Interpreting Evil

The face of evil may be jolly and full of life. This lesson, and many others, is brought home by the remarkable experience of Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, one of the last living witnesses to the Nuremberg Trials that followed the collapse of the Third Reich after WWII.

Sonnenfeldt, a Jew who escaped Germany in 1938, and later fought as a private in the U.S. Army during the Battle of the Bulge, served as the chief interpreter during the Nuremberg Tribunals. His job put him face to face with the architects of evil from Hitler’s empire, men like Hermann Göring, Rudolph Hess, and Albert Speer.

So what is it like to look into the eyes of evil? Sonnenfeldt, now 83, is struck by the banality of evil, the sheer ordinariness and often mediocrity of the men who built and operated the machinery of death that would constitute the most gruesome war crime the world has ever witnessed. Take Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, a former champagne salesman who was forever spouting inane platitudes, and was so lacking in gravitas and substance, that almost everyone he met with wondered how he could have risen so far. Hitler, as one insider from the Third Reich explained to Sonnenfeldt, had never noticed Ribbentrop’s vacuity because the dictator did all the talking when meeting with his foreign minister.

Hitler, from what Sonnefeldt was able to piece together, was a political genius who surrounded himself with yes men and political toadies. He was able to create Germany’s pre-WWII economic miracle through deficit spending. And he then consolidated unchecked power through deceit, legal chicanery, and brute force.

“All of my means are rationale. Only my ends are insane.” So said Melville’s Captain Ahab. This motto might explain Hitler’s methodology – efficient, but utterly lunatic. With a few exceptions the functionaries he surrounded himself were like the mindless cogs in a machine, human drones did their work with great zeal, but little human understanding. For instance, one nazi was asked if he was responsible for killing three-and-half millions Jews; he replied, nonchalantly, that the true figure was only two-and-half million, the rest had died of disease and starvation. Another anecdote Sonnenfeldt relates involves the accusation that a death camp commandant had allowed German guards to steal gold fillings from Jewish victims. “What kind of man do you think I am” was the nazi’s indignant reply.

Stalin one said, “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” Sonnenfeldt’s testament is a reminder that power separated from the rule of law is an invitation to evil. Conversely, there is a wonderful Jewish proverb – “If you save one life, you save the world entire” – that I believe stands as an eternal antidote to evil. If you are seeking insight into human nature, evil, and how simple decency can triumph over barbarism, then I highly recommend Sonnenfeldt’s book Witness to Nuremberg.

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