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A total and groundbreaking reassessment of the life of Adolf Eichmannmdasha superb work of scholarship that reveals his activities and notoriety among a global network of National Socialists following the collapse of the Third Reich and that permanently challenges Hannah Arendtrsquos notion of the ldquobanality of evilrdquo Smuggled out of Europe after the collapse of Germany Eichmann managed to live a peaceful and active exile in Argentina for years before his capture by the Mossad Though once widely known by nicknames such as ldquoManager of the Holocaustrdquo in he was able to portray himself from the defendantrsquos box in Jerusalem as an overworked bureaucrat following ordersmdashno more he said than ldquojust a small cog in Adolf Hitlerrsquos extermination machinerdquo How was this carefully crafted obfuscation possible How did a central architect of the Final Solution manage to disappear And what had he done with his time while in hiding Bettina Stangneth the first to comprehensively analyze more than pages of Eichmannrsquos own recently discovered written notesmdash as well as seventy-three extensive audio reel recordings of a crowded Nazi salon held weekly during the s in a popular district of Buenos Airesmdashdraws a chilling portrait not of a reclusive taciturn war criminal on the run but of a highly skilled social manipulator with an inexhaustible ability to reinvent himself an unrepentant murderer eager for acolytes with whom to discuss past glories while vigorously planning future goals with other like-minded fugitives A work that continues to garner immense international attention and acclaim Eichmann Before Jerusalem maps out the astonishing links between innumerable past Nazismdashfrom ace Luftwaffe pilots to SS henchmenmdashboth in exile and in Germany and reconstructs in detail the postwar life of one of the Holocaustrsquos principal organizers as no other book has done.