Adolf Eichmann was captured on May 11th, 1960 and was taken to court on April 11th, 1961. His trial was of extreme degree and intense examinations. On May 31st, 1962, Adolf Eichmann received the death penalty and was hanged. Before all of that, Eichmann's profession was that of being a Nazi bureaucrat. He was in charge of arranging the mass deportations, of the Jewish people, to the killing centers. Eichmann was a very unsuccessful student and had been fired from his last job as a travel salesman. When he first joined the Nazi's he did not know their true motives. However later on they became very clear; and yet Eichmann still remained true them. After losing his job as a salesman he was known as a failure to his family, friends, social class, and most importantly in his own eyes. With joining the Nazi's he figured that he could reinvent himself in the bureaucracy and make a better career for himself. Adolf remained with this job for thirteen years and rose up to Obersturmbannfuhrer which has the rank equivalent to a lieutenant colonel in the US Military. He was very loyal to the Nazi's and wanted to be successful in his career. .
Hannah Arendt thinks that Eichmann's trial was an excruciating lesson in the "banality of evil. " Banal is defined as lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring (Webster's Dictionary). Eichmann was known as one to exaggerate. He loved to boast about himself and make everyone think that he was really important the Nazi's; when in reality he wasn't all that important. On page 47 it says "To claim the death of five million Jews, the approximate total of losses suffered from the combined efforts of all the Nazi offices and authorities, was preposterous, as he knew very well, but he had kept repeating the damning sentence ad nauseam to everyone who would listen, because it gave him "an extraordinary sense of elation to think that [he] was exiting from the stage in this way.