Was it really so impossible to put Eichmann on trial in West Germany?

ECONOMIST: Adolf Eichmann

In 1962, World War II Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel for his role in the Nazi Holocaust.

CNN: Friday,

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, a fanatical Nazi and SS colonel in World War II, was sentenced to death in Jerusalem.

CNN: Sunday,

Eichmann himself comes across as a pathetic figure, dwarfed both by the evil he committed and the efforts made to catch him.

ECONOMIST: Adolf Eichmann

Eichmann was snatched from the street on his way home from work.

ECONOMIST: Adolf Eichmann

He brings out well the paradox of Eichmann's genuine interest in Jewish history and culture (he greeted his captors with a Hebrew prayer), and the abominable crimes he committed.

ECONOMIST: Adolf Eichmann

But he was still alive in late 1943 or early 1944, when he was interrogated by Adolf Eichmann in an attempt to determine if Grynszpan had acted alone when he shot vom Rath.

WSJ: Book Review: The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan

Mr Bascomb's understandable distaste for his subject does not prevent him giving a good flavour of Eichmann's slippery arguments once he went on trial: sometimes denying that he did anything wrong, sometimes saying he was only obeying orders, sometimes pleading other extenuating circumstances.

ECONOMIST: Adolf Eichmann