German-Jewish (and eventually naturalized American) philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) outraged the Left with her definitive account of modern tyranny, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Written in 1951 when Stalin was still ruling the Soviet Union and worshipped by the Left, it exposed with ruthless logic and evidence the essential sameness between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Nazism and Communism were just two sides of the same tyrannical coin, said Arendt, not opposites of Right and Left.
The world's leftist intellectuals never forgave her, and so were scandalized again in 1963 by her book, On Revolution, an impeccably scholarly study of why the American Revolution was a success and the French Revolution an abysmal failure.
Yet it is her account of the 1962 trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem, for which she is most famous. Hitler had put Eichmann in charge of transporting Jews to his extermination camps such as at Auschwitz. At his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann claimed that he was just doing his duty, conforming to the law, and that he was powerless to do otherwise.
Arendt saw that Eichmann really believed this. He wasn't a "radically evil" sociopath; he was an ordinary man just going along with what was happening. This was an evil that frightened Arendt more than that of a rare monster like Hitler, for it was an evil perpetrated by otherwise normal people.
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Why is this a surprise? Didn't someone once say something to the effect of "all it takes for evil to be done is men who do nothing about it"? Look around at millions of Americans who applaud every time our "leaders" take another one of our freedoms and tell us it is not important anymore. From stopping innocent people at Nazi "checkpoints" to searching, confiscating, and "detaining" AMERICANS without charges, trial, or warrant, to beating and strip searching people for protesting (another right guaranteed under the Constitution). We must fight our "enemies"! Live in "safety" and "security"! No matter what the cost! Can't you just hear the echoes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Kim saying the same thing to THEIR people? Can you picture the cheering throngs of millions, too? Then, try to pictures the millions of graves of those very same people. Thats where they ended up for all their enthusiasm for the "leaders" who told them it was all for their own good. But history NEVER repeats itself, so don't worry --- keep cheering!! USA! USA!! USA!!
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