–by Thomas Merton (Mar 29, 2013)

One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Otto Adolf Eichmann trial –a Nazi lieutenant colonel who, because of his organizational talents and ideological reliability, was given the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe, and later faced trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes– was that a psychiatrist examined him, in the 1960’s, and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.

If all the Nazis had been psychotics their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, “well-balanced,” unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass…