[4] For this reason, some modern historians such as Bettina Stangneth dispute that Eichmann was a desk murderer, as he took too active an interest in the process of the Holocaust.
Others use the term to refer to anyone who was part of the bureaucracy engaged with carrying out criminal orders, no matter how indirect their involvement.
The term "desk murderer" has also been used in non-Holocaust contexts, such as during the Auschwitz trial when the defence lawyer Hans Laternser demanded the arrest of witness Erich Markowitsch [de], an Auschwitz survivor and East German politician, for his alleged role in approving the killings of refugees attempting to escape East Germany on the Berlin Wall.
[2] The book I YOU WE THEM - Journeys Beyond Evil: The Desk Killers in History and Today, by Dan Gretton, is a layered investigation into the phenomenon of the 'Schreibtischtäter'.
I You We Them focuses beyond the intentionality of murder and examines the more complicated, and politically urgent, question of distanced killing, of how organisations and the individuals within them have been able to 'compartmentalise', to evade responsibility for their actions – whether in the rigid bureaucracies of the Third Reich or within the complex structures of corporations today.
"[8] German far-right politician Gerhard Frey used the term Schreibtischtäter for people supporting Israel, as, in his view, they thereby became accomplices in "crimes committed there".