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So what should we conclude about Arendt’s claim that Eichmann (as well as other Germans) did evil without being evil?
The question is a puzzle because Arendt missed an opportunity to investigate the larger meaning of Eichmann’s particular evil by not expanding her study of him into a broader study of evil’s nature. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), published well before the Eichmann trial, Arendt said: