According to wikipedia....
"Banality of evil is a phrase coined by
Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.[1] Her thesis is that the great
evils in
history generally, and
the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by
fanatics or
sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their
state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were
normal.
Explaining this phenomenon,
Edward S. Herman has emphasized the importance of "normalizing the unthinkable." According to him, "doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on 'normalization.' This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as 'the way things are done."
While it is possible for perfectly normal people to commit heinous acts, some things go beyond following orders(the Nuremberg Defense). There is no way the top ranking nazis could've gotten to where they were without questionable judgement, thuggery, and heartless brutality.
It is possible that they influenced others on their way, but their has to be a limit between blind obedience and pure evil. If Eichmann didn't agree with the Nazi Ethics and just wanted to make a career out of it, he wouldn't have done what he did, especially with the deportations.
Just wondering however if there was any credence to the phrase "Benalty of Evil?" Were there any Nazis he really were just following orders without any questioning?
Your thoughts?