Eichmann on extermination and conscience
How did Eichmann describe learning of the extermination order, witnessing killings, and the effect on his own and other perpetrators’ consciences?
These passages come from the Sassen interview collection. Quotations use working English translations, with selected readings corrected against the scans and punctuation lightly regularized. Source links open the original scan and page text; […] marks an omission. Unless otherwise indicated, the words quoted are Eichmann’s. His retrospective accounts contain contradictions and attempts to justify his role.
Heydrich’s reaction to announcing extermination
Eichmann portrays Heydrich as unusually subdued when announcing the order. He interprets the change in tone as surprise and an inward shudder. This is Eichmann’s retrospective interpretation of Heydrich’s state of mind. In a later exchange he also recalls his own astonishment and an objection he says he voiced to Müller.
No, no one had ever thought of that. I am convinced that Heydrich, who was a very cold man, a man who was very self-controlled, that this man too inwardly shuddered at the words “physical extermination”.
For he told me this matter in a kind of way and manner in which he otherwise did not; otherwise he was abrupt and energetic, whereas in this matter he spoke in a kind of softer conversational language, in any case never in the form of an order, so that one could perhaps infer psychologically that he too was surprised at the time.
No, I noticed that Heydrich had also been given something new here—I was also astonished—and Mueller noticed it too when I told him, this will not do, we cannot carry out the Jewish question this way. No, no, no, no, the SIPO could not have given birth to something like that. No, Heydrich did not propose it.
Related passages: Part III, scan 86; Part III, scan 87.
Learning what “physical extermination” meant
He repeatedly returns to the moment he learned of the order. His account separates hearing the words from grasping their meaning: killing. The German phrase “tonnenschwere Last” describes a ton-heavy burden. The weight of the realization is explicit; remorse is a separate question.
I remember exactly the moment when I was told: “The Führer has ordered physical annihilation.” I heard the words “physical annihilation” for the first time in my life. That moment stayed with me. I have forgotten much, but I will probably never forget that moment.
These are words and sentences heavy with meaning, which one cannot even grasp at the moment they are uttered; one can only grasp them afterward. The ton-heavy burden can only be grasped later.
And when everything then went awry, I did not know how to go on; I let everything hang and go, and when Heydrich then told me that the Führer had ordered physical extermination—I still had to think about it: “PHYSICAL EXTERMINATION”—that meant killing...
As I told you, I sat there, I heard it—I let the words “physical extermination” grind through my head.
Gas vans: refusing to look, weak knees, and “hell opened up”
Describing a visit near Łódź, Eichmann says he refused to look through a gas van’s peephole. He recalls physical distress, an objection to Müller, and horror at the unloading of bodies and removal of gold teeth. His dating of the visit to autumn 1941 is his recollection. Elsewhere he also describes being upset by an inspection at Lublin.
The doctor who was there told me I should look through the peephole; there had been a peephole from the driver's seat, perhaps 5 cm in diameter, and there was a light bulb inside; I saw that from outside because the little pane of the peephole was lit, and then I refused, I did not want to see that.
[…]
and I did not look inside, because I was seeing and hearing something like that for the first time. My knees went weak.
[…]
When I returned, Mueller told me I should have timed it, but I told him that I could not see through. I said to Mueller, it can't be done this way, one can't do it like this— but he did not answer me, he only looked at me in a fatherly, benevolent way— I never really understood Mueller, he more or less forgave me for not looking through the peephole, strange as “forgave” may sound.— I drove out there and arrived, and then for the first time hell opened up before me
[…]
Then a Pole jumped in— it shook me greatly at the time when I saw it; he jumped in with a pair of pliers in his hand, opened the people's mouths, and whoever had a gold tooth, he pulled it out and put it into the bag he had tied around himself.
I already said once: the first time I was personally upset was when Heydrich sent me to Lublin
Related passages: Part I, scan 31; Part IV, scan 20.
Minsk: a mother and child, fatherhood, and the fear of training sadists
Eichmann links his reaction to a shooting with having children of his own. He describes a silent return journey and thoughts about the meaning of life, while expressly denying that he turned against National Socialism. His objection to Müller also concerns the effect of killing on the perpetrators: that it would train them in sadism.
And why has this scene remained so indelibly in my memory?—I had children of my own then—and then I saw a Jewish woman who lifted up a small child, perhaps one or two years old, and at the very moment when I still wanted to say, “Don’t shoot, hand over the child,” at that very moment the child gets shot and out—
I saw this standing so close that afterward at home I saw the brain splatter stuck to my coat. My driver helped me remove it.
Even on this return trip I did not speak with my driver; I was thinking—not that I was now cursing National Socialism after all the misfortune; no, I was thinking about the meaning of life in general—
I said to Mueller then, literally, after all that I had seen: “Grf. The solution is clear: it should have been a political solution; only because the Führer ordered a physical solution must it be a physical solution, clear; but the way it is done in Minsk, and perhaps elsewhere too, this will not do, because our people are inevitably being trained in sadism.”
[Uncertain: You] cannot possibly shoot a woman in the brain when she cannot defend herself, with a child she is holding out toward us. That is not how we solve the Jewish question. But Mueller was like a prince this time too…
Related passages: Part II, scan 79; Part III, scan 73; Part III, scan 88; Part IV, scan 21.
Switching off and forgetting
In the same account of witnessing killings, he presents sensitivity and rapid forgetting as coexisting. This claim sits uneasily beside his recollections of images that remained vivid for more than a decade.
because I am, in fact, a very sensitive person; I cannot see something like that just like that; then I get a nervous tremor.
But one good thing I got from nature is that I can switch off and forget very quickly, without wanting to.
Auschwitz: persistent images and shame at appearing weak
He says the sight of burning bodies stayed with him for twelve to fourteen years. In another telling, he describes forcing himself to remain upright in front of Höss’s escort. Fear of appearing weak forms part of his account of distress.
On that occasion Höss told me the words of the RF, because I said then: ‘For the first time in my life I have seen something like this,’ and it may be that Höss saw in me a certain apprehension, a horror, since I had often seen him. It made such an impression on me that even today I still see that heap of corpses before me, after 12, 13, 14 years.
And when I then saw the young men of the Waffen-SS shooting at these Jews in the pit, I had just caught the last volleys; then I somehow became different—my knees shook just as they had once when Hoess showed me something where corpses were burned. My knees shook; I have said it before,—at that time I had to gather all my strength in front of Hoess’s escort, which was buzzing along behind us, because I had no escort, so that I would not somehow fall flat on my face.
Related passages: Part IV, scan 171.
Using a childhood recitation to stop the thoughts and trembling
Eichmann describes a technique of distraction at Auschwitz. The transcript inserts “Vaterunser” (Our Father) rather than recording the prayer in full. His stated purpose is to divert his thoughts, stop his knees shaking, and avoid shame; the passage does not establish a prayer for forgiveness.
And so I repeatedly encountered dead people, and I always had a strange feeling. I remember when I saw them in Auschwitz: God— my knees were shaking— and on the day I saw that, I still had a saying from my youth, and I always use it when I cannot get my thoughts away from something and want to distract myself. I say the following: (Our Father)— and even as a child I had found that once I said it, I no longer thought about the other thing.—
The same happened to me in Auschwitz when Hoess took me there and thought, now I’ll show this desk clerk what it is like… Of course, he meant it kindly— and so I said it then too, so that my knees would stop shaking; otherwise I would have been ashamed.
Höss’s suffering and Himmler’s reassurance
Eichmann says Höss suffered under his work and found reassurance in Himmler’s claim that the killings would spare future generations a struggle. He says the same argument reassured him in his own duties. This is a secondhand account: Eichmann reports what Höss told him about Himmler’s visit. “RF” means Reichsführer-SS, Himmler.
I learned from Höss himself that he suffered personally, as a human being, under his work, which partly included the physical annihilation of opponents. Once, as we sat in his home, he told me—perhaps to console himself—that a few days earlier the RF had visited Auschwitz and seen everything, including the physical annihilation of opponents, from gassing to burning. In Höss’s presence the RF had told the men: “These are battles our coming generations will no longer have to fight.” This RF statement, he said, had reassured not only his men but Höss himself inwardly that this heavy, burdensome work was necessary for the blood he came from and had to be carried out. I concluded from this that Höss was not the bulldog-like, uncomplicated, brutal camp commandant he was made out to be, but a man who examined himself and was accustomed to account for what he did. We thought as Höss did. When he told me this RF statement—which I can still repeat exactly today—it probably meant as much to me in my official capacity, though I was not present, as it did to Höss in his sector. We were followers of our RF and had pledged by oath to obey our superiors and carry out our orders for the good and benefit of German blood.
Related passages: Part I, scan 132; Part I, scan 135.
Relaxation after the Wannsee Conference
He recalls sitting comfortably with Heydrich and Müller after the conference, with smoking and cognac. This Sassen passage conveys the group’s mood and social ease. It does not explicitly say that the conference relieved Eichmann’s conscience.
I still remember that after this Wannsee Conference, Heydrich, Mueller, and my humble self sat comfortably by a fireplace; I saw Heydrich smoke there for the first time, a cigar or cigarette (?) and I thought, “Hey, Heydrich smokes now…” And something I had never seen: he drank cognac, although for years I had not seen Heydrich drink any kind of alcoholic beverage.
[…]
And after this Wannsee Conference we sat together peacefully, not to engage in shop talk but to give ourselves to rest after the long, strenuous hours. I can say no more about it.
Bombing victims as a reason to approve extermination
He presents the bombing of Berlin as a turning point from shock to endorsement of the extermination order. The interviewer challenges the chronology, pointing out that November 1943 was two years later. Eichmann answers that good leaders must foresee events. Asked whether his reaction faded afterward, he says it persisted into the interviews. His identification of Jews with Germany’s wartime enemies is an antisemitic justification.
then came the year 43—the bombing raids on Berlin—what I saw there defies description—then I said to myself, and the Führer was right after all with the extermination order, this enemy must be exterminated. I had never had this thought in quite this way before—but when I saw all this misery, then yes (description of the air mine in the diplomats’ cellar; these people too once saw how these dogs treated us—gesture of a foreign diplomat, all dead—) Yes, it contradicted our mentality, but only up to a certain point, and then no longer.
No, I changed nothing in my position, and I say that even today...
In 1941, when I saw that, I was as if knocked down from the seventh heaven and said that...and I said then, and you heard very correctly, and you also captured my entire attitude with that—after this experience in Berlin with this old married couple, I said to myself—and the Führer was right after all to have all these dogs killed. When you see such horror —that is our own blood, those are our children—that is me…
Related passages: Part I, scan 33; Part I, scan 135; Part III, scan 88.
“Too monstrous”—yet no attempt to withdraw
He says “we all” regarded the method as monstrous, then argues that further thought became useless once it was too late. When asked whether he tried to free himself from the task, he says he never did. He repeatedly distinguishes killing from the registration and transport work he carried out.
Yes, if you put it that way, then I have to tell you what we all said to ourselves—it is too monstrous, this method of solving the problem…
Wait, once it was too late, no longer; then thoughts were no use; later I did not think about it anymore...
But it was not my task as a recipient of orders, during a total war, to put the order I received and its effect on a letter scale... Yes, where would we have ended up if everyone could have interpreted his order according to his own opinion, according to his own wishes—I would have sent my subordinates before a court-martial, and I myself would have belonged there…
No, never—an order had to be carried out... That is, I had nothing to carry out; at that time I only had to inspect and submit reports.
Yes, that is true, but the registration never gave me a headache.
Denying a troubled conscience or a sense of guilt
When the interviewer suggests he is absolving his conscience, Eichmann rejects the premise. He grounds his denial of guilt in duty to people, fatherland, and oath. The final quotation continues across two scans.
I have absolutely no reason to absolve my conscience—I state that herewith
For I have no need to justify myself in any way, and I have no need in any way to relieve my conscience; I have no need of that, I feel no oppression and no sense of guilt in me—for, as a German who had sworn the oath, it was my self-evident and most basic duty to do my duty toward the people and fatherland… and I did that duty by carrying out and obeying the orders I received, and by giving the orders emphasis insofar as I had to detail them.
Separating feelings from thoughts that might change his conduct
The interviewer presses him on whether emotional reactions must have produced thoughts. Eichmann tries to separate personal feeling from reflection on his official work. He locates his thinking in 1941, acknowledges that further reflection might have produced other thoughts “for purely human reasons,” and contrasts his feelings with the coldness he attributes to his deputy Günther.
I have to go back to the year 1941; that is the only time I thought. But it must be expressly said that I did not think for myself—for today it would be tremendously easy for me to distance myself by telling you a fairy tale about all the pious wishes I had... I will not do that; I have no right to, because later I no longer thought; I thought in 1941.
From then on I received only the orders which, whether they suited me or not, I was to carry out in accordance with my duty.— I no longer had to think; —had I wanted to think—or had I wanted to look at the whole matter in detail first, especially those matters for which the Sipo and the SD, or rather the central agencies, were not at all responsible, perhaps other thoughts would have occurred to me for purely human reasons. That is possible...
Yes, my inner feeling, not my thoughts...
[…]
Yes, my inner feeling,—that was quite the opposite of my regular representative—Guenter was a man of icy coldness… In all the 7 years of our collaboration I did not have even a fraction of a human relationship with him...he was so cold that, in my absence, he simply had my people killed.
That I was an unhappy man, yes, that is true.
Related passages: Part IV, scan 15; Part IV, scan 16; Part IV, scan 17.
His “only consolation” during the transports
He describes uncertainty about an individual deportee’s fate, and his claim that deciding that fate lay outside his responsibility, as a psychological support. This claim concerns individual outcomes within a killing system whose existence he discusses openly.
Yes, yes, that is true—my only consolation through all those transports was that I did not know whether he would die or not… That was my only support, that I was not responsible for that, that I did not know what happened to the people…
Related passages: Part III, scan 74; Part III, scan 87.
“My task did not burden me”
Eichmann says he was glad to have been spared the commandant’s job at Auschwitz, yet would have obeyed an order to kill there. In another version he says he is neither grateful nor ungrateful to fate. His relief at avoiding direct exposure coexists with professed willingness to carry out the killings.
Good, and adapting your thoughts, I probably thought: This whole shit has nothing to do with me. I am just glad fate spared me from being commandant of Auschwitz. And I said I was more than grateful to fate; if it had come to that, I would have carried out the order too. My task did not burden me. One must distinguish very sharply between physical extermination and the registration in the individual countries.
Had I, by a quirk of fate, had to fill the post of a concentration camp commandant, I would not have acted differently either, and if I had received the order to gas and shoot Jews, then I would have carried out the orders, and I have already said once;
I am neither grateful nor ungrateful to fate that I did not get such a post, because I cannot sail against the wind anyway. For we were obligated by our oath to obey orders, and that is what I did. I was always a proper SS leader, accustomed to obeying.
Deliberately restricting what he allowed himself to see
This is his clearest account of deliberately separating the transports from their consequences. He describes a “Jesuitical train of thought” that kept the arrangements for handing over Jews within his field of vision while excluding what followed. “Jesuitical” is his description of his reasoning.
After I had wanted to bring the matter to a solution on a purely political basis and then saw the whole affair being shifted onto another track, I devised—as the last resort of my wisdom—a certain Jesuitical train of thought, which put a blinder on my right side and left my view free only to the left. I had to arrange the transports and the legal basis in the individual countries under our influence so that they would hand the Jews over to us. And everything that happened to the right of that blinder I did not want to see, did not wish to see, wanted nothing to do with. That is my mental picture.
Distance from killing as a way to keep officials working
He assigns a psychological function to the division of labor. Having to experience the entire extermination process, he says, would have prevented Gestapo officials from working at the same speed. He credits Himmler with keeping them at a distance.
Had we in the Gestapo had to go through such a process from the beginning—they wisely never ordered us to do so—we probably could no longer have worked at that same speed. That was a very clever measure by the Reichsführer.
Calling the obedience-and-blinders excuse “cheap nonsense”
Elsewhere he rejects the very excuse he uses in other passages. Discussing his anti-Jewish work broadly, he says it would offend his “inner morality” to claim he merely obeyed orders with blinders on. This passage helps reveal the competing accounts he gives of his own commitment; it is not tied to one particular extermination order.
And surely they saw in me, in light of their experiences, in me the suitable man, and I say this today, in 1957, to my own disadvantage— I could have it easier, I could say it was an order, I had to carry it out according to my oath of allegiance, and otherwise I had blinkers; no— that is cheap nonsense— that is a cheap excuse, which I cannot answer for with my inner morality. So I must clearly explain that after I had stubbornly carried out the first orders, I then made an effort to get into the matter. For fate had given me an intellectual horizon which apparently enabled me to do so.
Related passages: Part IV, scan 188.
Psychological incapacity and the consciences of subordinates
In the discussion of extermination orders, an interviewer describes relieving an officer of an execution duty because it would psychologically destroy him. Eichmann replies that he would have court-martialed his own men. In a separate exchange about Hungary, he claims his colleague Gromeier would have spoken up if conscience prevented compliance. That is Eichmann’s assertion about a colleague, rather than evidence of an actual refusal.
Interviewer:
I myself experienced it with a captain: he had an execution order. He asked me to relieve him; he would be psychologically ruined by it. Since I valued the man highly—he was capable—I took it off his hands and redirected it
Eichmann:
As much as you value your man, I would just as much have had my men put before a court-martial
I am convinced that he would have had enough courage to say it to my face if something had been incompatible with his conscience. He was not forced to come to me; he volunteered and was then appointed.
Related passages: Part II, scan 76.
Invoking Himmler to dispel Rauter’s reservations
Eichmann describes overcoming reservations about deportation by invoking Himmler’s order. He specifically says Rauter’s reservations concerned the Dutch police and political circumstances, rather than a personal moral objection. The psychological point is the authority he attributes to the order: it supposedly removed hesitation and gave Rauter strength to overcome others’ resistance.
Please, I said explicitly—not as a person, but that he had expressed only reservations because apparently he had to reckon with the Dutch police, and there he also had to see things clearly. And I said that I had to dispel Rauter’s reservations.
I would not call him distinctly stupid—Rauter was a recipient of orders, though he carried out only the RF’s order; he recognized him as his superior. As I said already, it was enough if I could show him that the RF had ordered it; that dispelled all reservations in him, and that also gave him the strength to haul the reservations of a Reich Commissioner over the [handwritten: hurdles], and to pull the Reich Commissioner over these hurdles with him.
Related passages: Part IV, scan 85.
Gold teeth and watches: a moral boundary alongside mass killing
He condemns stealing from victims and desecrating corpses, and says tolerating acts from “base motives” would have deprived him of peace of mind. In the same exchange he contemplates vastly greater retaliatory killing. The interviewer challenges his distinction between taking property and destroying a person’s life.
Reject it, condemn it, because it is inconceivable to me as an SS man. I wage a fight against the enemy; if necessary, a cruel fight, but first of all I do not take even a watch from the enemy. I accept nothing from this enemy, not even a gold crown—if he has it, let him go to his grave with it.
If it happened when the person is dead, that is desecration of a corpse. I would not take gold from a fallen enemy at the front either; it is the same thing. I do not know what the enemy did to us; if he fights me, kills me and my family, then I kill him too—that is natural. But if it resorts to the vile means of desecrating a corpse, I consider myself too good to repay it with corpse desecration. Then I put ten times or a hundred thousand times as many against the wall, but I would not let anyone pull out the gold teeth because he had done that to a fallen German soldier.
I would not have peace of mind today, after so many years, if I had tolerated even one case motivated by base motives, when it came to my attention, or had ordered such things by old methods. But as far as I know, my whole circle—we all remained correct in these matters; we held a different view.
Related passages: Part II, scan 199; Part I, scan 32.
Revenge and the spread of moral indifference
Continuing the discussion of killing and the treatment of victims’ bodies, Eichmann imagines commanders becoming indifferent to ethical limits after learning of family deaths. He says that attitude could spread through their men. This is his retrospective explanation and an attempt to shift responsibility toward locally acting perpetrators.
I can imagine how someone heard that some close relative had been massacred in hand-to-hand fighting, how he had died under whatever circumstances, how this and that had happened during the war, and how his entire thought and effort hardened toward destroying the enemy, until in the end he could no longer distinguish whether ethical values were to be upheld here, or whether now everything was, shit...irrelevant, if it served victory, even if it was the last tenth of a gram of gold. “You dogs had my wife and children suffocated; now ten thousand are next...”
You see, there were many such elements in subordinate leadership positions, even leadership positions, where they could command one or several men; and this outlook was transferred to the men, multiplied with other subgroups, which adds up to quite a nice total
Selective regret for Jewish people he knew
He expresses regret over the deaths of Jewish officials with whom he had worked and claims to have opposed avoidable hardship. The first passage is supplementary first-person prose in the interview collection, rather than a clearly recorded spoken exchange. In the continuing discussion of his feelings about deportation and killing, he also wonders whether a remnant of his Christian upbringing survived. These are his claims about personal feeling within his participation in persecution.
Dr. Eppstein of Berlin, Commercial Councillor Storfer of Vienna, and, I believe, Dr. Weilmann and Edelstein of Prague, were taken to a concentration camp in 1944, while I was absent from Reich territory, without my knowledge; they died or were killed there. They were Jewish officials with whom I had worked for years in some cases—officially, and correctly, on both sides. When I learned the facts later, I made no secret of my regret and incomprehension, either before the Jews or before my superior, Police Lieutenant General Müller, and my permanent deputy.
By that I mean that such thoughts occupied me while I was, so to speak, burdened with work for the Sipo and SD. And I tried, in a way, to tease out the meaning—why the harshness, if nothing lasts forever. And I said to myself: Should I still carry with me a remnant of the Christian upbringing from my youth, despite this harshness?
No order had been more welcome to me, one that I probably dictated a dozen times, than that avoidable hardships should be avoided. Wherever I encountered excesses, even approximately, I intervened.
Those were my thoughts; those were my feelings.
Related passages: Part III, scan 15; Part III, scan 16; Part III, scan 17; Part IV, scan 20.
Fear of being haunted by further scenes of killing
During discussion of an Auschwitz account, a participant says that witnessing more would have imposed a lasting psychological burden, while also wishing for firsthand knowledge to calculate the numbers. The context suggests Eichmann, but the transcript does not name the speaker. This attribution remains uncertain.
Unlabelled speaker, probably Eichmann:
One never knows how much one may believe people—and today I am glad I never saw such things and had nothing to do with them, because they would certainly weigh on me psychologically. But at this moment I regret that I did not see it after all, because then I could base a completely different calculation on it myself. I could speak from my own experience
Satisfaction in the deaths of “enemies of the Reich”
Revisiting his farewell boast, Eichmann describes joy at the thought of millions of enemies dying with him. When challenged, he insists he said “enemies of the Reich” rather than “Jews.” Later, discussing a version that placed millions of deaths “on his conscience,” he objects that accepting that wording would amount to admitting criminal guilt. His choice of words becomes part of his effort to control the meaning of the boast.
It had been in Berlin, specifically in my office on Kurfürstenstraße; the war was nearing its end, everything was lost, over, — and then I either had all my officers come, or it came out of a meeting like that, and these were pretty much my last days in office, and formally bidding farewell I then expressed myself thus: if it must now be so, I will gladly and joyfully jump into the pit with the awareness that 5 million enemies of the Reich have jumped in with me; I know that I said these words very harshly, because at that time I felt extraordinarily happy; if I already have to bite my way in there like the dogs, then at least I am not alone in there... that was my feeling, and I also expressed it to my gentlemen, and with that I had, for all intents and purposes, left the stage.
I would have virtually admitted guilt. — I cannot have said that; as I said, in the presence of my subordinates I would have slapped myself in the face.
Related passages: Part I, scan 34; Part III, scan 81; Part III, scan 82; Part III, scan 83; Part IV, scan 128.
His closing declaration: no regrets and endorsement of total extermination
At the close of the interviews, Eichmann describes himself as both a bureaucrat and a fanatical fighter. He says his inner self resists admitting wrongdoing and that killing all the Jews in the figure he cites would have satisfied him. His stated figure is reproduced as part of the quotation. This declaration is central to interpreting the distress passages: his accounts of horror coexist with an explicit endorsement of genocide.
I, the cautious bureaucrat.—
But I would like to expand on “the cautious bureaucrat” to my own disadvantage: alongside this cautious bureaucrat stood a fanatical fighter for the freedom of the blood from which I descend.— And I say once again: the louse that bites you does not bother me, but the louse that sits under my collar does—and that applies to my people. What benefits my people is a sacred command and sacred law to me.—
And now, in conclusion, I must tell you: first, I regret nothing; I do not crawl to the cross in any way. In the four months in which we have now taken up the whole matter, during which you tried to refresh my memory, a great deal has been refreshed.— It would be too easy, and I could make it cheap, in today’s view, to act as though I were somehow playing a role in which a Saul became a Paul. But I tell you, I cannot do that, because I am not prepared to, because my inner self resists saying that we did anything wrong. No,— I must tell you quite honestly: if we had killed 10.3 million Jews, the number Korherr gave, as we now know—10.3 million Jews—then I would be satisfied and would say: good, we have destroyed an enemy.
Related passages: Part IV, scan 187; Part IV, scan 189.
Human feeling as weakness, and regret at not doing more
His closing self-assessment treats human feeling and insufficient physical toughness as weaknesses. He reproaches himself for failing to do more. A defective sentence between the two excerpts is omitted; the statements about weakness, what he could and should have done, and physical toughness are clear.
Of course, I must tell you, human feeling also comes into it; I too have not been free of it, I too succumbed to weakness
[…]
I too was a limited mind; I was placed in a position where in truth I could have done more and where in truth I should have done more. As an excuse it may serve that, first, I lacked a comprehensive intellect; second, I lacked the necessary physical toughness; and third, that against my will I had a legion of people who also opposed this will, so that I myself, already feeling handicapped, could not in turn carry out the rest that might have helped me break through, because I had to spread myself too thin in a years-long struggle against the so-called interventionists.