Politics on Trial: Eichmann in Jerusalem

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

History, Politics, News, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode is about a momentous trial and the incendiary book that followed: the trial was of Adolf Eichmann, convicted by an Israeli court in 1961 of orchestrating the Holocaust, and the book was Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), which questioned the grounds on which he was prosecuted. What did Arendt mean by ‘the banality of evil’? Why was she convinced that the case against Eichmann was badly misjudged? Was the trial really intended to serve as a history lesson? And if it was, what was it designed to teach? Next time in Politics on Trial: Nelson Mandela vs Apartheid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:05.5	podcast. Today, in politics on trial, I'm talking not about the trial of a book, but about a trial
1:13.0	and then the book of that trial. The trial is of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961,
1:20.7	in which he was charged effectively with being responsible for the Holocaust. The book is Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem,
1:31.2	which has shaped ever since the way that people think about the trial itself.
1:37.0	What actually happened in the trial, and is Arendt's judgment of it fair?
1:55.4	I am aware in this series that we have moved from 1945 in the trial of Marshall Petin through to Lady Chathalie's lover and now Eichmann in Jerusalem.
2:00.7	And it may seem like we have missed something out
2:03.0	because I haven't done an episode on the Nuremberg war crimes trials. In this series, I've wanted
2:10.4	to focus on trials that are themselves focused on particular cases, particular individuals or groups
	...

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