch führende Vertreter der westdeutschen Industrie zu sorgen. Mit wachsendem Unbehagen registrierte man vor allem die sich entwickelnde inneramerikanische Diskussion über die Komplizenschaft der Wirtschaft im Nationalsozialismus.[32] Im Auftrag seines erkrankten Chefs sprach der Generalbevollmächtigte der Friedrich Flick KG Anfang 1961 beim Auswärtigen Amt vor, um sich über den bevorstehenden Eichmann-Prozess zu informieren. CSU-Mitglied Wolfgang Pohle, der in den Nürnberger Nachfolgeprozessen als Flicks Verteidiger gewirkt hatte, ließ es bei dieser Gelegenheit nicht an Kritik fehlen. So warf er der Bundesregierung vor, der Bundesrepublik mit ihrer Kampagne gegen den sozialdemokratischen Kanzlerkandidaten Willy Brandt schwer geschadet zu haben. Außer durch den Eichmann-Prozess sei das Image in den USA durch nichts so stark beschädigt worden wie durch die „Anti-Brandt-Hetze“.[33] Pohle schlug dem Amt vor, den Diplomaten Horst Pelckmann als ständigen Beobachter nach Jerusalem zu entsenden. Wie Pohle war auch Pelckmann einst Strafverteidiger in Nürnberg gewesen; im Hauptkriegsverbrechertribunal war er als Rechtsbeistand von SS und SD aufgetreten, im Flick-Prozess wirkte er als Advokat des Mandanten Hermann Terberger.[34] Obwohl Staatssekretär Albert van Scherpenberg diesen Vorschlag ablehnte, entschloss man sich in letzter Minute doch noch, zumindest mit einem „Beauftragten“ beim Eichmann-Prozess präsent zu sein. Selbst Adenauer, der bis dahin alle Kassandra-Rufe in den Wind geschlagen hatte, musste schließlich einsehen, dass er dieses Ereignis nicht einfach ignorieren konnte. Einen Tag vor Verhandlungsbeginn dankte er dem israelischen Regierungschef in einer Fernsehansprache ausdrücklich dafür, dass er die „jungen Deutschen“ von der Verantwortung für die „Untaten vieler Angehöriger der älteren Generation“ ausgenommen habe.[35]

 

III. Fazit

Im Oktober 1962 fand sich eine Gruppe von PR-Experten und Mitarbeitern des Bundespresseamts zusammen, um über eine internationale Befragung zu den Auswirkungen des Eichmann-Prozesses zu beraten, die das Bundespresseamt in Auftrag gegeben hatte. Die Ergebnisse ließen an Deutlichkeit nichts zu wünschen übrig: Die altbekannte Stereotype der „autoritätsgläubigen“, „kriegslüsternen“ und „brutalen“ Deutschen hatte infolge des Ereignisses weltweit neuen Auftrieb erhalten;[36] sämtliche Bemühungen, die Bundesrepublik von den negativen Geschichtsbildern abzuschirmen oder deren Wirkungen zumindest einzudämmen, durften somit als gescheitert betrachtet werden. Bei der Suche nach Schuldigen richtete sich der Blick als erstes auf Ost-Berlin, das den Prozess für eine aggressive Kampagne gegen Globke instrumentalisiert hatte. Aber auch die Israelis trugen aus Sicht der Regierungsbeamten eine erhebliche Mitschuld an dem PR-Desaster.

Rückblickend betrachtet, befand sich die Bundesregierung angesichts des bevorstehenden Prozesses in einer schwierigen Situation: Jede Distanzierung von dem Verfahren wirkte unweigerlich wie ein indirektes Schuldeingeständnis. Unterblieb diese aber, fiel dies erst recht auf den westdeutschen Staat zurück. Die Möglichkeit, sich für eine stärkere Verankerung der Opferperspektive in der offiziellen Geschichtskultur einzusetzen, blieb der Bundesrepublik im Gegensatz zu anderen westlichen Demokratien versperrt. Eine positive Signalwirkung hätte sich womöglich nur dadurch erzielen lassen, dass man die NS-Strafverfolgung intensiviert und die Wiedergutmachungszahlungen an Israel verlängert hätte. Zu keinem der beiden Schritte konnte sich die Adenauer-Regierung allerdings zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre durchringen. Stattdessen hielt sie beharrlich an der Vorstellung fest, die Gefahren des Eichmann-Prozesses ließen sich durch eine Beschwörung der totalitären Bedrohung quasi neutralisieren. Damit ignorierte man jedoch, dass sich die integrativen Wirkungen des Totalitarismusparadigmas schon in der Zeit vor Eichmanns Ergreifung bereits weitgehend erschöpft hatten.

 

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[1] Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland, München 1968, S. 15 f.

[2] Ein prägnantes Beispiel ist Hans Mommsens einleitender Essay zur Neuauflage von „Eichmann in Jerusalem“, der auf Arendts dezidierte Vorwürfe gegen Adenauers Integrationspolitik mit keinem Wort eingeht. Stattdessen findet sich dort – neben scharfer Kritik an der israelischen Anklagestrategie – die durch keine Belege gestützte Behauptung, Arendts Interpretation des subalternen und interesselosen Schreibtischtäters sei durch die westdeutschen NS-Prozesse im Wesentlichen bestätigt worden; Hans Mommsen, Hannah Arendt und der Prozess gegen Adolf Eichmann, in: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen, München/ Zürich 2007 (2. Aufl.), S. 9-48, S. 25.

[3] Vgl. Edgar Wolfrum, Die geglückte Demokratie. Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart 2006, S. 273.

[4] Vgl.; Werner Bergmann, Antisemitismus in öffentlichen Konflikten. Kollektives Lernen in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik 1949-1989, Frankfurt a.M. 1997; Annette Wieviorka, Die Entstehung des Zeugen, in: Gary Smith (Hrsg.), Hannah Arendt Revisited: „Eichmann in Jerusalem“ und die Folgen, Frankfurt a.M. 2000, S. 136-159; Habbo Koch, Die Tat als Bild. Fotografien des Holocaust in der westdeutschen Erinnerungskultur, Hamburg 2001; Ders., Verschobene Schuld. Täterbilder und historische Fotografien in einem Illustriertenbericht zum Eichmann-Prozess, in: Gerhard Paul (Hrsg.), Visual History. Ein Studienbuch, Göttingen 2006, S. 303-316; Peter Krause, Der Eichmann-Prozess in der deutschen Presse, Frankfurt a.M./New York 2002; Stephan Alexander Glienke, Die Darstellung der Shoah im öffentlichen Raum. Die Ausstellung „Die Vergangenheit mahnt“ (1960-1962), in: Ders./ Volker Paulmann/ Joachim Perels (Hrsg.), Erfolgsgeschichte Bundesrepublik? Die Nachkriegsgesellschaft im langen Schatten des Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen 2008, S. 147-175.

[5] Vgl. Joachim Schwelken, Verstimmte und Verschonte. Wirkungen des Eichmann-Prozesses im Ausland, in: FAZ vom 22. Juli 1961, S. 2.

[6] León Poliakov, Bréviaire de la Haine, Paris 1951; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York 1961; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, London 1953; ###

[7] Vgl. Alan E. Steinweis, Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust in den USA und Deutschland, in: Detlef Junker (Hrsg.), Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Kriegs. Ein Handbuch, Bd. 1: 1945-1968, Stuttgart/ München 2001, S. 742-752; Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung, Göttingen 2004 (3., durchges. Auflage).

[8] Vgl. Annette Weinke, „Eine Gesellschaft ermittelt gegen sich selbst“. Die Geschichte der Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen (ZSL) in Ludwigsburg, 1958-2008, Darmstadt 2008.

[9] Vgl. Irmtrud Wojak, Eichmanns Memoiren. Ein kritischer Essay, Frankfurt a.M. 2001.

[10] Vgl. Patrick Wagner, Die Resozialisierung der Kriminalisten, in: Ulrich Herbert (Hrsg.), Wandlungsprozesse in Westdeutschland. Belastung, Integration, Liberalisierung 1945-1980, Göttingen 2002, S. 179-213.

[11] Aufzeichnung Raab, 24.5.1960; PAAA, B83, Bd. 54, I; Eichmann vor dem Vernehmungsrichter in Jaffa, in: FAZ vom 25. Mai 1950, S. 1.

[12] Vgl. Carole Fink, Turning away from the Past. West Germany and Israel, 1965-1967, in: Philipp Gassert/ Alan E. Steinweis (Hrsg.), Coping with the Nazi Past. West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 1955-1975, New York/ Oxford 2006, S. 276-293, S. 278; George Lavy, Germany and Israel: Moral Debt and National Interest, London 1996.

[13] Eckart Conze/ Norbert Frei/ Peter Hayes/ Moshe Zimmermann, Das Amt und die Vergangenheit. Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik, München 2010, S. 601.

[14] Janz über StS an Minister vom 20.6.1960; PAAA, B83, Bd. 54, I.

[15] Vgl. Marc von Miquel, Ahnden oder Amnestieren? Westdeutsche Justiz und Vergangenheitspolitik in den sechziger Jahren, Göttingen 2004, S. 207.

[16] Brentano an Janz vom 21.6.1960; PAAA, B83, Bd. 54/I.

[17] Zum folgenden vgl. Conze/ Frei/ Hayes/ Zimmermann, Das Amt, S. 600 ff.

[18] Vgl. Willi Winkler, Der Schattenmann. Von Goebbels zu Carlos: Das mysteriösen Leben des Francois Genoud, Berlin 2011, S. 117ff; Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann vor Jerusalem. Das unbehelligte Leben eines Massenmörders, Zürich/ Hamburg 2011, S. 480.

[19] Ahrens, Fernschreiben (verschlüsselt) an die Botschaften Kairo, Bagdad, Ankara, Amman, Beirut, Damaskus, Djidda, Tunis, Rabat, Tripolis vom 24.5.1960; PAAA, B83, Bd. 54/I; erst am 14. Juli 1960 folgte ein Rundschreiben an die Botschaften der westlichen Verbündeten; vgl. Brochhagen, Nach Nürnberg, S. 338.

[20] Biographisches Handbuch des Auswärtigen Dienstes ##, Bd. 1, S. 545-546.

[21] Federer an Zentrale vom 20.10.1960; PAAA, B83, Bd. 55.

[22] Federer an Zentrale vom 23.12.1960; PAAA, B83, Bd. 55.

[23] Zu Klein vgl. vor allem den instruktiven Beitrag von S. Jonathan Wiesen, Germany’s PR Man. Julius Klein and the Making of Transatlantic Memory, in: Gassert/ Steinweis, Coping with the Nazi Past, S. 294-308.

[24] Vgl. Shlomo Shafir, Von der Abgrenzung zum vorsichtigen Dialog: Das amerikanische Judentum und Nachkriegsdeutschland, in: Junker, Die USA und Deutschland, S. 833-846.

[25] Manfred Görtemaker, Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart, München 1999, S. 379.

[26] Proceedings and Debates of the 86th Congress, 2nd Session, S. 5561-5570; eine Übersetzung der Kongressrede vom 15. März 160 findet sich in: PAAA, B101, Bd. 247/ I.

[27] Klein an Adenauer vom 26.10.1960 („Durchdruck: Herrn v. Brentano“); PAAA, B83, Bd. 55.

[28] Vgl. Matthias Weiß, Öffentlichkeit als Therapie. Die Medien- und Informationspolitik der Regierung zwischen Propaganda und Aufklärung, in: Frank Bösch/ Norbert Frei (Hrsg.), Medialisierung und Demokratie im 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 2006, S. 73-120.

[29] Zit. nach Ulrich Brochhagen, Nach Nürnberg. Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Westintegration, Hamburg 1994, S. 300.

[30] Federer an AA vom 3.2.1961; PAAA, B83, Bd. 55 ?

[31] Vermerk Marmann, Ref. 503, AA vom 12.1.1961 betr. Besprechung mit Grützner, BMJ, betr. die Entsendung des StA Zeug von der ZSL; PAAA, B83, Bd. 55.

[32] So beispielsweise die Publikation von Tete Tetens, The New Germany and the Old Nazis, New York 1961.

[33] Vermerk StS Scherpenberg für Herrn D5 vom 6.3.1961; PAAA, B2, Bd. 82.

[34] Vgl. Norbert Frei/ Ralf Ahrens/ Jörg Osterloh/ Tim Schanetzky, Flick. Der Konzern. Die Familie. Die Macht, München 2009, S. 415.

[35] Adenauer dankt Ben Gurion am Beginn des Eichmann-Prozesses, in: FAZ vom 11. April 1961.

[36] Zit. nach Wiesen, Germany`s PR Man, S. 294.