Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
mann, Israel had spat on Argentine sovereignty and, from a lawyer’s point of
view, the only hope of securing a favorable verdict (a prison sentence to be later
commuted) depended upon world opinion developing so as to encourage Israel to
temper its arrogance somewhat with a magnanimous gesture. However, the possibility
of such an outcome depended upon presenting a defense whose fundamental
acceptance by the Jerusalem court would have been within the realm of political
possibility. Thus, just as with the Nuremberg defendants, Eichmann’s only possible
defense under the circumstances was to deny personal responsibility.
Eichmann conceded the existence of an extermination program, and the first
edition of Reitlinger’s book was accepted by both sides as approximately descriptive
of what had happened. Eichmann’s fundamental defense, thus, was that he
had merely organized the transports of Jews in obedience to orders that could not
be disobeyed. In one respect, his defense was partially successful, for his (accurate)
picture of himself as a mere “cog in a machine” has been more or less universally
accepted by those who have studied and written about this trial (e.g. Hannah
Arendt’s book).
Actually, Eichmann inflated himself a bit beyond “cog” status, for a secondary
feature of his testimony is that he claimed that he, Eichmann, had done whatever a
person as lowly as he could do in order to sabotage the extermination program,
and his interpretations of the meanings of many of the documents used in the trial
were obviously strained in this respect. A good example was Eichmann’s commentary
on two particular documents. The first document was a complaint by the
commander of the Lodz resettlement camp, dated September 24, 1941, complaining
of overcrowding at the camp due to tremendous transports of Jews that were
pouring in:
“And now they face me with a fait accompli, as it were, that I have to absorb
20,000 Jews into the ghetto within the shortest possible period of time,
but further that I have to absorb 5,000 gypsies.”
The letter is addressed to the local head of government. The second document
is a letter by that local head, dated October 9, 1941, passing on the complaint to
Berlin, and adding that Eichmann had acted like a “horse dealer” in sending the
Jewish transport to Lodz for, contrary to Eichmann’s claim, the transport had not
been approved. Eichmann’s Jerusalem testimony in regard to these documents
was that there were only two places he could have shipped the Jews to, the East
(where he was supposed to send them, he said) or Lodz. However, according to
him, there were exterminations in the East at that time, but none at Lodz. Being in
strong disapproval of the exterminations and doing everything that his low office
permitted to thwart them, he shipped the Jews to Lodz despite the inadequate
preparations there. 325
This feature of Eichmann’s defense strategy is also illustrated by his testimony
regarding the “trucks for Hungarian Jews” proposals of 1944. He naturally attempted
to represent efforts on the German side to conclude the deal as being due
in no small measure to the force of his initiative, motivated, again, by Eichmann’s
325
Eichmann, session 78, N1-O1; session 98, T1-W1.
227