Storytelling and Resistance Theme Analysis

During Eichmann’s trial, the prosecution continually emphasized the unfathomable suffering and desperation that European Jews faced during the Holocaust. Arendt (like the judges) agreed that these stories needed to be told but believed that Eichmann’s trial was the wrong forum—not only were these stories irrelevant to the question of Eichmann’s guilt, but they also reinforced the sense that there was nothing to be done in the face of Nazism’s unspeakable evil. Rather, Arendt preferred to center stories of resistance in her own account of the Holocaust to show that individuals and institutions fought for justice even in the darkest imaginable times, against monumental odds, or when they lacked a personal stake in the matter. These stories demonstrate the resilience and power of moral thinking even when morality is deliberately erased from the public sphere, and reveal how totalitarianism is never total and always vulnerable to protest.

The most salient, improbable, and uncomfortable stories of resistance (especially to the Israeli public, which conceived all German Gentiles as collaborators) are those of individual Germans who, recognizing that their voices would be taken more seriously than those of groups declared enemies of the state, risked their own safety to protest the Nazis and rescue Jews from extermination camps. In her sixth chapter, Arendt contrasts the “conspirators,” who were usually praised for resisting Nazis from within Germany—but really wanted to save Germany from the credibility crisis that Hitler’s anti-Semitism created and improve their chances at winning the war—with the “completely silent” dissenters who resisted the Nazi regime on moral grounds. The most salient story was that of Anton Schmidt, a German soldier who helped Jews escape from Poland, which Arendt includes at the end of the fourteenth chapter.

Arendt also focused on the incredible resistance that Nazi deportation campaigns faced from the people and governments of occupied nations around Europe. These stories, too, are often forgotten when stories of suffering take center stage. Slovakia and France were initially cooperative but eventually refused to let the Nazis deport more people from their countries; in Belgium, Italy, and Bulgaria government officials and private citizens simply tried as hard as possible to hamper the Nazis’ goals. But Denmark and Sweden were the most extraordinary examples of organized resistance: Sweden never fell to the German military and offered asylum to Jews from Norway and Denmark, while Denmark openly protested the Third Reich’s policies. Danes refused to identify foreign-born Jews and even convinced S.S. officials stationed there to resign or feed information to underground resistance groups. Danish citizens of all religious and class backgrounds helped Jews hide from the Gestapo and put enough pressure on the German government to ensure that Danish Jews who were deported received special treatment. Ultimately, less than 10% of Jews in Denmark were deported and less than 10% of these deportees died.

While it is important to record Holocaust survivors’ horrifying tales of deportation, forced labor, and their fellow deportees being gassed and shot, Arendt believed that stories of resistance have the essential and neglected political function of demonstrating that “most people will comply but some people will not,” that “‘it could happen’ in most places but it did not happen everywhere.” For one, these stories serve as inspirational models for citizens who want to resist totalitarianism. Anton Schmidt, for instance, demonstrated that no resistance is “practically useless” even when everyone else seems resigned to cooperate with violence. Arendt wonders “how utterly different everything would be today … if only more such stories could be told.”

Astonishingly, all these forms of resistance were reasonably successful despite the immense ideological power of Hitler’s regime: Germany “possessed neither the manpower nor the will power to remain ‘tough’ when they met determined opposition.” One reason that totalitarianism may be so vulnerable to protest is that, as Eichmann’s banality demonstrates, its success depends primarily on suppressing critical thought and normalizing violence; it is a centrally ideological project, and protest offers a counter-ideology that challenges the notion that violence and extermination could ever be an acceptable, normal order of things. This forces people to evaluate their governments as moral actors rather than absolute legal authorities—which even convinced Nazis in Denmark to abandon their beliefs.

Ultimately, Arendt’s discussion of resistance shows that she managed to at once confront the gruesome and inconvenient realities raised at the trial—Eichmann was banal, Jewish Councils cooperated with the Nazis, and Israel was more interested in justifying its own existence than truly pursuing justice—while also maintaining a deep optimism about the human tendency to pursue freedom and ensure that the world remains “fit for human habitation.” Stories of resistance, like those that she foregrounded whenever possible, serve to remind readers that moral behavior leaves a legacy—and organized moral behavior can block the advance of evil—even if everyone else seems to have resigned themselves to the inevitability of totalitarianism.