Otto Adolf Eichmann was born on 19 March 1906, in Solingen, Germany, and raised in a Protestant, middle-class family. After his mother died, the family moved to Linz, Austria, where Eichmann attended the same school once attended by Adolf Hitler. However, Eichmann was academically unsuccessful, eventually dropping out of vocational college without a degree. He worked a variety of jobs, including as a traveling oil salesman.

In 1932, encouraged by friends, Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party and the SS. After losing his job due to economic cuts, he relocated to Germany in 1933, just after the Nazis seized power. He entered the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and quickly rose in the ranks, thanks to his intense work ethic and his emerging role as an expert in Jewish affairs. Ironically, Eichmann even learned some Hebrew and Yiddish, using this knowledge to better understand and control Jewish communities.

Throughout the mid to late 1930s, Eichmann worked to coordinate Jewish emigration from Germany and Austria, often through forced or manipulated channels. He was instrumental in setting up emigration offices, such as the one in Vienna, that handled the systematic removal of Jewish people from Nazi-controlled regions under coercive pressure.

By 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, Eichmann’s focus shifted from expelling Jews to deporting and eventually exterminating them.

As the architect of the Holocaust’s logistics, Eichmann personally coordinated the mass deportation and eventual deaths of millions of European Jews between 1939 and 1945, serving under the Nazi SS and directly answering to senior officials like Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Müller, and ultimately Heinrich Himmler.

When World War II broke out in September 1939, Nazi policy toward Jews shifted dramatically from forced emigration to deportation and internment. Eichmann, who had already established himself as an expert in "Jewish affairs," was appointed head of the RSHA’s Department IV-B4, specifically overseeing Jewish emigration and later, extermination logistics. In this position, he coordinated the forced displacement of Jews from Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, and other territories occupied by Nazi Germany.

At first, Nazi plans focused on deporting Jews to ghettos and designated regions. Eichmann was responsible for overseeing operations like the Nisko Plan, an early failed attempt to concentrate Jews in a "reservation" area in southeastern Poland. Deportees were sent by train to Nisko, where they were abandoned with no shelter, food, or water. Many died of exposure; others were forced east into Soviet-occupied territory. Though the plan was abandoned in late 1939, it laid the foundation for future, deadlier operations.

Eichmann's rise continued. By 1941, the Nazi regime’s objectives escalated toward outright extermination. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June that year, the SS Einsatzgruppen — mobile killing squads — began systematically murdering Jews behind the frontlines. Eichmann, while not present during these killings, received regular reports and was kept fully informed of their progress. His department worked in tandem with the Gestapo and SS to refine the next phase: mass deportation to extermination camps.

In January 1942, Eichmann attended the Wannsee Conference, a secret high-level meeting of Nazi leaders where the Final Solution — the complete annihilation of European Jewry — was formally coordinated. Eichmann served as Heydrich’s assistant, compiled statistical data on Jewish populations across Europe, and prepared the conference minutes, which documented Nazi plans for transporting Jews to death camps in the east. After this point, Eichmann's office became the central coordinator for all railway logistics, deportation schedules, and property seizures related to the Holocaust.

Eichmann’s department arranged thousands of train transports, often under horrific conditions. Jews were packed into cattle cars with little food or water, often for journeys that lasted days. Many died en route. Upon arrival at death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bełżec, Majdanek, and Sobibor, most were immediately gassed, especially the elderly, children, and women. Eichmann’s role, though bureaucratic, was essential. He managed deportation rosters, timetables, and communication between the SS, German railways, and foreign collaborators. His focus was on maximum efficiency and minimal cost, not human life.

Perhaps Eichmann’s most notorious operation came in 1944, when Germany occupied Hungary. Up until then, Hungary’s Jews had been largely spared deportation. But under Eichmann’s leadership, over 437,000 Hungarian Jews were rounded up in just eight weeks, beginning in mid-May. Nearly all were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where approximately 75% were murdered upon arrival. Survivors of these transports were subjected to forced labor or later gassed. Eichmann personally oversaw the logistics and was present in Budapest throughout the operation.

Despite international outcry and pressure from neutral countries and the Vatican, the deportations continued until July 1944, when Hungary's leader Miklós Horthy finally halted the operation. Still, Eichmann attempted to resume the deportations in July and August, even as the war began turning against Germany. His last known mass atrocity was the forced death marches of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Budapest to Austria, which began in late 1944. Prisoners were made to walk over 100 miles under brutal conditions, with thousands dying along the way.

With Germany collapsing in 1945, Eichmann ordered the destruction of incriminating records from Department IV-B4. He fled to Austria and lived under an alias, avoiding justice for 15 years. His role in the Holocaust had already been exposed during the Nuremberg Trials, with multiple witnesses naming him as a central figure in the Final Solution.

In 1960, Israeli Mossad agents captured Eichmann outside his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after he had been living under the name Ricardo Klement. He was secretly flown to Israel and stood trial for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against the Jewish people. His defense, that he was merely "following orders", was rejected by the court, which found him deeply complicit and morally responsible.

He was convicted on 15 counts and sentenced to death. Eichmann was executed by hanging on 1 June 1962, making him the only person ever officially executed by the Israeli state following a civilian trial. His last words were a mix of defiance and religious reference, and his ashes were scattered at sea, to ensure no place of martyrdom could be established.