The Eichmann Tapes

Adolf Eichmann was head of Gestapo Division IV-B4 the Third Reichs notorious Security Service and he was responsible for implementing the Final Solution of the European Jews in the Greater German Reich. Though arrested at the end of the war by the U.S. army Eichmann succeeded in escaping from U.S. custody in 1946 and lived unnoticed in Germany and Austria until 1950 when he travelled to Argentina. While living in Buenos Aires Eichmann produced a series of tape recordings and hand written notes giving a very open and incriminating account of his role in the Final Solution and Eichmann declares that this is indeed the only testimony that he wishes to be considered as genuine and not dictated under duress. In 1960 the Israeli Intelligence Service Mossad succeeded in tracing Eichmann to Argentina. They captured him and on May 21 he was flown to Israel where he was tried by the Israeli Court in 1961 found guilty and hanged on May 31 1962. After his courtroom testimony in Israel in August 1961 Eichmann wrote an additional testimony that he called False Gods. The English translation of False Gods is also published by Black House Publishing and is a companion to this volume. This book provides an incriminating account of Eichmanns role in the wholesale murder of the Jews in Europe and establishes the scope of the anti-Jewish measures undertaken in the Third Reich and the gradual development of these measures from emigration to concentration to large-scale murder. The reader of Eichmanns memoirs will thus obtain not only a vivid impression of the extensive police operations of the Third Reich but also a glimpse into the ideological and political motivations of these actions motivations that were perhaps not fully shared by Eichmann himself.