I cannot exactly remember the frame of reference of main character as he read this in the scene. But I do remember thinking: how did I think I would make it through the military as an officer when I was a young little wannabe patriot?
I think we see this now too. Many people complain about gamification of war. I do not think spy planes and Apache gunship HUDs (heads up displays) make that happen, they just add post-modern flare. If society does not gamify war and killing, we have convinced ourselves we will not win, not fight hard enough.
An end to my many anecodtes. My grandfather was a WWII vet, and very much hated it (only was promoted once in the brig for unlawful dissertion). I was always remember his favorite quote: "they trained us very well to kill but never to stop." It haunts me all the time.
All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann
EYES:……………………………………Medium
HAIR:……………………………………Medium
WEIGHT:………………………………Medium
HEIGHT:………………………………Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten
NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten
INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
>Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad. If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you'll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy's mind.
However something like 4% of men are sociopaths, so this isn't always true. But as far as I know, Hitler was not a sociopath, nor were all of the countless other people involved.
And, of course, it's not like his actions were that different than things like the slavery of African Americans, the colonization and enslavement of 2/3 of the world by the European colonial powers (with tens of millions of dead, and heinous acts of torture and mass murder), etc.
It is fair to say that there were people such as Arendt painted Eichmann to be. Some went on to quite solid careers on either side of the Cold War.
Arendt's thesis is that Eichmann was banal -- that is so lacking in originality and boring -- in his evil, that he was an unthinking functionary just following orders. This is not what Eichmann's memoirs and interviews from his time in Argentina (after World War II, before Jerusalem) convey. He contemplated and dismissed the philosophy of Kant. He participated in weekly book clubs and laid groundwork for Holocaust deniers. He spoke of his genocidal role as a "duty to our blood".
This is not the talk of a man who was just following orders.
It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.