Is there no end to the banality of evil?
Evil. The other day, I was looking up something Maurice Cowling had written, which brought back memories. Although Maurice was a High Anglican and a High Tory, he usually concealed his inner seriousness with a delight in mischief-making. “Lord, what fools these mortals be” could well have been his motto. To friends, he would often say: “Oh, you are evil.” But that was an unalloyed compliment.
This is “evil” in a jokey context, akin to scary, something to delight the children without making them afraid of a ghost under the bed. Then there is remote evil, the horrors emerging from primitive societies under brutal leadership: Lenin, Stalin, Mao: Tamburlaine with his mountains of skulls. In such cases, we appear to be at a safe and sanitised distance from our version of mankind. But we can come close: hideously close. For that, it is only necessary to see The Zone of Interest, the latest film about Auschwitz and the banality of evil. The Höss family are socially aspirant. They strive for status and for a comfortable house. They attain both, when the husband, Rudolf, becomes Commandant of Auschwitz, the bureaucrat of mass murder. This was truly the banality of evil.
After the war, Höss was interrogated by Colonel Gerald Draper who became a distinguished international lawyer. In dealing with their captives, the Colonel and his colleagues would decide what tactic to approach in order to extract the maximum information. In Höss’s case, Col Draper decided to be wholly matter of fact; no outrage, just the plain details of the desk-murderer’s daily routine. Even the courtesies were observed. The two men addressed each other as “Herr Commandant” and “Herr Colonel”.
It all worked. Thirty-five years later, recounting the story, Gerald Draper often spoke in German. The interrogation was more than etched in his memory. It was scorched into his memory: the season when he was on duty in Hell. Höss was happy to describe his travails, especially with Eichmann, his boss, who was constantly enraged by Höss’s failure to ensure that the empty trains were turned around fast enough.
There was one especially difficult moment (those reaching for the tissues might choose to skip the next few lines). A train arrived, with only children on board. They refused to disembark. Perhaps some good angel was trying to protect them. If so, it availed them naught. Höss sent on the SS. The children who survived were instantly herded off to death. But Höss had a problem. The SS’s efforts left traces: blood, brains et al. The Commandant ordered the cleaners to work double shifts, but even so, Eichmann was screaming at him down the phone. “How dare you send back a filthy train like that. It this happens again, I’ll have you in front of a people’s court.” Höss said that he had tried to ensure, successfully, that there were no more children’s-only trains. “Impossible man, Eichmann”, said the Commandant, as if looking for sympathy. He got a curt nod.
The sessions drew to an end. “We have agreed, Herr Commandant, that during your command, approximately one million, one hundred thousand people were killed at Auschwitz.”
“Oh no, Herr Colonel: I make it one million and twenty thousand.” Both men consulted their notes. “Ah” said Höss. “I see what’s happening. You’re including that time in late ’43 when I was at a conference, and the period in early ’44 when I was on sick-leave. Of course, I was still in nominal command then, but not in day-to-day control. I think that this should be made clear.”
“It will be.”
“What will happen to me now, Herr Colonel?”
“Well, you might be called as a witness in the war crimes trials and then you yourself will be put on trial in Poland. I imagine that you will be hanged.” He was. But the Commandant had the final words. ‘Will my widow keep my pension rights?”
Truly the banality of evil: of utter, blackest, diabolic evil.
Another scene comes to mind; library film footage dating from the later Thirties, before the full Hellish instruments of Nazi-ism had been deployed. The Berlin Philharmonic are performing under Furtwangler’s baton: no greater conductor, no greater orchestra. They are playing the Eroica: that fugal section in the second movement. For what little my opinion is worth, it is the greatest passage in all orchestral music. The camera pans away from the podium, towards the former Imperial box, now the Fuhrer’s box. There is Hitler, in white tie. How could anyone listen to the Eroica and plan the Holocaust? The banality of evil was a necessary component, but the full hideous assault of evil upon civilisation and humanity defies comprehension. For much of our era, it is as if a Manichean conflict were in full apocalyptic terror, with no certainty that the good side would prevail.
The fate of children made me think of little Hind Rajab, the girl cut off in Gaza. In her last recorded words, she was frightened, afraid of the dark, and desperate to be rescued. In the next few days, half the world held its breath. If only, somehow, that child had survived. It was not to be. She too had gone into the dark.
I am not attempting a moral calculus, still less trying to draw parallels between events in Gaza and the Holocaust. But brooding on evil, on the hideousness of Hoes’s purposes and the banality of the way he ran his office and finally, on the death of a heart-rendingly sweet little girl – forces me towards two conclusions. The first is that the human race is highly inept at running its own affairs. Technology has out-run both morality and our powers of governance. If this continues, then Private Fraser from Dad’s Army may be right and we are indeed a’ doomed.
Second, there has to be some attempt to fight back against evil, starting with Gaza. It should be possible to mobilise some international moral initiative. There must be a better way to end the suffering, the meat-grinding, the casual slaughters, the prospect of blood-letting without end.
There must be. Surely there must be. But is there?
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