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Christine Flowers: The horror of ordinary men Christine Flowers November 17, 2025 November 16, 2025

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1961 was a seminal year in the history of the Holocaust. It was the year that Adolf Eichmann was put on trial for war crimes, a decade and a half after escaping judgment in Germany. It was during his trial that writer Hannah Arendt quipped, famously, about “the banality of evil.”

She was referring to Eichmann specifically, but at a larger level her words were meant to define the entire Nazi regime. While there were indeed inhuman monsters who were responsible for the atrocities, from faceless SS officers to people like Goebbels and Himmler, there was also, and not just according to Arendt, an abu

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