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Name: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Rating: 4.6 (324 reviews)
Author: Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt's landmark work about Europe's anti-Semitic and imperialist roots

4.6 (324 Bewertungen)

19 Min.

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Sozialismus & Kapitalismuskritik Europäische Geschichte Deutsche Politik Westliche Philosophie

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The Origins of Totalitarianism
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What’s in it for me? Get a landmark account of how totalitarianism can corrupt so many.

We’ve come a long way and made a great many advancements over the years, but the fact remains that we’re only a few generations away from one of the most devastating wars humanity has ever known. It’s comforting to think that we’ve moved past such brutalities, but if we truly hope to prevent future atrocities we must stay mindful of how quickly a democratic society can turn against its people.

With some luck, Hannah Arendt was able to escape the Nazis as a refugee in the 1930s. The Origins of Totalitarianism is considered her masterwork by many, but it was not without its controversy when it was first published only a few years after WWII.

Arendt traces events in Europe that led to the rise of totalitarianism in Germany and the Soviet Union, and the role ineffective democratic governments played in setting the stage for these brutal regimes. As her account lays bare, we need to be vigilant in maintaining free discourse and making sure people don’t fall through the cracks of society, because when they do, terrible things can happen.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how catastrophically dangerous conspiracy theories can be;
how a criminal trial shed light on a country’s racial divisions; and
why a totalitarian movement will target lonely people.

European Jews were historically isolated from mainstream society but kept close to those in charge.

During the twentieth century, totalitarianism has been inseparably linked to anti-Semitism. The reasons behind this anti-Semitism are complex, and to try to explain it, we’ll have to turn back the clock and look at how Europe’s class system changed over the years.

By the mid-seventeenth century, Europe had long been operating under the rules of feudalism, which meant that society was primarily divided into two categories: peasants and nobility.

Within this structure, Jewish people had traditionally worked in the position of moneylenders. They managed financial accounts for the nobility, including their loans, and in return, they received interest payments, as well as some special benefits that other non-nobles didn’t receive.

But then came the Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties signed in 1648, which essentially put an end to feudalism in much of Europe. From its ashes rose a new kind of society – one controlled by governments instead of monarchs. Under this new governmental rule, communities began to grow more homogenous and develop their own unique nationalities, which is how different regions in Europe came to be known as nation-states.

During the transition away from feudalism, the Jewish people who’d worked as nobility’s financial managers began to work for governments. But it was soon apparent that these more complex systems generated more work, so more Jewish people, including those who hadn’t previously benefited from feudal arrangements, began to rise in status.

However, the reality of this status was neither here nor there – for the Jews found that they were considered outsiders by everyone.

Their service to government brought them special access to elite circles and events, and this did more than just make the working class view them as having an unfair advantage. In fact, the growing number of Jews ascending the social ladder led to a popular conspiracy theory that there was a Jewish plot to take over all of Europe.

The ruling classes of Europe didn’t accept the Jews as their own, either. Instead, they saw Jews as a “vice” – something deemed to be unwholesome yet had to be endured due to the role Jews played in society. Therefore, some Jews were accepted on an individual basis, though they were still looked down upon, even by people who benefited greatly from their assistance.

Racist imperialism and pan-nationalism emerged in the new but weak nation-state.

With the advent of the nation-state, there was some hope that modern society could be both strong and fair. But this hope diminished rapidly, as the pursuit of power in this new world took over.

In the wake of feudalism, the bourgeoisie were on the rise, and replacing the dwindling nobility as the most powerful economic group. However, the new governments only allowed their capitalist ambitions to go so far. So, in order for business to expand, businessmen had to look beyond their own borders, thereby giving birth to generations of imperialism.

As the nation-state crumbled, Jews took the blame for society’s ills.

As the nineteenth century progressed, governments continued to lose power to imperialists and pan-nationalist movements. The nation-state was disintegrating, and Jews would suffer immensely because of it, even though they were initially unaware of how dire the situation was becoming.

With government power on the decline, there was a corresponding growth in resentment against Jewish people. This had to do with the Jews still being relatively wealthy, even though their role in government finance was carrying less weight.

Up to and following WWI, more and more people joined the “classless masses,” ideal subjects for totalitarianism.

As a result of the nation-state’s instability, an increasing number of people were losing their places in society at the start of the twentieth century.

Political parties represented the interests of the upper and middle classes, and there was a growing number of poor, disenfranchised people in Europe who felt unrepresented by any political party. They became known as the classless masses, and their numbers only increased after the widespread destruction of World War I.

The masses were now ready to be indoctrinated by totalitarian propaganda.

When totalitarianism takes hold in a society, it’s a sign that the people have disengaged from analytical and political thought. Within a totalitarian society, the only thing that really matters is the leader’s vision for the future. If factual evidence is presented to disprove that vision or present a viable alternative, it’s always twisted into an attempt by an enemy to mislead the public.

After their formation in the years following WWI, the Nazis consistently steered people away from analytical thought and repeatedly hammered them with the fake story of a Jewish conspiracy and its threat to their way of life. Over and over again, the public was warned that steps must be taken to prevent the Jews from succeeding, or else a horrible, oppressive future lay ahead. And since there was only room for one vision in the Nazis’ totalitarian society, this tall tale became the public’s reality.

At the helm of totalitarianism is an ideology that distorts history to fit the reality of the ideology.

Another typical sign of totalitarianism is that the propaganda and ideology make careful efforts to rewrite history in a way that justifies a totalitarian regime’s actions. In the case of the Nazis, their skewed version of history presented Aryans as the eternal master race, and suggested that all of history had been leading up to the moment in the 1930s when Germany would be able to fulfill its destiny of world conquest.

For this kind of revisionist story to make sense, a totalitarian party must suppress individual free thinking and turn the once-isolated masses into instruments ready to obey the leader’s will. When this happens, the only sensible version of history will be the one that aligns with the party’s ideology.

Totalitarianism is truly all-encompassing.

Anyone who becomes part of the masses in a totalitarian movement becomes less human and more like a cog in a machine. Human characteristics like free thought and autonomy are extinguished as people become one anonymous gear.

One of the main ways in which totalitarianism succeeds in dehumanizing people is by deliberately taking away all spontaneity – for being spontaneous, making choices and changing your mind are at the heart of what it means to be free.

Whenever people are lonely, when humans are “atomised,” there is a risk that totalitarianism might succeed.

When people are isolated and feel left out or discarded by their communities, they become a prime target for a totalitarian movement – because when you lose your community, you also lose your sense of self. If you feel like society has decided you are disposable or unwanted, chances are you’ll be at a loss for meaningful connections with others. This also comes with a sense that there’s no place for you in society anymore, so why bother participating in anything?

At the core of this state, however, is a longing for something else to come along, fill this void and make people feel like they belong once more. This naturally makes them extremely vulnerable to the rhetoric of a totalitarian movement, which is full of promises to make them part of some bigger plan.

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Worum geht es in The Origins of Totalitarianism?

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) is a landmark work by Hannah Arendt, in which she traces the anti-Semitic and imperialist roots of modern-day totalitarianism in Europe. Starting with the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century, Arendt reveals the prejudices and myths that empowered the Nazism and Stalinism of the early twentieth century, and that can lead to the erosion of free-thinking democracy. She also gives clear warning on how to avoid predatory totalitarian movements in the future.

Wer The Origins of Totalitarianism lesen sollte

Students of philosophy and political science
Anyone interested in how history can teach us about the present
People concerned about human rights

Über den Autor

Hannah Arendt was a German-born scholar, philosopher and prolific writer. As a Jewish refugee from the Nazi regime, she was able to escape a forced march between internment camps in France and find passage to America, where she became the first woman to hold the rank of full professor at Princeton University. Her other books include The Human Condition (1958) and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).

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