Cold Open

It’s the evening of May 11th, 1960 in Argentina.

Workers are filing out of the Mercedes-Benz factory in a small industrial town just north of Buenos Aires. Among them is Rikardo Klement, a beady-eyed, balding factory worker in his early fifties. Rikardo punches his time sheet at the door, then joins the flow of employees shuffling onto a waiting bus.

Rikardo finds an empty seat near the back and turns to face the window. He runs an oil-stained hand through what little remains of his dark hair, before pulling out a pair of spectacles and perching them on his beaky nose.

Rikardo gazes through the window as the sun sinks behind the factory chimneys, gradually turning the sky the color of rust.

Half an hour later the bus arrives at Rikardo’s stop.

He disembarks and sets off on foot for home.

But as he walks, Rikardo becomes aware of the nearby rumble of a car engine. Turning, he spots a black sedan idling by the curb. 

Rikardo grows increasingly uneasy as a man wearing a fedora and dark sunglasses emerges from the car and looks directly at Rikardo.

There’s something about this stranger that feels out of place. Then as the man calls out to him, panic rises in Rikardo’s chest. He spins around and breaks down the street, his heart thumping. But the sound of footsteps grows louder behind him, so Rikardo quickens his pace, almost breaking into a run. But it’s no use.

A minute later… Rikardo is tackled from behind and his wrists lashed together. Then a bag is pulled over his head and the world goes dark. He tries to cry out for help, but a gag has been forced into his mouth, and the next thing he knows, Rikardo is being bundled into the back of the black car… before it speeds off down the street.

Rikardo Klement is no ordinary factory worker. His real name is Adolf Eichmann, and he was once one of the highest-ranking officials in Nazi Germany and a chief architect of the Holocaust. Following Germany’s defeat in World War Two, Eichmann fled here to Argentina, where he has been living under a false identity for ten years. But following a covert operation by the Israeli secret service, Eichmann is tracked down and arrested. After his capture, he will be brought back to Israel to be prosecuted for his complicity in the murder of six million Jews. The trial will be televised to the world, further exposing the true extent of the horrors committed during the Nazi regime, before Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death and executed on June 1st, 1962.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is June 1st, 1962: The Execution of Adolf Eichmann.

Act One: The Jewish Question

It’s January 20th, 1942 in a quiet Berlin suburb; twenty years before Adolf Eichmann will be sentenced to death.

In the garden of a lakeside villa, Eichmann stands alone, dressed in a winter coat and fur hat. The 35-year-old Nazi official gazes out across the fog-shrouded surface of the water, an inscrutable smile playing on his thin lips.

Eichmann is one of fifteen Nazi Party officials who have been invited to this villa to attend a top-secret conference, one that will decide the fate of the Jewish population in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Ever since Adolf Hitler rose to power, the Nazis have been trying to solve this question. First, they introduced laws turning Jews into second-class citizens. Then they expelled Jews from Germany or forced them to emigrate. Following the outbreak of World War II, Hitler ordered the deportation and resettlement of Jews into ghettos within German-occupied territories. But as the conflict drags on, Hitler and his high command have expanded their ambitions. They are no longer satisfied with half measures. Now, only one outcome is acceptable: the complete annihilation of Jews in Europe.

So today, at this idyllic villa, Adolf Eichmann and fourteen other Nazi Party officials have come together to devise a means of achieving their murderous ambition. As head of the Department of Jewish Affairs and Eviction, Eichmann is a key figure here at the conference, and a crucial cog in the administration of the Nazi regime.

Back inside the conference room, Eichmann and his fellow Nazi bureaucrats carefully plot what they refer to as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe.” They methodically examine the population statistics of Jews in Nazi-occupied regions and calculate the logistics of transporting these millions of people from ghettos to the newly-introduced extermination camps in Poland. They devise the system of trains and murder squads that will be utilized in rounding up Jews to bring them to these camps and discuss the methods of mass human destruction that will be implemented there.

Throughout the proceedings, Eichmann’s beady eyes gleam behind his round spectacles. He has been instructed to take the minutes and ensure every detail is meticulously documented. But Eichmann is careful not to be too explicit. He uses euphemistic phrases like “liquidation” and “human reduction,” in place of terms such as “genocide” and “mass murder”, dressing up this barbaric scheme in the clinical language of bureaucracy.

After the conference closes, cognac is served in the lounge. The Nazi officials warm themselves by the fire, toasting their achievement of having just successfully planned the methodical extermination of eleven million people. Eichmann sips his sweet and sharp brandy with great satisfaction. The young man is thoroughly indoctrinated with the belief that Jews are sub-human and enemies of Germany, so he is proud to have helped create the logistical and bureaucratic framework for their systematic destruction.

And in the months that follow, Eichmann helps to implement the policies devised at the conference. His department gathers information on the Jewish people living in certain areas and feeds this intelligence back to the relevant authorities. Eichmann personally oversees the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration camps, approximately 1.7 million Jewish people have been murdered under Eichmann’s direct supervision. As the years pass and the killing continues, Eichmann proves himself to be a highly effective administrator. He often visits the camps to conduct inspections himself and impresses his superiors with his attention to detail in clinical detachment to the horrors being perpetrated.

By late 1944 though, the tide of the war has turned against Germany. With the Soviet army sweeping through Eastern Europe, Eichmann realizes he has no choice but to abandon his post and flee. He leaves his headquarters in Hungary and runs away to Vienna. But Eichmann’s plan backfires.

He is arrested by U.S. troops in 1945 and held in a detention camp for captured Nazi officials. Eichmann knows that if the conquering Allies identify him as one of the central masterminds behind the Holocaust, he will be executed. So he forges documents and conceals his identity. Eichmann then manages to escape from the camp, and after making his way to Italy, smuggles himself onto a boat bound for Argentina.

Over the next several years, as his fellow Nazi officials are rounded up and put on trial, Eichmann manages to evade capture. He assumes a new identity and takes a job as an electrician in a factory outside Buenos Aires. In this way, Eichmann intends to live out the rest of his days as just another face in the crowd. But the hunt for Eichmann isn’t over. After the war, the nation of Israel will be established as a new home for Europe’s Jews; its government will fund an operation to capture Eichmann, and it will soon be carried out by a determined team of spies who will stop at nothing until the notorious Nazi war criminal has been brought to justice.

Act Two: Operation Finale

It’s a warm autumn night in 1957 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Isser Harel sits behind his desk at the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s Secret Service. He's the director of the agency and the last person in the building. His employees have all gone home for the night. But the 45-year-old spymaster has just received a secret dossier containing some potentially explosive information, and he intends to read every word – even if it takes him all night.

This dossier was given to him by an associate at the Foreign Ministry. It tells an extraordinary story. A few days ago, a German Jew living in Argentina contacted Israeli diplomats claiming to have knowledge about the whereabouts of the former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. The informant alleged that his daughter had gone on a date with a young man who boasted that he was the son of Eichmann and that his father lived nearby. The diplomats at the Foreign Ministry feared that by launching an effort to seek extradition for Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal might disappear underground. So they decided to forward the dossier to Israeli intelligence instead.

As Isser reads about Eichmann and the atrocities that were committed under his watch, he grows increasingly convinced that everything he’s achieved in his career so far has been leading to this moment.

The details about Eichmann’s role in the Holocaust are chilling. As Head of the Department of Jewish Affairs and Eviction, Eichmann personally supervised the deportation of millions of Jews to extermination camps. Eichmann was also the primary point of contact for the commandants at Auschwitz. When more than 1.1 million men, women, and children were sent to die in the gas chamber there, it was Eichmann who gave the order.

Isser closes his eyes briefly, reflecting on the suffering of his fellow Jews. When he opens them though, he has found a new determination to track this monster down and seek retribution. But, Isser doesn’t want to simply order an assassination. Instead, he decides the most fitting course of action is to apprehend Eichmann and bring him back to Israel to answer for his crimes.

Isser assembles a crack team of agents to conduct the investigation, which they code-name Operation Finale. One of the team members is 30-year-old Polish-born spy, Peter Malkin. Peter’s own sister was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, further intensifying his desire to catch Eichmann and bring him to justice.

But Peter and his fellow investigators soon run into problems. Eichmann’s rumored address turns out to be incorrect, and despite making several inroads, the trail goes cold. Eichmann has erased all evidence of his Nazi past and fully immersed himself into Argentinian society under a false name. It isn’t long before Peter and his team are chasing shadows.

But after two years without progress, their luck turns around.

Israeli intelligence receives a tip from a German geologist living in Argentina. The geologist was recently employed by an Argentinian construction company, where he worked alongside an electrician with receding dark hair and beady black eyes. The man went by the name Rikardo Klement. The geologist recognized the man’s German accent and soon discovered his real identity as the former Nazi official, Adolf Eichmann. The geologist promptly alerted authorities in Germany, who in turn notified the Israelis.

The information provided by the geologist allows Peter Malkin and his team to pinpoint Eichmann’s location to a small town just north of Buenos Aires. It’s the break in the case they need, and Peter and his fellow spies immediately fly out to Argentina to conduct the investigation on the ground.

There, they locate the house where they believe their target lives and stake out the property day and night, snapping photographs with a telephoto lens. Every day, at around six o’clock, a balding, bespectacled factory worker gets off a bus and walks back into the house. Peter feels certain this man is Eichmann – but he isn’t one hundred percent sure, they can’t afford to make mistakes. 

One afternoon, the spies watch from their car as the suspect enters the house carrying a bunch of flowers. Clearly, some kind of celebration is taking place. It doesn’t take long for Peter to work out the connection. Today is March 21st – the date of Eichmann’s 25th wedding anniversary. There is no longer any doubt that this man is the Nazi official.

A few weeks later, Peter and his team watch as Eichmann disembarks the bus yet again and walks toward his house as usual. But this time, the Israelis spring into action. They step from the car and address Eichmann, whose panicked expression is proof enough that he’s the man they’ve been hunting. They bundle the 53-year-old in the back of their car and drive him to a safe house for interrogation.

Peter wants nothing more than to put a bullet between Eichmann’s eyes. But he knows he must separate his personal desire to avenge his sister’s death from the objective of the mission: to see this Nazi monster prosecuted on an international stage. So soon, Eichmann will be flown to Israel. And there, he will stand trial for the instrumental role he played in organizing the mass murder of over six million European Jews.

Act Three: Evil on Trial

It’s April 11th, 1961 in Jerusalem, a year after Adolf Eichmann’s arrest.

The Israeli Supreme Court judge, Gideon Hausner, sits before a packed courtroom, dispassionately surveying the crowd over the rim of his glasses. Today’s trial is actually taking place inside a theater because no courtroom was large enough to accommodate the hundreds of witnesses, reporters, jurors, and prosecutors who have come to judge the barbaric deeds of the former Nazi official, Adolf Eichmann.

Judge Hausner frowns as the spectators murmur amongst themselves, unable to contain their anticipation. This is the first trial that has ever been broadcast and televised globally. It’s meant to educate the world about the horrifying realities of the Holocaust. But Judge Hausner only hopes that the theatrical setting doesn’t set the tone for today’s proceedings and that Adolf Eichmann’s day of reckoning doesn’t descend into a show trial.

Once the crowd has settled down, Judge Hausner gives a signal to the bailiff, who presses a button releasing a mechanized door. The door swings open, and a procession of prison guards escorts a frail-looking balding man into the courtroom. In his suit and spectacles, Eichmann appears unnervingly ordinary. Judge Hausner shivers thinking about the dissonance between this average-looking middle-aged man and the chilling extremity of his crimes.

Eichmann is placed inside a bullet-proof glass box at the front of the courtroom. He peers out from behind the glass, his expression cold and neutral. Judge Hausner clears his throat, then reads his introductory statement outlining his expectations for a fair and just trial.

Over the course of the next few weeks and months, the court listens to hundreds of witness testimonies, including Holocaust survivors who saw first-hand the bodies piled up outside the gas chambers. Eichmann is charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people – none of which he denies. He ultimately confesses to being directly complicit in the deaths of six million Jews but insists that he was only following orders.

In August, Eichmann is found guilty and sentenced to death. After languishing in a prison cell for a year, the 58-year-old is led to the gallows on June 1st, 1962. Seconds before dropping from the scaffold, a witness overhears Eichmann murmur the words: “I hope that all of you will follow me.” Within hours of his execution, Eichmann’s body is cremated and the ashes are dumped in the ocean.

In the years following his execution, Eichmann’s meek, ordinary appearance in court will fuel his image as the archetypical Nazi bureaucrat following orders, an unreflective functionary who committed unspeakable acts of brutality from the safety of a desk. Subsequent commentators will revise that view, arguing that Eichmann was really a more-than-willing participant of the Holocaust, a man who derived sadistic pleasure from arranging the slaughter of millions. But while Eichmann’s internal convictions may remain open to debate, what seems undeniable is that without the bravery and tenacity of the Israeli spies who tracked him down, Adolf Eichmann may never have been captured, tried, or executed, as he was on June 1st, 1962.

Outro

Next on History Daily. June 2nd, 1953. 25-year-old Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor is crowned Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Joe Viner.

Produced by Alexandra Currie-Buckner.

Executive Producers are Steven Walters for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.