meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Bad People

35. Nazi on Trial 1: Can “just following orders” justify horrific crimes?

Bad People

BBC

True Crime

4.41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our story starts in Argentina in 1960. A middle-age man is on his way home. As he gets off the bus, hooded men grab him and shuffle him into a van. The man is Adolf Eichmann and the hooded men are Israeli intelligence officers. They smuggle him to Israel to stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. As a prominent Nazi in Hitler’s Third Reich, Eichmann organised the deportations of millions of Jewish people to death camps. He gets the chilling nickname “The Architect of the Holocaust”. The trial was broadcast globally and onlookers watched on in horror and disbelief as the crimes of a seemingly normal man were lay bare. On this episode of Bad People, Dr. Julia Shaw and comedian Sofie Hagen dissect Eichmann’s morally dubious defence that he was “just following orders” and was acting within Nazi law. And they unpick the controversial research that led scientists to question whether all humans are capable of great harm under the right circumstances. This episode includes audio from the short series of educational films, The Eichmann Show, created for the BBC Warning: This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence CREDITS Presenters: Dr Julia Shaw and Sofie Hagen Producer: Louisa Field Assistant Producer: Simona Rata Music: Matt Chandler Editor: Rami Tzabar Academic Consultants for The Open University: Lara Frumkin and James Munro Commissioning Assistant Producer: Adam Eland Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins Bad People is produced in partnership with The Open University and is a BBC Audio Science Production for BBC Sounds. #BadPeople_BBC

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, Gary Lednika here with Alan Shira and Michael Richards to say the match of the day top 10 podcast is back

0:07.4

We'll be ranking our footballing top 10s and debiting. It was right. Well, it's don't be me. Not a champ, it's Gary

0:14.8

First season wonders to goalkeeping blunders. Nothing is off the table. You had a few blunders in your day, didn't you Gary?

0:22.0

Yeah, match of the day top 10. Listen only on BBC sounds

0:27.4

BBC sounds, music, radio, podcasts

0:32.2

Yeah, it looks good. Yeah, good to go. Hurrah. Let's

0:37.0

Let's do this one. Let's end our careers

0:43.8

I feel like we can't not talk about this either. Like we can't not do an episode. I'm not season by people, right?

0:48.5

No, no, no, we're doing it. We're overdue. We've made it this far. No, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Let's do it

0:54.6

Have you ever heard of Godwin's law?

0:58.4

You sound just like Hitler

1:01.2

Exactly. It's an online version of what was previously called Reduccio ad Hitlorum, which I don't speak not

1:07.2

And so I probably mispronounced that but it's also known as playing the Nazi card or trying to describe it

1:12.8

Someone's ideas because the Nazis some you know thought something similar at some point even remotely so and it's usually used in ludicrous arguments like

1:21.0

Oh, you like highways. You know who else liked highways or the Autobahn

1:27.4

Nazis, so it's like like that

1:30.0

Yeah, but it's also now used by actual Nazis when you mention that they're actual Nazis

1:36.1

They're like, oh, so just because I want to eradicate a whole group of people and I have a swastik on my chest

1:41.2

You mentioned Nazis snowflake true

1:44.9

But Godwin's law is more, you know online as well and it's a sort of

1:50.0

Yeah, when it descends into a non-argument really and it's named after an American man whose name to Mike Godwin and he was an important figure in digital rights actually

2:01.0

So I found a discussion of this law from 1995 and this is actually a snapshot from the sort of if you will original

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.