Otto Adolf Eichmann

·44 min·2 clips

Eichmann insists he was “only following orders,” while the prosecution argues he knew deportees were being killed.

1. World of War Crimes returns with an episode on Otto Adolf Eichmann. 2. Jeremy Leland hosts the show, mentions a new podcast called Beyond the Textbooks, and explains a two-year hiatus after finishing his master’s degree. 3. The episode asks how Eichmann moved from a German-Austrian clerk to a central SS administrator of deportations. 4. Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906, in Solingen, and his father Adolf Karl moved the family to Austria in 1913. 5. He attended the same Linz secondary school as Adolf Hitler 17 years earlier. 6. His school years included violin, sports clubs, and the Wandervogel woodcrafting and scouting group. 7. Poor school performance led him into trade training and then work in his father’s business and in sales for radio and oil companies. 8. In 1932, he joined the Austrian NSDAP on April 1 as member number 889,895 and the SS as member number 45,326. 9. After the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, he returned from Austria and trained with SS units in Passau and Dachau. 10. In 1934, he moved into the SD, first cataloging Freemason material for an anti-Masonic exhibit and then joining the Jewish department under Baron Leopold von Mildenstein. 11. In that department, he studied Zionism and learned Hebrew and Yiddish. 12. He married Veronica on March 21, 1935, and the episode names four sons: Klaus, Horst, Adolf, and Dieter Helmut, plus Ricardo Francisco much later. 13. The host notes that Eichmann visited Palestine in 1937 with Herbert Hagen and met Feral Polkes in Cairo about the Ha'avara agreements. 14. In 1938, after the Anschluss, he was sent to Vienna and put in charge of the Central Agency for Jewish Immigration at the Palais Rothschild. 15. By 1939, the host says about 100,000 Jews had left legally or been smuggled to Palestine through that system. 16. After the invasion of Poland, Eichmann became a specialist in deportations, first through the Nisko Plan and then through RSHA office IV B4. 17. The episode says he coordinated police agencies, transport schedules, confiscations, and financing for deportations from Germany and occupied Poland. 18. It also covers ghettos in cities such as Łódź and Warsaw, the Madagascar Project, and the shift toward mass killing after Barbarossa. 19. The tone is lecture-like and chronological, with frequent asides, acronyms, and direct comments from the host. 20. People interested in Nazi bureaucracy, the Holocaust, or war-crimes history would likely listen through this episode, while listeners wanting a light or fast-paced show probably would not.

As heard by us

A direct return that traces Eichmann from his birth into the machinery of deportation and Nazi policy.

Otto Adolf Eichmann is presented through the machinery of Nazi deportation policy, and the episode follows him from his birth on March 19th, 1906 in Solingen into the planning around ghettos, deportations, the Madagascar proposal, and the escalation after Operation Barbarossa.

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Why you'd press play

You want a blunt return to Eichmann, deportations, and the machinery around them.

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