Desk Murderer
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The term "desk murderer" () is attributed to
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...
and is used to describe state-employed mass murderers like
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ;"Eichmann"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 19 March 1906 – 1 Ju ...
, who planned and organised
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
without taking part in killings personally. The German translation of the term, ''Schreibtischtäter'', was listed as one of the 100 most significant words in the German language in the 20th century and dates from around the same time as the English version. In the early 1970s the word ''Schreibtischtäter'' was included in the German standard dictionary, the ''
Duden The Duden () is a dictionary of the Standard High German language, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, and later by Bibliographisches Institut GmbH, which was merged into Cornelsen Verlag in 2022. The Duden is updated regularly with ...
''.


History

The planning of the Holocaust, the genocide of the Jews, had one of its key points at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Only two of the participants actually took part in any killings. The other participants were involved in the planning and organisation of the Holocaust. This second group of officials was later classified as "desk murderers"; of this group, Adolf Eichmann was seen as the prototype of a desk murderer. Despite his designation as a desk murderer, Eichmann did leave his desk and office and traveled to extermination camps such as Sobibor, Auschwitz and Treblinka, becoming actively involved and knowing exactly what went on there. For this reason, some modern historians such as Bettina Stangneth dispute that Eichmann was a desk murderer, as he took too active an interest in the process of the Holocaust.
Maurice Papon Maurice Papon (; 3 September 1910 – 17 February 2007) was a French civil servant and Nazi collaborator who was convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the occupation of France. Papon led the police in major prefectures from ...
, responsible for the deportation of Jews from France during the German occupation, was, like Eichmann, seen as a stereotypical desk murderer and, like Eichmann, long escaped justice. Heinrich Müller, chief of the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
and Eichmann's superior, described by British historian
Robert S. Wistrich Robert Solomon Wistrich (April 7, 1945 – May 19, 2015) was a scholar of antisemitism, considered one of the world's foremost authorities on antisemitism. The Erich Neuberger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew Universi ...
as somebody who made mass murder into an administrative task, was another high-ranking desk murderer during World War II.
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...
, who reported on Eichmann's trial for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', published ''
Eichmann in Jerusalem ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil'' is a 1963 book by the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of ...
'' in 1963, a book sometimes falsely credited with being the source of the term "desk murderer". In this book she described him and his associates as the "modern, state-employed mass murderers" and talks of the "bureaucracy of murder". She first used the term "desk murderer" in early 1965 but this was not translated into German at the time and she herself did not use ''Schreibtischtäter'' in any of her German language publications. She used the term "desk murderer" in an English introduction to the report by German journalist on the
Frankfurt Auschwitz trials The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German language, German as , was a series of three trials running from 20 December 1963 to 14 June 1968, charging 25 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower- ...
in 1966 and, from there, it was translated to the German ''Schreibtischtäter''. The German origin of "desk murder" dates from 1964, when the ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The (; ''FAZ''; "Frankfurt General Newspaper") is a German newspaper founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt and is considered a newspaper of record for Germany. Its Sunday edition is the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'' ( ...
'' used the term for the first time.


Criminal responsibility

Under West German criminal law, a distinction is made between those who order murder and those who commit murder on their own initiative. Desk murderers who pass on orders from above would therefore be guilty only as accomplices to murder, but if they ordered any murders, they would be fully liable for them even if someone else carried them out. Some people, including lawyer
Jan Schlöss Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numbe ...
, have recommended reducing the scope of the term "desk murderer" to those who directly ordered murders. Others use the term to refer to anyone who was part of the bureaucracy engaged with carrying out criminal orders, no matter how indirect their involvement. One example is Ingeburg Werlemann, who took notes at the ill-famed Wannsee Conference of 1942.


Other use

The term "desk murderer" has also been used in non-Holocaust contexts, such as during the Auschwitz trial when the defence lawyer
Hans Laternser Hans Laternser (3 August 1908 in Diedenhofen – 21 July 1969 in Frankfurt am Main) was a German lawyer who specialised in Anglo-Saxon law. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, that made him especially qualified to defend Germans p ...
demanded the arrest of witness , an Auschwitz survivor and East German politician, for his alleged role in approving the killings of refugees attempting to escape East Germany on the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...
. The book ''I YOU WE THEM - Journeys Beyond Evil: The Desk Killers in History and Today'', by Dan Gretton, is a layered investigation into the phenomenon of the 'Schreibtischtäter'. ''I You We Them'' focuses beyond the intentionality of murder and examines the more complicated, and politically urgent, question of distanced killing, of how organisations and the individuals within them have been able to 'compartmentalise', to evade responsibility for their actions – whether in the rigid bureaucracies of the Third Reich or within the complex structures of corporations today. By foregrounding the role of white-collar perpetrators in the Holocaust and other historical genocides, and by highlighting the collaboration between corporations and the state in history and today, it raises urgent questions about the meaning of responsibility and the deeply problematic nature of contemporary corporate behaviour. In his book, Gretton notes that: "In the early stages of this research I used the term 'desk murderer'. However, it soon became apparent that many of the individuals who kill from their desks do not have the criminal intent to do so, therefore ‘desk killer’ is a more accurate term, Desk murderers do exist, but, thankfully, are very few. On the other hand, desk killers are all around us."Extract fro
'I You We Them: Journeys Beyond Evil'
by Dan Gretton
German far-right politician
Gerhard Frey Gerhard Frey (; born 1 June 1944) is a German mathematician, known for his work in number theory. Following an original idea of , he developed the notion of Frey–Hellegouarch curve, Frey–Hellegouarch curves, a construction of an elliptic cur ...
used the term ''Schreibtischtäter'' for people supporting Israel, as, in his view, they thereby became accomplices in "crimes committed there".


See also

* Corpse-like obedience *
Nuremberg defense Superior orders, also known as just following orders or the Nuremberg defense, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether civilian, military or police, should not be considered guilty of committing crimes ordered by a superior officer or ...
*
Little Eichmanns "Little Eichmanns" is a term used to describe people whose actions, while on an individual scale may seem relatively harmless even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit. The ...
* ''
Respondeat superior ''Respondeat superior'' (Latin: "let the master answer"; plural: ''respondeant superiores'') is a doctrine that a party is responsible for (and has vicarious liability for) acts of his agents.''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, ...
''


References

{{Reflist, 30em Holocaust terminology Planning the Holocaust Mass murder German words and phrases 1964 neologisms