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Adolf Hitler
The leader of the S.S. and one of the most powerful officials in the Nazi regime, Himmler primarily but indirectly determined Eichmann’s orders. Himmler was the pioneer of Nazi “language rules” that solved officers’ “problems of conscience” by teaching them to downplay their actions’ moral consequences, and at the end of World War Two, he began to disobey the increasingly unhinged Hitler, most notably by ordering the Final Solution to stop—but Eichmann refused to violate Hitler’s will and obey these orders.
Heinrich Himmler Quotes in Eichmann in Jerusalem
The Eichmann in Jerusalem quotes below are all either spoken by Heinrich Himmler or refer to Heinrich Himmler. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
Eichmann, much less intelligent and without any education to speak of, at least dimly realized that it was not an order but a law which had turned them all into criminals. The distinction between an order and the Führer’s word was that the latter’s validity was not limited in time and space, which is the outstanding characteristic of the former. This is also the true reason why the Führer’s order for the Final Solution was followed by a huge shower of regulations and directives, all drafted by expert lawyers and legal advisers, not by mere administrators; this order, in contrast to ordinary orders, was treated as a law.
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Chapter 9
Quotes
Eichmann himself, after “consulting Poliakoff and Reitlinger,” produced seventeen multicolored charts, which contributed little to a better understanding of the intricate bureaucratic machinery of the Third Reich, although his general description—“everything was always in a state of continuous flux, a steady stream”—sounded plausible to the student of totalitarianism, who knows that the monolithic quality of this form of government is a myth.
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Heinrich Himmler Quotes in Eichmann in Jerusalem
The Eichmann in Jerusalem quotes below are all either spoken by Heinrich Himmler or refer to Heinrich Himmler. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
Eichmann, much less intelligent and without any education to speak of, at least dimly realized that it was not an order but a law which had turned them all into criminals. The distinction between an order and the Führer’s word was that the latter’s validity was not limited in time and space, which is the outstanding characteristic of the former. This is also the true reason why the Führer’s order for the Final Solution was followed by a huge shower of regulations and directives, all drafted by expert lawyers and legal advisers, not by mere administrators; this order, in contrast to ordinary orders, was treated as a law.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9
Quotes
Eichmann himself, after “consulting Poliakoff and Reitlinger,” produced seventeen multicolored charts, which contributed little to a better understanding of the intricate bureaucratic machinery of the Third Reich, although his general description—“everything was always in a state of continuous flux, a steady stream”—sounded plausible to the student of totalitarianism, who knows that the monolithic quality of this form of government is a myth.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
