Eichmann's Accomplishments

Adolf Hitler was arguably one of the evilest and most potent dictators known to man. Some would argue that he changed the course of history, but he didn’t do it alone. He needed one more piece to complete his puzzle. The last piece was Adolf Eichmann, one of the most influential and despicable men to ever exist. He was one of Hitler's most trusted men and played a significant role in WW2. Eichmann’s early life, his rise to power, and his accomplishments made him the figure we know him as today.

His descent into madness started when he was a young boy. His family was poor, and he moved around. He wasn’t very astute and took up mechanical engineering, but he didn’t finish his schooling, as seen in this quote “Eichmann (1906–1962) was born in

This article on PBS explains his rise through the parties leading to his most powerful state. “In April 1932, he joined the Austrian Nazi party. His advance within the SS was fairly rapid. In 1934 he was hired as an expert on ‘Zionism’ by the department in Berlin responsible for "Jewish Affairs." By 1937, Eichmann became convinced that the Jewish ‘problem’ could be solved by expelling Jews from German territory” (Educational Foundation); Eichmann was able to rise through the ranks very quickly and was given the title of an expert on Zionism so he could complete his ultimate goal of eradicating the Jews. Adolf Eichmann personally hated Jews, and he raided the offices of the Jewish cultural community. He organized a Jewish emigration in Vienna. 110,000 Austrian Jews emigrated, as seen in an article on the Holocaust Museum website “During the Anschluss in March 1938, Eichmann personally led a raid on the Jewish Cultural Community offices. He then worked to organize a Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) in Vienna, which opened officially on August 20, 1938. According to internal estimates, the Central Office ‘facilitated’ the emigration of 110,000 Austrian Jews between August 1938 and June 1939” (Memorial Museum). From there, he became a head of Jewish emigration and made many Jews lose their homes, which

Eichman came up with the final solution to the “Jewish question” He was going to make the plan’s logistics; it wasn’t widely known at this point that the “solution” was mass genocide. He set up identification, assembly, and transportation. All of this contributed to his master plan of eradicating the Jews. Michael Berenbaum wrote an article on Britannica discussing his impact on the Holocaust. In the said article, he wrote, “In January 1942, at a lakefront villa in the Wannsee district of Berlin, a conference of Nazi high officials was convened to organize the logistics of what the Nazis called the “final solution to the Jewish question.” Eichmann was to coordinate the details; thus, although it was not yet generally known that the “final solution” was mass execution, Eichmann had in effect been named chief executioner. Thereupon he organized the identification, assembly, and transportation of Jews from all over occupied Europe to their final destinations at Auschwitz and other extermination camps in German-occupied Poland”(Berenbaum Michael). During Hitler’s attack on the Soviets, Eichmann took it upon himself to keep the operation running. As stated by Cole Curtis on ABC-CLIO, “Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941; however, Eichmann sent special mobile killing squads of SS (known as Einsatzgruppen) to begin murdering the millions of East European Jews who fell under