Eichmann, Bureaucracy and the Holocaust

Was Adolf Eichmann really the 'monster' so many believe him to be? Was he the evil genius behind the Final Solution, second in importance only to Himmler and Hitler himself? Or was Eichmann a distinctly average and psychologically 'normal' individual, whose actions can be better explained and understood in terms of his social milieu, modest rank, and the systems, processes and procedures used to prosecute the Holocaust? Based on an academic dissertation, this fully referenced work analyses Eichmann's actual documented role from a sociological perspective, using Max Weber's work on bureaucracy and Zygmunt Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust" as its theoretical framework. The unsettling conclusion is that modern methods of bureaucratic organisation contributed to Eichmann's moral blindness, leaving him more concerned with the minutiae of his professional life than the fate of those he transported to the death camps.