The Schutzstaffel (SS): Waffen-SS, Gestapo & Einsatzgruppen
The Bureaucrat of Genocide: SS Officer Adolf Eichmann
20m
Captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and brought to Jerusalem in 1961, SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann stood trial as one of the principal organizers of the Holocaust. From his office in the Reich Security Main Office, he meticulously coordinated the deportation of millions of Jews from across Nazi-occupied Europe to ghettos and extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Throughout the trial, Eichmann insisted he was merely a cog in a machine — a loyal functionary “following orders.” Yet the court and the world saw something far more chilling: a man who carried out genocide not out of passion, but through bureaucratic precision and moral emptiness.
The verdict — guilty on nearly all counts — and his execution in 1962 marked a turning point in how humanity defined personal responsibility for crimes of the state. The Eichmann Trial revealed the face of modern evil — ordinary, organized, and efficient — and forced the world to confront how obedience can become an instrument of mass murder.
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