Otto Adolf Eichmann[a] (/ˈaɪkmən/ EYEKH-mən,[1] German: [ˈʔɔto ˈʔaːdɔlf ˈʔaɪçman]; 19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962) was a German-Austrian[2] official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust.

He returned to Germany in 1933, where he joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, "Security Service"); there he was appointed head of the department responsible for Jewish affairs – especially emigration, which the Nazis encouraged through violence and economic pressure.

Dieter Wisliceny testified at Nuremberg that Eichmann told him he would "leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people[b] on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.

He ended up in a small village in Lower Saxony, where he lived until 1950 when he moved to Argentina using false papers he obtained with help from an organisation directed by Catholic bishop Alois Hudal.

[12] His poor school performance resulted in his father's withdrawing him from the Realschule and enrolling him in the Höhere Bundeslehranstalt für Elektrotechnik, Maschinenbau und Hochbau vocational college.

[14][15] During this time, he joined the Jungfrontkämpfervereinigung, the youth section of Hermann Hiltl's right-wing veterans' movement, and began reading newspapers published by the Nazi Party.

[17] They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic peoples, formation of a national community based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.

[18] On the advice of family friend and local SS leader Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party on 1 April 1932, member number 889,895.

[45] Eichmann was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer (first lieutenant) in July 1938, and appointed to the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, created in August in a room in the former Palais Albert Rothschild at Prinz-Eugen-Straße 20–22.

[48] After discussions with Hitler in the preceding weeks, on 21 September SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SD, advised his staff that Jews were to be collected into cities in Poland with good rail links to facilitate their expulsion from territories controlled by Germany, starting with areas that had been incorporated into the Reich.

The plan was stymied by Hans Frank, governor-general of the occupied territories, who was disinclined to accept the deportees as to do so would have a negative impact on economic development and his ultimate goal of Germanisation of the region.

[57][58] While Eichmann claimed at his trial to be upset by the appalling conditions on the trains and in the transit camps, his correspondence and documents of the period show that his primary concern was to achieve the deportations economically and with minimal disruption to Germany's ongoing military operations.

[65] From the start of the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (task forces) followed the army into conquered areas and rounded up and killed Jews, Comintern officials, and ranking members of the Communist Party.

[67] On 31 July, Göring gave Heydrich written authorisation to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in all territories under German control and to co-ordinate the participation of all involved government organisations.

[68] The Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered.

[84] Eichmann held regular meetings in his Berlin offices with his department members working in the field and travelled extensively to visit concentration camps and ghettos.

[90] Round-ups began on 16 April, and from 14 May, four trains of 3,000 Jews per day left Hungary and travelled to the camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, arriving along a newly built spur line that terminated a few hundred metres away from the gas chambers.

[96] Eichmann later testified that Berlin had authorised him to allow emigration of a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks equipped to handle the wintry conditions on the Eastern Front.

[96] In June 1944 Eichmann was involved in negotiations with Rudolf Kasztner that resulted in the rescue of 1,684 people, who were sent by train to safety in Switzerland in exchange for three suitcases full of diamonds, gold, cash, and securities.

[98] Eichmann, resentful that Kurt Becher and others were becoming involved in Jewish emigration matters, and angered by Himmler's suspension of deportations to the death camps, requested reassignment in July.

[99] At the end of August he was assigned to head a commando squad to assist in the evacuation of 10,000 ethnic Germans trapped on the Hungarian border with Romania in the path of the advancing Red Army.

[100] Throughout October and November, Eichmann arranged for tens of thousands of Jewish victims to be forced to march, in appalling conditions, from Budapest to Vienna, a distance of 210 kilometres (130 mi).

[105] In 1948, Eichmann obtained a landing permit for Argentina and false identification under the name Ricardo Klement through an organisation directed by Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian cleric and Nazi sympathiser then residing in Italy.

[123] Bauer, lacking trust in the German police or legal system and fearing they might tip off Eichmann if informed, decided to directly approach Israeli authorities.

[126][127] Harel dispatched Shin Bet chief interrogator Zvi Aharoni to Buenos Aires on 1 March 1960,[128] and after several weeks of investigation, he confirmed Eichmann's identity.

[130][131] Harel arrived in May 1960 to oversee the capture,[132] and Mossad operative Rafi Eitan was appointed as the leader of the eight-man team, consisting mostly of Shin Bet agents.

[150] Argentina requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council in June 1960 after unsuccessful negotiations with Israel, as they regarded the capture as a violation of their sovereign rights.

[158] The Israelis were unwilling to take him to trial based solely on the evidence in documents and witness testimony, so he was subject to daily interrogations, the transcripts of which totalled over 3,500 pages.

[163] Defence attorney Servatius submitted a request for clemency to Ben-Zvi and petitioned for a stay of execution pending his planned appeals for extradition to the West German government.

[228] Historians such as Christopher Browning, Deborah Lipstadt, Yaacov Lozowick, and David Cesarani reached a similar conclusion: that Eichmann was not the unthinking bureaucratic functionary that Arendt believed him to be.