4 Dec 1975
The 69-year-old died Hannah Arendt — the founder of the theory of totalitarianism, author of the books “The Banality of Evil” and “The Origins of Totalitarianism”.
To control the behavior of its subjects, a totalitarian regime must prepare everyone equally well for the role of both victim and executioner.
Under tyranny, it is much easier to act than to think.
Born in 1906 Hanover (Germany), to a family of German Jews. Her father died when she was three. Her mother, an active Social Democrat, raised Hannah in Königsberg. If a teacher made anti-Semitic statements, the girl, following her mother's instructions, would leave the class, and her mother would write an official complaint.
Studied at three universities, Heidegger и Jaspers. At 26, she wrote an article about the role of women in politics. But she was most interested in national issues and anti-Semitism.
Shortly before Hitler came to power, Jaspers urged Hannah to become a "proper" German. She replied:
For me, Germany is my native language, philosophy and poetry.
During the Third Reich, she sheltered Jews hiding from the purges. In 1933, she spent a week under arrest, but was released thanks to a kind investigator.
If we are attacked as Jews, we will defend ourselves as Jews.
In occupied France, she ended up in the Gurs concentration camp: she spent a month there and managed to escape. She made it to the United States and became the first female teacher in Princeton. She studied not only totalitarian Germany, but also the USSR.
She became famous at 45, after the publication of the book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”.
The collapse of the protective walls between classes transformed the sleepy majorities behind all parties into one vast, disorganized, structureless mass of embittered individuals. They had no need to refute their opponents' arguments and consistently preferred methods that ended in death rather than conversion. They promised terror, not persuasion.
The fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all tyrannies of the past is that terror is used not as a means of destroying and intimidating opponents, but as a tool for controlling completely submissive masses of people.
During the war, the most convincing lie swallowed by the entire German people was the slogan: "The battle is for the fate of the German nation." It contained three components that facilitated self-deception: first, that the war was not a war at all; second, that it was unleashed by fate, destiny, and not Germany itself; and third, that it was a matter of life or death for the Germans, who must completely destroy their enemies, lest their enemies completely destroy them.
In 1961, she worked as a correspondent for The New Yorker during the trial of Otto Adolf Eichmann — "the architect of the Holocaust" who was responsible for the deportation (and ultimately death) 6 million Jews and was sentenced to death.
In her book, "The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem," she showed that the most ordinary people—obedient operatives and bureaucrats—can be behind mass murder. They commit crimes not out of malice, but simply because they are trying to do their jobs well.
There were many like Eichmann, and many were neither perverts nor sadists - they were and are terribly and horrifyingly normal.
She left behind more than 450 works in which she encouraged critical thinking and described the difference between power and violence.
Terror is established when violence, having destroyed all power, retains complete control.
A supporter of the principle of collective responsibility and an opponent of the principle of collective guilt.
Where everyone is guilty, no one is guilty.
For many years now, I've been meeting Germans who admit they're ashamed to be German. And every time, I'm tempted to tell them I'm ashamed to be human.
She died at work from another heart attack.
Totalitarianism does not strive for despotic domination over people, but for the establishment of a system in which people are completely unnecessary.