The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harvest Book

This book is simply a scanned/photocopied edition of a previous book. Image quality varies page to page, and there are even section which were apparently underlined in the source book that was scanned.

My initial inclination was to toss the book away. The hardcover version is too heavy, marred by unreadable type and cheap graphics, and expensive to boot. The early pages are marred by long passages of proof by assertion, and one must dig and dig into the material on antisemitism for a fair chance of genuine understanding. All this being said, the work is monumental, the scholarship incredible, the insights formidable. I will keep ploughing on. It isn't Flaubert but then what is?

While I don't doubt Ms. Arendt's scholarship, her writing style is convoluted to the point of being incomprehensible. (I have an engineering degree from an Ivy League school and did graduate work at Berkeley in economics.) Every other sentence is so long and complex that I have to re-read it four or five times, and I'm still not sure what she's trying to say. My significant other is an attorney, and she found the style of writing cumbersome and abstruse, too. Granted, the subject matter isn't simple, but I've read others on the same subject and didn't feel gaslighted. Approach this book with trepidation - it's a tough read. (And I'm in philosophical agreement with the author.) Have fun.

An amazing book. Nearly half of it deals with the political uses of racism. Also Ms Arendt explores the refugee problem in great depth. Oh yes, the discussion of Facism and totalitarianism are the best I've ever read. An easy read for the general reader.

This book addresses a very interesting topic, and has insights that I have not seen elsewhere. However, it is the most unreadable book I have tried to read in 50 years!. The author assumes that the reader can read German, French and Latin, and knows virtually every political figure of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some sentences have so many clauses that the reader forgets what the subject of the sentence was. Skip the book, and get the "Cliff Notes" on Google.

I spoke with an the store representative today by phone, but I would like to reiterate my issues with this product. Even though I had marked the first few pages, the representative assured me I would receive a full refund. While the refund is important to me, I would urge the store.com to discontinue selling this book, or others from this publisher or seller.
I purchased this book about a month ago, intending to use it for one of my classes. I just began reading it, had marked a few pages, and ignored my previous concern with its quality. After much frustration I discontinued using it due to its many errors in transcription. The book does not have a copyright, states that the publisher cannot be held responsible for its numerous errors on the "publication" page, many words are misspelled beyond recognition, and there is incomprehensible digital typeface in the middle of many pages, among numerous other issues with it.
the store needs to stop selling this product to its customers. I have bought numerous books and other goods from your website and have had no quality issues with them, until this purchase. I have since purchased a copy of the work from a legitimate publisher in place of this false copy. I would not have written if I were not legitimately concerned with this book. I am not even sure this "publisher" has a right to be printing this book, or others. I urge you to address this issue with whomever can best handle the situation, and if you can, to flip through this product to any page, and you will see the obvious issues with it.
It is unfortunate that I did not open this book sooner, and that I marked a few pages in an attempt to decipher it. I have no issues with the store.com and I plan to continue to make purchases on the site. I just hope nobody else has to deal with this publisher's quality control problems in the future.

According to Hannah Arendt, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia created totalitarian political systems. Totalitarianism, she argues, transcends left/right distinctions and is a novel political form, both unknown to traditional political thought and uniquely dangerous to humanity. Since political systems emerge from particular contexts, Arendt sees the emergence of totalitarian evil as eloquent testimony of profound problems which have only arisen in our modern world. Her 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is a powerful attempt to explain both the rise and the functioning of this political system. Based on her analysis, Arendt argued that “the politically most important yardstick for judging events in our time” is “whether they serve totalitarian domination or not.” (p.442) Many American foreign policy thinkers agreed with this proposed yardstick and made use of what one may call “the totalitarian model” during the cold war. Interestingly enough, though, Arendt eventually came to believe that the Soviet Union “de-totalitarianized” after Stalin’s death. And one should bear in mind that any self-satisfied distinction between the free world and totalitarianism does not do justice to Arendt’s critique of a modernity which made people receptive to totalitarianism in the first place. Though the passing of the cold war means that the “totalitarian model” is less trendy than it once was, Arendt’s book remains historically insightful, and even politically relevant. New emergences of totalitarianism in previously non-totalitarian locales are entirely possible, thinks Arendt, and her “yardstick” can be put to thought-provoking use analyzing current Western social/political trends. (I’ll refrain in this review from indulging my own political pontifications.) It should be remembered as well that Arendt thinks totalitarianism’s “danger is that it threatens to ravage the world as we know it-a world that everywhere seems to have come to an end-before a new beginning rising from this end has had time to assert itself.” (478) So, warding off totalitarian threats-whether external or internal-though an important task, was for Arendt ultimately a way to buy time in order that we may learn to travel down a different road. One might go so far as to assert that for Arendt, totalitarianism was but the most horrible symptom of a diseased modernity.

Arendt’s book is organized into 3 sections: Anti-Semitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism. The subjects of the first two sections, interesting in their own right, are preparatory for an understanding of the totalitarian phenomenon. Related themes appear in the book as well, such as the nation state and the interaction/tension between its constituent elements, the bourgeoisie’s atomization of society and corruption of politics, a valorization of a polis-like conception of participatory politics, the impotence of abstract “human rights,” and the negative effects of a general loss of belief in the transcendent.

Anti-semitism for Arendt must be distinguished from traditional Christian antagonism towards the Jews. Nor does anti-semitism reflect a scapegoating that could have been accomplished with a different group. Because Jews were so instrumental to the emergence of the nation state and the European system of nation states, providing financial and diplomatic services in return for the State's protection, the Jews were-however precarious their position-symbolically linked with the status quo, and anti-semitism emerged as increasing dissatisfaction with the political status quo led people to direct anger and criticism at its symbols. Anti-semitism became a powerful political weapon with which to attack the establishment.

An interesting nuance of Arendt’s argument is her claim that some Jews embraced attitudes and behavior that, ironically and tragically in retrospect, can be seen as helping to facilitate totalitarian oppression. Many secularized Jews held on to the concept of being the chosen people, even without God’s promises, and some Jews even proudly embraced the erroneous idea of Jewish secret societies having a profound, controlling influence on the world. Such notions, which amount to self worship and the conceit of historical mastery, are entirely understandable in terms of bolstering the self-confidence of a minority group losing its guiding traditions and facing many outside hardships. However, these notions not only played into the hands of the anti-semites, they were appropriated by them. Consider that Hitler used the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to denounce the Jews, and also as a personal political blueprint prioritizing the nation over the state and envisioning the world rulership of a chosen and conspiratorial master race. Yes, the Protocols was a forgery, but it seemed plausible to many partly because it exploited in exaggerated form what some Jews somehow fancied about themselves. Hitler found such ideas, suitably altered, very attractive, and so did many others. This is a good indication that the sense of homelessness and alienation felt by the Jews was spreading to others throughout an increasingly sick Europe, as were coping mechanisms meant to deal with these phenomena. Arendt also explains how some Jews participated in the the salon game of providing through their presence a fashionable vice to a decadent, ostensibly anti-semitic audience. They thus played along with a boredom-ridden bourgeois society that was making fashionable the taboo and learning to normalize criminality. This came back to bite them later when a more criminalized society then decided that these Jewish symbols of bourgeois decadence were no longer fashionable.

The corruption of the body politic under the influence of bourgeois money, the eventual availability of which powerfully undercut the Jews’ special relationship with states in Europe, also worked to bolster anti-semitism. Like others in the newly corrupt political environment, Jews were more exploitive of the state for personal gain than previously, yet unlike others, they were scapegoated for this, as if by excoriating the Jews society was symbolically righting the ship of state.

Arendt’s treatment of the Dreyfus affair, which I will not elaborate on here, illustrates very well the development of anti-semitism as a political weapon and the exhaustion of the Republican ideals of 1789 in France. This did not bode well for the emerging 20th Century.

Arendt considers imperialism as contributing in profound ways to totalitarianism. The age of imperialism, beginning around 1884, was the time when the socially ascendant bourgeoisie really decided to get heavily involved in politics. Imperialism represented the bourgeois philosophy of unending growth, and emerged because economic growth required moving beyond the confines of the nation state. Though the bourgeoisie was ultimately able to get the state to back their foreign ventures for economic, military, and even domestic security reasons, imperialism met with some pushback, because it didn’t really fit in with the philosophic rationale or the structure of the nation state. This poor fit had consequences. For instance, Arendt thinks the flourishing of racial thinking was inevitable in the age of imperialism, since only the distinction between higher and lower breeds could somehow rationalize/justify the exploitation and political control of other peoples in the minds of 19th century Western Europeans, who were accustomed to the notion that rights were safeguarded and expressed through particular national communities with their own history, territory and state. Also, imperialism led to the growth of a bureaucratic form of government abroad, largely unaccountable to the people back at home, that saw itself as creatively in tune with the historical process of expansion, and thus a law unto itself. This development had the potential to, and sometimes did, warp domestic politics.

The so-called pan movements, continental versions of imperialism, helped destabilize the European political status quo. Arendt argues that in the aftermath of the fall of the ancien regime, though the concept of nationalism provided a communal identity/common good that kept class strife politically manageable, a dangerous tension inherently existed between nation and state, resulting in a slight diminishment of of the state’s ability to function impartially. With the tribal nationalism of the pan movements we see the allegiance to nation completely overwhelming the allegiance to state.

Racial thinking, a new bureaucratic conception of politics, and a new nationalism that somehow transcended the state were all legacies of imperialism that totalitarianism proved willing and able to exploit. However, the totalitarians, unlike the imperialists unambiguously aimed their bureaucratic politics at their own countries. Also, though the totalitarians exploited the popular notion of nation above state, the revolutionary parties were higher still.

Arendt thinks imperialist competition led quite naturally to the first world war, and that the problem of statelessness since the aftermath of this war casts doubt on the whole concept of “human rights.” Arendt acknowledges the lessons of history have led her to respect Burke’s critique of the “abstract” rights of man. Modern statelessness is especially problematic for Arendt since she seems to agree with the ancient Greek notion that man can only actualize his full humanity in and through a polis. Yet despite this valorization of political life, Arendt also indicates certain limitations regarding what can be accomplished through politics. Political aliens tend to be treated poorly, even beyond what one might understandably expect when a community is wary of outside intrusion, because their presence disrupts not merely the political artifice but the delusion that man is the Creator of his world. Politics, which can bring out the best in people, can also bring out less admirable qualities. Given the lack of readily available political solutions to the problem of statelessness in the modern world, Arendt reminds the reader that in the realm of private life people can at least interact humanely with individuals caught up in this problem.

Totalitarianism, says Arendt, is not merely a kind of political tyranny. In several respects it is novel. For one, it is more ambitious than traditional tyranny. The old fashioned political tyrant creates a desert of political isolation (though the oasis of private life is largely left intact.) The totalitarian ruler goes further, says Arendt, managing to raise a sandstorm in the desert that threatens to obliterate the private life of the individual. Further still, the totalitarian leader is not content until his rule encompasses the globe. This move beyond mere political domination of a limited area to an attempt at total domination (of the individual and of the world) is made comprehensible when one considers another novel aspect of totalitarianism, that it does not fit the traditional categorization of political regimes as either lawful or lawless. Both the Nazis and the Stalinists saw themselves as adhering to law, but not law as traditionally understood. Rather, the laws of darwinian inspired “nature” (in the case of the Nazis) and the laws of marxist inspired “history” (in the case of the Stalinists) were promoted, but for those enamored with these “laws” of process, traditional legality was simply an impediment. Terror, the essence of totalitarian regimes, allows the laws of process their unending march forward less hindered by obstacles. Accordingly, totalitarianism is ultimately not state centered, or even nation centered (though it utilizes such propaganda when convenient.) Its highest allegiance is to the “movement” itself, which through proper elite led organization strives to reconfigure the world and man according to its truth. Ideology animates the totalitarian regime, putting it in motion.

For Arendt, totalitarianism is a threat inherent in the conditions of modern life. In the wake of modern uprootedness and superfluousness, loneliness (which Arendt distinguishes from political isolation and also from solitude) abounds, leaving individuals susceptible to embracing ideologies whose simplifications are impervious to reality. Leaders willing to put ideologies into action gain recruits hungry to belong to something, and together they make war against recalcitrant reality. Arendt points out that Hitler and Stalin, though their regimes functioned similarly, took different paths as they developed totalitarianism. Hitler was in a better position to take advantage of pre-existing horrible social conditions, while Stalin to a greater extent created the atomized society he then utilized. This difference is a good example of the fact that widespread loneliness not only enables totalitarianism, it is what totalitarianism strives to achieve, since it makes men pliable. Arendt thinks the totalitarian leaders and their highest collaborators are not “believers” in their ideologies so much as believers in (their own) human omnipotence, as demonstrated by their clever organization and utilization/manipulation of people through the tools of ideology and terror. Even so, the leaders themselves-said Arendt in 1951- are not “free” in the sense of being able to stop the totalitarian train from barreling down the tracks. They cannot simply stabilize the regime into a traditional tyranny in order to safely consolidate their power. The system is inherently dynamic, the terror perpetual.

I should also mention that Arendt indicates at various points throughout her text that the loss of religious belief has contributed profoundly to the problems she diagnoses. Religion, she says, is a balm for loneliness and a spur to compassion, a check on the notion that everything is permitted, and indeed, on the notion that everything is possible. Arendt memorably states that “nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radically from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in a Last Judgment: the worst have lost their fear and the best have lost their hope.”

This book is a grand interpretive effort. All such efforts can be challenged on numerous grounds; Arendt’s book is no exception. She herself proved open to revising her outlook, eventually acknowledging the “de-totalitarianization” of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin in 1953, which worked against her original idea of totalitarianism as necessarily self-perpetuating. Setting aside the validity of her various interpretations, her highly philosophical, German mandarin “kulturkritik” approach to historical understanding has proven methodologically problematic to some, though on the other hand, her attempt at capturing the “big picture” (which someone has to do) made her book more compelling to a large reading audience than the more cautious and circumscribed work of various academic specialists. Whatever this book’s faults, it is deservedly considered a masterpiece. I found it rewarding and thought provoking, and definitely worthy of serious engagement.

I had difficulty following some of the politics of the times. Not familiar with some of the names. I am now in the middle of the book. The Rehoboth Film Festival had a film about Hannah Arendt recently and I belong to a Salon where we will discuss the philosopher Hannah Arendt. Look forward to hearing more.

First of all, my apologies to those who insist that reviews deal only with the content of the book under consideration. That said, my downgrading of Arendt's marvelous and cogent work is predicated on the microscopic printing in this edition, the Harcourt trade paperback. Arendt's writing is dense, but not near as dense as the printing. The publisher has crammed 45 lines of small print into a less than 7-1/2 inch page, with even tinier footnotes on most pages. I found it impossible to focus visually on narrow segments of text, a prerequisite for following Arendt's complex thought. So I wound up buying the Kindle edition, which lets me set font size to my comfort. I wanted to keep a hard copy, so I'm keeping the paperback, but I'll use it only infrequently.

If the words of Saul Alinsky as applied by Barack Obama are disturbing in the short term, Origins of Totalitarianism will show you where it all may be headed (again). Recent antisemitic disturbances in Europe with supporting "proportionate" comments on the war in Gaza from Obama and John Kerry prove my point. It also explains why so many American Jews support an administration so clearly opposed to Israel's continued existence. The book is not an easy or quick read, but is certainly worth the effort. I have now ordered a print edition so I can mark it up more easily (and permanently - my Kindle lost my notes on the first third of the book).

I've begun enthusiastically reading the book but can't help being put off by the cheap paper used in its production. It's not only sensually unappealing, but the grayish tinted pages are a hindrance to reading. I will remember and avoid this publisher in future.

This is not an easy read. It takes considerable mental effort and patience to get through the 576 pages (paperback). It is dense with data, and Arendt's writing style borders on torture. She consistently writes paragraph-long sentences with numerous phrases that circle back on each other. Saying her writing is difficult and confusing is a gross understatement.

So why 5 stars? Although her writing is as mind-twisting as an Escher painting, her analysis and conclusions are groundbreaking, transformative, and a warning to all. Through her research, Arendt determines that totalitarianism is its own distinct political movement. It has at its core the survival and constant forward movement of the state, and a total disregard for the masses. In fact is it imperative that the masses feel isolated, are stripped of free will, and are controlled with terror. There is no escape from the state (physical or psychological) and the only morality is that which serves the state. And even if state pronouncements change from one day to the next, both are correct. Fake news is the norm, but even the most ridiculous news is real because the state's representatives say it is so.

Arendt's book is especially relevant today as nations move toward isolationism and authoritarianism, which is a small step from totalitarianism. The final section of the book, "Totalitarianism," brings all of the analysis together; therefore, if you do not wish to read all of the book, the final section will give you the relevant information. It is well worth your time and effort.

"The Origins of Totalitarianism" is in the best German tradition: turgid style,high-flown philosophising. The whole issue is presented in a roundabout way that makes it difficult to see what it is aiming at. I think there is a rambling quality to it that frustrates the reader's efforts to get the point or the general drift of the argument. Also, truths are delivered with an ex cathedra tone above ordinary explanations and analysis. As to the "insights", I think they are seriously flawed. For one thing, I don't think Stalin intended to conquer the world following the precepts of a guiding ideology. He was much more keen on keeping on to his throne in Russia, rather than risking everything (like Hitler) in a gigantic bet with history.

Johanna "Hannah" Arendt (1906-1975) was a German-born political theorist, who wrote many books such as Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism,Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism,Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,The Life of the Mind,On Violence,The Human Condition, etc.

She wrote in the 1967 Preface to this book [that was originally published in 1951], "This book then is limited in time and place as well as in subject matter. Its analyses concern Jewish history in Central and Western Europe from the time of the court Jews to the Dreyfus affair as it was relevant to the birth of anti-Semitism and influenced by it. It deals with anti-Semitic movements that were still pretty solidly grounded in factual realities characteristic of Jewish-Gentile relations... in the era of imperialism, followed by the period of totalitarian movements and governments, it is no longer to isolate the Jewish question or the anti-Semitic ideology from issues that are actually almost completely unrelated to the realities of modern Jewish history." (Pg. xii)

She states, "The theory that the Jews are always the scapegoat implies that the scapegoat might have been anyone else as well. It upholds the perfect innocence of the victim, an innocence which insinuates not only that no evil was done but that nothing at all was done which might possibly have a connection with the issue at stake. It is true that the scapegoat theory in its purely arbitrary form never appears in print. Whenever, however, its adherents painstakingly try to explain why a specific scapegoat was so well suited to his role, they show that they have left the theory behind them and have got themselves involved in the usual historical research---when nothing is ever discovered except that history is made by many groups and that for certain reasons one group was singled out. The so-called scapegoat necessarily ceases to be the innocent victim whom the world blames for all its sins and through whom it wishes to escape punishment; it becomes one people among other groups, all of which are involved in the business of this world. And it does not simply cease to be coresponsible because it became the victim of the world's injustice and cruelty." (Pg. 5-6)

She points out, "Nietzsche... made... his correct estimate of the significant role of the Jews in European history, and saved him from falling into the pitfalls of cheap philosemitism or patronizing `progressive' attitudes. This evaluation, though quite correct in the description of a surface phenomenon, overlooks the most serious paradox embodied in the curious political history of the Jews. Of all European peoples, the Jews had been the only one without a state of their own and had been, precisely for this reason, so eager and so suitable for alliances with governments and states as such, no matter what these governments or states might represent." (Pg. 23)

She observes, "The popular notion that the Jews---in contrast to other peoples---were held together by the supposedly closer bonds of blood and family ties, was to a large extent stimulated by the reality of this one family, which virtually represented the whole economic and political significance of the Jewish people. The fateful consequence was that when, for reasons which had nothing to do with the Jewish question, race problems came to the foreground of the political scene, the Jews at once fitted all ideologies and doctrines which defined a people by blood ties and family characteristics." (Pg. 27-28)

She asserts, "Jews became the symbols of Society as such and the objects of hatred for all those society did not accept. Antisemitism, having lost its ground in the special conditions that had influenced its development during the nineteenth century, could be freely elaborated by charlatans and crackpots into that weird mixture of half-truths and wild superstitions which emerged in Europe after 1914, the ideology of all frustrated and resentful elements." (Pg. 53)

She states, "It is important to bear in mind that assimilation as a group phenomenon really existed only among Jewish intellectuals. It is not accident that the first educated Jew, Moses Mendelssohn, was also the first who, despite his low civic status, was admitted to non-Jewish society. The court Jews and their successors, the Jewish bankers and businessmen in the West, were never socially acceptable, nor did they care to leave the very narrow limits of their invisible ghetto." (Pg. 62)

She notes, "It is well known that the belief in a Jewish conspiracy that was kept together by a secret society had the greatest propaganda value for antisemitic publicity, and by far outran traditional European superstitions about ritual murder and well-poisoning. It is of great significance that Disraeli, for exactly opposite purposes and at a time when nobody thought seriously of secret societies, came to identical conclusions, for it shows clearly to what extent such fabrications were due to social motives and resentments and how much more plausibly they explained events or political and economic activities that the more trivial truth did. In Disraeli's eyes... the whole game of politics was played between secret societies." (Pg. 76)

She suggests, "We have already observed how the dissolution of the state machinery facilitated the entry of the Rothschilds into the circles of the antisemitic aristocracy... The admission of the Jews into high society had been relatively peaceful. The upper classes, despite their dreams of a restored monarchy, were a politically spineless lot and did not bother unduly one way or the other. But when the Jews began seeking equality in the army, then came face to face with the determined opposition of the Jesuits who were not prepared to tolerate the existence of officers immune to the influence of the confessional." (Pg. 103)

This is an excellent, very thought-provoking analysis of this form of hatred, that will be "must reading" for anyone seriously studying the subject.

Arendt is one of those thinkers who you frequently see cited in academia, and yet it's difficult to piece together what her thought was really about from those who reference her. I've seen lefties dismiss her as a weird type of liberal. I've seen liberals dismiss her as a obscurantist communitarian. She was a student of Heidegger, but her place in Heidegger's philosophical legacy is ambiguous. Fortunately, Arendt's overall worldview as a philosopher-historian can be understood as long as you're an attentive reader. Nowhere in this text does she "lay out" her philosophy, and for the first two-thirds of the books' massive 600+ pages, one can wonder why this is considered to be an important work of political theory. It does in fact work excellently as both a work of history and a work of philosophy, and will help educate the reader on the history of antisemitism, the (de)evolution of European parliamentary democracy, and the societal trends that paved the way for Nazism and Stalinism.

I think it's important for citizens of any society to read this book. From a purely historical perspective, it takes to task the vague, reductive explanations school children and college undergrads are told in order to explain this period of history. Perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to this aspect of Arendt's thought because I'm an American who has been through the U.S. education system. We all hear the same story about the holocaust, such as the claim that it was the extension of European antisemitism, or that the Nazis persecuted the Jews because they needed a "scapegoat" for Germany's problems. Some leftists in the post-war period tried to argue that the holocaust was the inevitable result of capitalist social relations. For Arendt, these explanations entirely miss the true lessons we should carry away from 20th-century totalitarianism. These explanations miss the difference between mere authoritarianism and full-on totalitarianism (while also missing the nature of their connection). It misses the specific choices and non-inevitable mistakes that Europeans made which allowed Stalinism to overtake Leninism and Nazism to overtake parliamentary democracy. At the same time, it ignores the complex socio-economic trends that laid the groundwork which allowed for these choices to be made in the first place.

On a more philosophical level, Arendt is convinced that Western political thought consistently misses one of the most ethically significant aspects of political life: The actual act of being a political citizen. Western philosophy traditionally defines the problems of politics as the problems of political theory. Politics is improved through a succession of better systems, and the problems these systems face stem from either errors in their design or the imperfections of reality. Arendt argues that conservatives, Marxists, and liberals miss the defining feature of the human being as a political animal, which is the human being's ability to see their fellow man as equals, and to live out their egalitarian ideals in their public lives. When assessing both her philosophical and historical arguments, I found it handy to keep this passage in mind:

"Comprehension, however, does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden that events have placed upon us- neither denying their existence nor submitting meekly to their weight as though everything that in fact happened could not have been otherwise. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality- whatever it may be or might have been" - page 7, preface.

The first half of the book is concerned with the history leading up to the onslaught of totalitarianism. Arendt sees the Second Empire as a major watershed moment, when the ideals of the French Revolution began to decay and a hard-nosed materialism began to seep into the European consciousness. She blames capitalist social atomism for this decay, and argues that Hobbesian liberalism is always destined to descend into nihilism, but that capitalism is what pushes liberalism towards embracing the belief that power defines all human wanting.

Arendt's history of antisemitism is probably the section that will challenge the reader's perception of history the most. Arendt argues that the folk antisemitism of old Europe is actually a different phenomenon from the antisemitism behind the holocaust. "Old" antisemitism was violent prejudice. Meanwhile, the antisemitism of the Nazis was part of a program that completely sought to overtake and control every aspect of modern society. The Nazis didn't want to just lash out at Jews- they wanted to destroy Jewishness, and identified most of European culture as tainted by Jewishness. Old antisemitism was reinforced by the associations between Jewish financiers and the aristocracy. The populace assumed that powerful Jewish individuals were in cahoots with the aristocrats they periodically agitated against, and aristocrats could periodically blame Jews for the social problems caused by their own governments due to their association with nearly every aristocratic regime. In reality, Jews were largely apolitical, and generally kept their distance from gentile society. According to Arendt's history, this situation began to change, and European Jewery, for a period of time, had the chance to join in with the social movements of the Western Enlightenment, but failed to do so, instead opting for a status as inter-national locutors who stayed aloof of the nations they found themselves in. Once this change set in, a new ideology of antisemitism began to form within the ranks of the aristocracy, particularly in Austria. The Jesuits also started to become rabidly antisemitic, something I was shocked to learn. The defining development which created the ideology of antisemitism that drove the holocaust occurred in 20th-century France. The Catholic Church in France identified the cultural visibility of modern Jews with secular modernity, and in many cases, publically called for the extermination of all Jews in France. Arendt explains the way in which the Dreyfus Affair served as a lit fuse for the antisemitic ideologies of the Catholic Church and the French military, and that this was the first time in modern Europe where a political faction used a "mob" to its political ends. There had been plenty of popular insurrections before in France, but Arendt differentiates "the mob" from the citizenry by the vagueness of its purpose and the general sense within mobs that violence is the only true reality of politics.

Arendt delves more into the socio-economic aspects of the 19th-20th century political experience with her analysis of imperialism. She endorses Rosa Luxemburg's Marxian interpretation of imperialism as an extension of capitalism, and argues that capitalism requires the constant political expansion of the state. With the imperialist stage of capitalism, societies that ranked as the freest in history maintained some of the most barbaric governmental practices in history. This is because capitalism brings out the most selfish instincts in human beings, but liberal freedoms require moral idealism in order to flourish. In order to solve this contradiction, European powers export their worst practices to other continents while trying to foster a moral society at hime. The problem, as Arendt argues, is that colonialism's moral nihilism eventually comes back home. Militaries developed barbaric practices in their colonies which made their way into the political culture of Europe, and the treatment of citizens as mere tools, as seen in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, reflect the economic realities of European colonies.

The second half of "Origins" is mainly dedicated to the analysis of totalitarianism itself. The most important of Arendt's arguments is that authoritarianism is not identical to totalitarianism. Although authoritarian regimes are repugnant in their own right, authoritarian regimes seek to monopolize the military and the operation of public political power. Totalitarianism, as the word would suggest is far more "total." In totalitarianism, all institutions whether legal, cultural, or economic absolutely must be controlled by the arbitrary power of a single, small elite. Not only must these institutions operate according to the leader's will, but the institutions must constantly promote fear of the leader's power, and instill the understanding that peoples' very thoughts are criminal in the eyes of the leader. Authoritarian regimes oppress people because they want results. Totalitarian regimes oppress people because they want to mutilate their very sense of being.

Perhaps the most convincing pieces of evidence that Arendt proposes for this claim is the natures of Hitler's concentration camps and Stalin's labor camps. The Nazis carried out the holocaust at the expense of the war effort itself. Stalin's camps had no practical use, and his regime preferred to allow as many prisoners to die as possible. The reason for this commonality was clear: Both dictators cared far more about their ability to kill, torture, and terrorize than any possible political end these tactics could achieve. Hitler's killing was not going to stop with the Jews. The Nazis also planned to eliminate Slavs, many Western Europeans, and even a substantial portion of the German population. Stalin was constantly inventing new enemy classes to purge, and felt no need to provide a meaningful justification with each sudden twist and turn in his terrorist policies. In Arendt's view, there is only one sensical explanation of this constant, insane slaughter: The Nazis and Stalinists actually desired to keep their societies in a violent state. They desired the moral nihilism, reverence for violence, and intellectual deadness that such a state of affairs causes.

The final chapter concludes with a basic presentation of a positive political philosophy that could counter-act the roots of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism doesn't just obliterate the individual. It also obliterates any sense of the common good. Totalitarianism isn't the overgrowth of the state, it is the abolition of the state's integrity in favor of an arbitrary leader. It doesn't represent "the dark side" of human nature, it represents the mutilation of human nature. Arendt warns that although totalitarian formations had ebbed in her time, that plenty of regimes still possessed elements of totalitarianism, and that the conditions for the creation of totalitarianism could return in the future. She proposes that intellectuals need to overcome their reverence for abstract theoretical correctness and capitalist lifestyles and engage in politics as active, morally beholden citizens. "Origins" does not provide suggestions beyond that, but I doubt that it could have. The political attitude Arendt endorses requires that citizens believe in a common good, by which they establish rational discourse and egalitarian political lives. At the same time, Arendt rejects the idea that there is an eternal human nature, or a permanent solution to humanity's political problems waiting to be discovered. Rationality, ironically, becomes irrational when it is deployed with complete and total political power. This is where her education in Heidegger's philosophy becomes most evident. She holds that reason belongs to human beings, and can only come to fruition within human beings. It does not descend to us from on high, and any attempt to surrender our autonomous capacity for reason to a higher authority completely misses the essence of reason itself. When we surrender our ownership of our reason, and the communal moral responsibilities that stem from it, we put ourselves in a cultural position that's susceptible to seduction by hateful violence.

The atrocities of the Hitler and Stalin regimes forced all thinking people to come to grips with them in some way. For Hannah Arendt, a German, a Jew, and an intellectual, the need must have been especially compelling. She was old enough to watch both regimes come to power, and at the time she wrote totalitarianism had been an essential component of European politics for about twenty years. The Origins of Totalitarianism was her attempt to understand the origins and nature of these regimes. It's extremely dense, always thorough, and often quite insightful reflection on the essential challenge of the 20th century.

Hannah Arendt's thesis is that the Hitler and Stalin regimes were functionally identical (an idea not without controversy), and that they represented a new form of political organization based on the concept of "total domination." On this conception of political life everything and everyone is to be subordinated to the Will of the Leader - the movement he heads, the state he controls, all the people, property, organizations, and land both within that state's borders and beyond, and in short reality itself. The totalitarian worldview does not acknowledge the existence of any such thing as an objective fact, let alone "rights" or "laws." Everything and everyone must be completely dominated - that which exists outside its grasp implicitly undermines the Leader's claim to omnipotence, and must be confronted and brought into subordination. All totalitarian regimes pursue a perpetual war against individuality, reason, and humanity at home, and against all foreign powers abroad, not because they have any specific policy objective, and not because they have an ideology which they seek to realize, but because their own internal dynamic requires them to do it. Such is the lunatic world of a Totalitarian movement - a ceaseless pursuit of omnipotence for its own sake, and utterly incomprehensible to outside observers so long as they insist on retaining familiar notions like common sense and objective reality.

How did this bizarre form of political organization come about? Hannah Arendt argues that it was a product and a combination of Antisemitic and Imperialist European politics. Antisemitism originated in the class and social conflicts which bedeviled Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The Jews naturally feared the spontaneous outbursts of mob violence which had threatened them since the ascent of Constantine, and, following the advice of Jeremiah, purposefully identified themselves with the powers that be, in whatever form they took. In this way they could at once demonstrate their loyalty to a regime which would naturally regard their insular culture with suspicion, and at the same time secure protection against outbursts of mob violence. In the context of European politics, this meant identifying themselves with the power of the aristocracy, and later with that of the states.

Both groups often (though not always) found it useful to protect their Jewish minorities because their international connections were useful for conducting informal diplomacy, and because they often had access to financial resources which the people in power did not. Indeed, the superstition that all Jews are wealthy is based on a kernel of historical truth, for in the middle ages the Jews were usually forbidden to own land, and were therefor forced to earn their living through commerce, finance, and the professions. Finance was particularly lucrative because the Church forbade its adherents to lend money at interest, but since Jews were not Christians, the prohibition naturally did not apply to them. The need for financial services was quite real, and interest rates often quite high, so some Jewish financiers were able to amass considerable wealth in this way. At the same time, the Christian prejudice toward the ownership of land as intrinsically more dignified than buying and selling also worked to the financial advantage of the Jews, who had no prejudice against commerce and so, again, faced little effective competition.

So the position of Europe's Jews (according to Hannah Arendt) was somewhat precarious throughout the 19th century. They had a great deal of wealth but they were socially isolated and politically powerless, except through the good offices of the aristocracy, and later the State. After the French Revolution the State began to displace the aristocracies. The State, unlike the aristocracies, had a constant need for ready cash and no prejudice against commerce or finance as a means of obtaining it. They began to foster financial institutions, and as the opportunities to accumulate wealth became apparent to educated Europeans, and as the authority of the Church began to crumble under the repeated blows of the Enlightenment, Europe's Jews gradually found their economic pre-eminence, and thus their claim to State protection, undermined. Further, the growing tide of nationalism transformed the international character of their community from an asset into a liability. According to the then-current conception of the Nation-State, people subject to the State's authority had to be assimilated into the Nation (i.e. adopt its language, customs, religions, prejudices, etc.) or else they had to be expelled or in some other way removed from the community.

By the late 19th century the position of Europe's Jews had become extremely precarious. Their prominence int he professions and distinctive customs made them highly visible, their internationalism attracted the suspicion of nationalists, and their loss of state patronage made them easy targets for mob violence. Their attempts to assimilate themselves into the society around them were frustrated by racism and the bourgeois love of spectacle and transgression. They could neither retain their identity as Jews with safety, nor could they find a way to get rid of it. They were trapped. During the Dreyfus Affair antisemitism became for the first time a full-blown ideology, complete with its own world view, political organization, platform, martyrology, code of self-identification, and in short all the paraphernalia of a modern ideology. One no longer had to denounce a Jew in order to achieve some other goal - to denounce a Jew now became a perfectly legitimate goal in and of itself, and an ample demonstration of one's own wisdom and moral character.

The second main current which led into the creation of totalitarianism, according to Hannah Arendt, was Imperialism, first in the form of British overseas Imperialism, and later in the form of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism, with their aspirations to continental empire. In the early 19th century British administrators faced a problem which was not easily squared with the notion of a Nation-State. On that conception, a more or less homogeneous population conferred legitimacy on the state which governed them because that state was felt to be an expression of their common cultural identity - their language, religion, customs, values, etc. This ideal was difficult enough to put into practice in Europe, but totally impossible for overseas colonies, because in those territories there could be no identification of the rulers with the ruled. They came from completely different backgrounds. So the ruled could only regard the rulers as tyrants, and the rulers could only regard the ruled as subjects. In the absence of a legitimating ideology acceptable to both rulers and ruled, there could be no common bond between these groups except the mere fact of the power of one group and the powerlessness of the other, periodically reinforced through massive displays of violence.

To be effective as an imperial administrator, a European had to set aside all notions of liberal democracy, human rights, or nationalism, because these concepts were simply not applicable to his situation. British Imperial administrators learned from the Boers the value of racism, which denied the humanity of the subject populations and gave the powerful carte blanche to do just as they pleased. Since, by the mere fact of being born a Boer, then an Anglo-Saxon, and, later, an Aryan, one became a member of a master race, whatever one did was right and whatever one was chose to be was good. At any rate, one's own superiority relative to the native population, who were taught to prostrate themselves before them and to worship them as gods, could be taken for granted under any and all circumstances. This demand for worship made a great deal of sense as an extension of the administrator's lust for power, which was, after all, the only thing that kept him alive and in a position of privilege in a society where he was constantly surrounded by people who had every objective reason to want him dead.

It went without saying that anything that propped up that power was good, and anything that undermined it - including the interference of the home government in the name of democracy or rights or some other such nonsense - was bad. If the home government occasionally sought to interfere with their activities, that was simply because they didn't understand how things really were out in the colonies. Civilian oversight was to be frustrated and undermined at every possible opportunity. Further, if British Imperialism was understood in terms of a mission to civilize the backward peoples of the earth, then imperial administrators became, by default, the guardians of civilization. The same mission that compelled them to carry that civilization to the colonies might one day compel them to protect it at home - or, in other words, to unseat a democratically elected government in the name of civilization and rule their own country in the same way that they ruled the colonies - which is to say, tyranically.

It can be seen, then, that the experience of imperial rule and the adaptation of a race ideology were both intrinsically corrosive to European notions of limited government, democracy, human rights, and all the rest. According to Hannah Arendt Imperialism and Liberalism were on a long term collision course, and that collision happened in the 1930's with the emergence of genuinely totalitarian movements. Why in Germany and Russia rather than the imperial power par excellence, Great Britain? Because both of these countries experienced debilitating crises during the first world war, which destroyed the legitimacy of their original governments and left the way open for fringe parties, of which the totalitarians were the most successful precisely because their worship of power equipped them to play the game of politics with uncommon ruthlessness. Further, Germany and Russia both had their own imperial traditions to draw upon. Germany had been assembled within the last few generations through wars of aggression conducted by Prussia, the core of the German state as it then existed, against its neighbors, and had limited overseas holdings besides, up until they were stripped by the Versailles settlement. Going back to the middle ages, Germans had long looked to the East for new territories, and had fought constant wars of aggression against the Slavs in order to seize it. The Russians, for their part, had been oppressing the peoples of East Europe and Central Asia for centuries, and were, arguably, even more practiced at Imperialism than the British.

Hannah Arendt makes a number of other arguments besides, but that's the core of it. It's an extremely dense book, and even in a long book review it's hard to cover all of them. It's an impressive intellectual achievement, and it forces the reader to think about the Hitler and Stalin regimes in ways that aren't by any means obvious at first glance. Just the same there are some criticisms to be made.

The first is the totalitarian argument itself. It has to be said, at the outset, that the idea that these regimes pursued omnipotence and irrationality as ends unto themselves does exercise a certain attraction. It provides all the spectacle of insanity and horror to excite the imagination while at the same time promising to integrate huge amounts of information within a neat and easy-to-understand package. This is much of the appeal of Orwell's 1984, which makes essentially the same argument about the nature of these regimes, and works as a novel for more or less the same reason that Origins of Totalitarianism works as a piece of philosophy.

However, I can't help but notice that Hannah Arendt doesn't provide a great deal of supporting evidence from history itself. Her method is, rather, of speculation, deductive logic, maybe even literary criticism, but it's not the method of historians, which is to discuss specific events and specific people in the context of a specific place and time, and on the basis of the evidence which that time and place has left us. Generalities abound throughout this book, and hobble it in many places. Time and again she asserts, without any demonstration or supporting evidence, that whole categories of people did this, or that, and that they did it for such and such a reason. Frankly I don't know how she knew all this. She doesn't appear to have consulted very many primary sources, and it seems to me that she gets her facts wrong in some very important places.

For instance, toward the end of the discussion of totalitarianism, when she wants to make the point that the concentration camp was the central institution of these regimes, she says that the Nazis announced their extermination policy to the world, and that they were even proud of it, because that was a way to make everyone complicit in the crime, and thus to strengthen their ties to the regime. That makes a lot of sense in terms of her definition of totalitarianism, but it's an interpretation that's hard to square with some other aspects of the Nazi extermination program. The Nazis did occasionally threaten the Jews in their open statements - Hitler famously threatened them with destruction before the Reichstag in 1939 -, but similar pronouncements had long been a feature of European demagoguery in the antisemitic tradition. If Hitler had wanted the world to know what he was doing, the nazis wouldn't have needed the euphamism of "resettlement" to disguise their plans, the camps wouldn't have been located in the Polish wilderness where hardly anyone could find them, and they wouldn't have been surrounded by miles-wide zones of death where all trespassers were to be shot on sight. Certainly there would have been no need to entrust the actual killing to the most fanatical nazis in the organization, the totenkompf SS, all of whom were sworn to secrecy. The evidence suggests that, far from announcing the holocaust to the world, the Nazi leaders wanted to keep it a secret, because they feared the political implications that the exposure of their crimes might lead to. Because they recognized, in other words, that they were not omnipotent.

The argument that the official ideologies of the regimes were meaningless as guides to their actual behavior encounters a similar problem. It might be true that the Nazis and Soviets adopted all kinds of policies which are not easily squared with their official ideologies, but all states do that. It doesn't mean that ideology is irrelevant as a guide to policy - it just means that ideology is not the only guide to policy. Indeed, I find many of the actions of these regimes difficult to explain on any ground other than a fanatical commitment to very specific ideological principles. To return to the holocaust, I suppose it's possible that Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews because that's a form of domination, and domination is all that totalitarian regimes know or care about. But that's not the most compelling explanation, at least to me. What makes sense to me is to look at the Nazi ideology, and notice how it conflated Jewishness and Communism at every possible opportunity. Indeed, Hitler never talked about one without talking about the other - Judeo-Bolshevism was the term that he used most often. To him, a Communist was a Jew and a Jew was a Communist. So, a war against Communism was also a war against the Jews, which meant that every Jew within the Reich was an enemy agent and a definite threat to the security of the regime. It's no coincidence that the extermination program only kicked into high gear as the Wermacht began to falter in the East, and it began to look like the Communists might win. So the holocaust made sense within the context of a particular ideology. Indeed, it only makes sense within that context. Back in the real world, where a Jew isn't necessarily a Communist and a Communist isn't necessarily a Jew, it seems inexplicable at first. But then, Adolf Hitler was a fanatical ideologue, and most of us aren't. The point is that ideology, far from being irrelevant to the regime, was at its very center.

A similar point could be made about the real nature of German war aims, which was European, not World, domination. Far from seeking a fight with every and everyone, the Nazis made alliances with the Fascist regimes of Hungary, Rumania, Italy, and Spain, as well as the non-fascist regime of Japan, and they tried to make peace with Britain after the capitulation of France. The Hitler regime was already effectively at war with the United States when it declared war openly in 1941 - German U-boats and American destroyers had been fighting constant sorties in the Atlantic ever since the United States began shipping military equipemnt to Britain and the Soviet Union under the lend-lease act. Even France was only attacked in order to clear Germany's Western frontier in preparation for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Again, the reason for that invasion was largely ideological - because the USSR was the home of the Communist movement (and, in the mind of Adolf Hitler, of a Jewish conspiracy against Germany), and because Hitler believed that the acquisition of the land and resources of the East Eurasian plain would provide the foundation for a future German superpower.

In each of these cases, Hannah Arendt's misunderstanding of the regime is basically attributable to her method, which is to discuss historical events without making any systematic use of historical evidence. Her thesis is an impressive intellectual accomplishment, and I do think that it captures something essential about the regimes she's discussing. But in many places she's reading too much into too little, and disregarding, for whatever reason, large bodies of data that might have given her cause for second thought. Her argument is just too vague in many places, and too scantily supported, to be be completely convincing. Also, some of the categories that she takes for granted ("the mob," "Jewry," "the bourgoisie") might strike the modern reader as somewhat odd. Indeed these terms have been largely abandoned by professional scholars in the sixty years or so that have passed since this book first appeared.

Nevertheless, I do recommend this book. Although it has long dry spells and is often needlessly verbose, it also contains brilliant observations, it points to connections that aren't by any means obvious, even to readers who are familiar with the subject, and it provides some uncommonly weighty food for thought. People who have the patience to bear with her as she makes her way through the argument will find their efforts richly rewarded, and will end with a reading experience that they aren't likely to forget.

A Modern World still cannot long live without these valuable insights

This eloquent three-part treatise, a retrospective on the last millennium composed after the Second World War, summarizes the meaning of our contemporary reality about as well, as honestly, and as profoundly as it is likely ever to be done. The power of the book lies not in it's recounting of the events of WW-II and its aftermath, but in the way its subtext warns us about the future.

Fifteen hundred years of entrenched anti-Semitism, followed by a generation of colonialism: and then imperialism, racism and two world wars and an increasing number of smaller ones, all in one generation, (and now al Qaeda, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Darfur), has led the author to believe that political forces can no longer be counted on or trusted to follow common sense; that the rules that govern the "world's ways of operating" of maintaining any sense of coherence and order, are being not just lost, but squandered, and thus that such a world will inevitably imploded into (what at the time the book went to press (1949)) an uncontrollable third world war - undoubtedly to be a planet-ending nuclear catastrophe.

Although the tail end of this prediction did not come to pass -- as the Cold War ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union -- everything else developed on schedule just and as she predicted: the fragmentation of the world's peoples, the utter alienation, isolation and meaninglessness of the lives of the increasingly mentally barricaded, menaced and guilty well-off (mostly Western world); the corresponding increase in the poverty and hopelessness of the world's masses; and last but surely not the least: the increasing lost of freedom to a mindless and amoral, amorphous corporate, global Fascist elite run totalitarian juggernaut: In effect, just as we have won one round against the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin, we are just as innocently backing into an inchoate, passive-aggressive capitalist run world that has by default become an unintended "One-world Government" run by selfish oligarchs at the opposite end of the pole that these very oligarchs themselves feared the United Nations would become.

That said, one will find it surprising to believe that the book is not at all just irrational radical, leftwing pessimistic speculation run amok, but quite the contrary: Its power lies in the very fact that based on a careful reading of the past, it is avowedly agnostic but still unerringly correct about the general contours of the future. To the extent it is possible at all, the author is an innocent bystander who just happens to be a passionate, deep thinker and synthesizer, who, even though Jewish, has no axes to grind, and thus who is "calling a historical spade a spade."

Unlike that of other "typical historians," her analyses and insights ride along on the unwavering psychological and economic trends mined from deep within the undercurrents and the subtext of the existential imperatives growing out of World War II, not on a mere "clinical or surface reading" of the essential facts of history, including the disasters of the Holocaust. And although she may be an innocent bystander, her involvement with history is nevertheless interactive. She yearns for a positive outcome but is keenly aware that progress and doom are but different sides of the same coin; that the good and the bad produce novel interactive effects, with unpredictable consequences, and as Karl Jaspers notes in the preface to this edition of her book: "both are articles of superstition, not faith."

Her answer to our global problems is the existentialist's answer to all complex "man-generated" problems: The brutality of our reality must be comprehended and faced honestly and up front.

Thus, in each part of this book her analysis reveals startling surprises: For instance, in Part I, on anti-Semitism, she places almost as much responsibility on Jews for their antagonism towards gentiles and Christianity, the myths of superiority and "chosen-ness," and to the "closed-off" unnecessarily insular cultural habits of Jews themselves that enabled gentile suspicions and anti-Jewish sentiments, as she does on a "new form of biologically-based racism" against Jews, and then against other races and cultures.

In Part II, her analysis reveals that as far as contemporary imperialism is concerned, it has always been and continues to be a mostly unintentional and mindless grab for power "for power's sake," run now by mostly "invisible governments" with accountability to no one, and operating the same way in Republican as in Fascist and more despotic governments. Political rationalizations for wealth distribution and for going to war no longer have ideological or a national basis, or even any rhyme or reason. They are built up out of whole cloth, propaganda, pure and simple. She concludes for instance that the détente between the U.S. and Russia, was not so much about an end to the nuclear standoff as it was about a fear of an entirely newly emerging round of imperialism, however this time with China in the "power maximizing" driver's seat: this occurring as we inevitably drift mindlessly onto a collision course similar to that which occurred prior to World War I.

And in Part III, her analysis shows that more than anything else totalitarian rule almost always rests on the consent of the governed, not as is so commonly believed: as a result of raw unadulterated dictatorial tyranny. This underlying fact so blurs the stereotypical distinctions between republican and despotic governments that in reality with "invisible governments" running them all, one can hardly know the difference?

In the end, her message is clear: that nothing in the modern world can be trusted as it appears on the surface; impressions have little to do with the underlying realities: It is not the context or the pretext, but the subtext of international relations that matters. All values must be renegotiated; freedom cannot be taken for granted; an equitable social order must continually be fought for, renegotiated, and re-won with each succeeding generation.

Some books require reading and then re-reading, others require being imbibed and savored like a fine wine, others require that the reader's soul be soaked in and marinated in the authors thoughts and ideas, still others, requires that the substance be inhaled, or even "mainlined" and pumped directly into the blood stream. This book requires the latter. Even after fifty years since its first printing, and even with some mis-predictions, a modern world still cannot survive long without drinking deeply of these valuable insights: 1000 stars!

This is some very dense writing, and author Hannah Arendt can be a tad speculative and reductive, especially in her opening sections on antisemitism and imperialism. However, the closing section that gives the book its title is an improvement, and Arendt draws out key similarities between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to get at the base nature of totalitarianism and how it can develop. It's a good history lesson and an important checklist of warning signs, some of which feel particularly relevant in today's political climate. But you really have to work for those insights, and Arendt doesn't make it easy for her readers.

Over half a century after its original publication, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" is still the most important treatise on totalitarianism in government. Arendt's book is also just as relevant and important today as it was in the mid-20th Century.

The book is divided into three main sections: Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism. In the first section, Arendt tracks the rise of antisemitism in Europe, looking mainly at 19th Century events and situations that aided the spread of this phenomenon through European culture. The Dreyfus Affair, which sharply divided France and ultimately became a political battle between antisemites and their opponents at the end of the 19th Century, gets more attention than any other event in this chapter.

In the middle section on imperialism, Arendt shows how the rise and fall of the continental European imperialist movements of the 19th Century (mainly, Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism) helped set the stage for their 20th Century totalitarian successors. As she puts it in opening the chapter on "the Pan Movements": "Nazism and Bolshevism owe more to Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism (respectively) than to any other ideology or political movement. This is most evident in foreign politics, where the strategies of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia have followed so closely the well-known programs of conquest outlined by the pan-movements before and during the first World War that totalitarian aims have frequently been mistaken for the pursuance of some permanent German or Russian interests. While neither Hitler nor Stalin has ever acknowledged his debt to imperialism in the development of his methods of rule, neither has hesitated to admit his indebtedness to the pan-movements' ideology or to imitate their slogans." It's a testament to the truth and prescience of Arendt's work that the preceding passage remains as timely as ever, given the ongoing collapse of the Pan-Arabist movement which dominated the Middle East during the second half of the 20th Century and the battle between democracy and totalitarian Islamofascism over which will rise up next.

The first two sections lead perfectly into the third and most important part of the book: the section on totalitarianism. Arendt shows how Nazism and Bolshevism were much more similar in their goals, practices, ideologies, and enemies than many people often believe or want to admit. They were both mass movements that sprang from cultures that had largely dismissed any objective truths. (Arendt: "The ideal subject of totalitarianism is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.") Both movements sought power for the sake of power, were rigidly ideological, made widespread use of terror, sought not only to punish and kill their enemies (as many brutal governments before them had done) but to dehumanize them and erase any trace of their existence from the memories of the governments' other subjects, a phenomenon introduced to the world by these 20th Century totalitarian governments.

Many people have said in the decades since the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag that the world should never let these atrocities happen again. But the sad irony is that many of these same people then promote a materialist, existentialist worldview that are the breeding grounds for the same radical totalitarian governments that ultimately carry out these atrocities. Arendt recognized this problem: "...We actually have nothing to fall back on in order to understand a phenomenon that nevertheless confronts us with its overpowering reality and breaks down all standards we know. There is only one thing that seems to be discernible: we may say that radical evil has emerged in connection with a system in which all men have become equally superfluous. The manipulators of this system believe in their own superfluousness as much as in that of all others, and the totalitarian murderers are all the more dangerous because they do not care if they themselves are alive or dead, if they ever lived or never were born... Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man."

So where do we go from here? "Never again?" I'd love to think so, but I'm not betting on it. I don't think Hannah Arendt would either.

Other reviews use appropriate words such as dense and weighty. Arendt writes historical analysis, not history, describing the roots or outcomes of events from the standpoint of competing classes, competing ideas, competing national identities, and broad historical trends. However, she does not always describe the history that she is interpreting, instead assuming the reader is already familiar with it. (I wonder how long the book would be if she had done so.) For example, she devotes an entire chapter to the Dreyfus affair in France, covering many of the leading characters and movements from a groups-in-conflict perspective, but never says what the Dreyfus affair actually was. This is what I mean by historical analysis: she is concerned with the forces that cause history to happen, rather than presenting that history; she is writing about the backstage factors that determine which actors played which roles, rather than reviewing the play itself as it was performed on stage.

As a result this book takes a great deal of effort from the reader to understand. But her ideas are worth the effort, whether the reader agrees or disagrees. Her historical analysis is at times remarkably profound -- as, for example, her description of the racist Afrikaaner state in South Africa as a return of a European people to tribal status, or her observation that racist societies tend also to hold labor in contempt, as it is the despised racial group who end up doing that labor. Such observations come about two to a page, and these are what make this a book that must be digested slowly. Each such observation deserves reflection -- both to absorb it and, at times, to disagree with it.

Even many educated Americans are not accustomed to reading such material any more. If you would like to make the process a bit easier, get the audio book. It is unabridged (from Audible or on CD), and I found listening was easier than reading.

Also, be aware that Arendt presents many of her personal conclusions as fact in dependent clauses. She might say, for example, "Since peoples whose names begin with differing vowels always struggle to the death, the conflict between the Igs and the Ugs inevitably became a war of annihilation" (not a direct quote, but an illustration of her style). Again, this makes the book slow to digest, as the reader does well to pause at the comment "Since peoples whose names begin with differing vowels always struggle to the death" and consider whether this has been demonstrated.

Those who do read this book will come away with many fresh perspectives on history and historical processes. As a note, the book "Modern Tyrants" by Daniel Chirot was written as a response to "The Origins of Totalitarianism," and analyzes several other cases (besides Hitler and Stalin) to derive what the author hopes will be a more general understanding of how and why totalitarian regimes develop. It is also well worth reading.

Origins, an incredibly detailed analysis of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, shows Arendt's versatility in political thought. I have yet to see a political philosopher/thinker publish a work with this much depth to it, and I think it will be a long time before we see anything like it.

Many of the reviews here have done better justice to her legacy, so I will just say that if you are thinking twice about pursuing this work because of it's length, think three times.

This is a comment on the photographed reprint of a used text, replete with underlinings, weakly reproduced pages that are hardly readable...Not a review of the contents of the book. A complete scandal that such a book should be passed off as new. The publishers, Hard Press, have the cheek to excuse their execrable job by appealing to the classic status of the book. Indeed it is a classic, but this reprint is not.
Avoid

Hannah Arendt's _The Origins of Totalitarianism_ is a book that takes a hard look at two rival totalitarian movements in the twentieth century, Soviet Communism and Nazism, and traces their historical roots. The book is divided into three volumes focusing on Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism. The first of these volumes is concerned with the historical origins of Antisemitism. Arendt examines some of the ways historians have dealt with the historical roots of Antisemitism. For example, some historians have argued based on a "scapegoat theory" that the Jews were used as an innocent scapegoat for the world's ills. Arendt concludes that such approaches are flawed because they fail to take into account the full historical situation of the Jews. Arendt explores the rise of Antisemitism in the birth of the nation-state, the emancipation of the Jews, the rise of the Jewish financiers, the roles of Jews within society, and the infamous Dreyfus affair. Of particular interest here is the role of conpiracy theories concerning such individuals as Benjamin Disraeli or the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The idea that the Jews constitute a race or are members of secret societies or clubs played an important role in the historical development of Antisemitism. The second of the volumes in this book is concerned with the rise of Imperialism. Here, a discussion of racism and racial thinking is examined involving such racial theorists as Count Arthur de Gobineau and various forms of Social Darwinism. The role of the Boers in South Africa is looked at and a thorough examination of the lives of such individuals as Cecil Rhodes, who called for the creation of a secret society of aristocratic Nordic elite, is made. The great Pan Movements, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Germanism, and the Pan-Arabism of T. E. Lawrence are dealt with and their subsequent roles in the creation of the totalitarian states is explored. The final volume of this book is concerned with Totalitarianism proper. Here, the role of propaganda and the secret police, as well as terror and the concentration camps are dealt with in their place in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Arendt explores each of these issues and shows why they are so particularly disturbing. Arendt contends that totalitarianism sought to annihilate the nature of man completely. Repression and terror abound within the totalitarian state and freedom is virtually nonexistent. Written during the Cold War period and just after the Second World War, this book takes an important look into the minds of such totalitarian leaders as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Their movements of Nazism and Soviet Communism continue to haunt the modern world even though they have been largely extinguished. The book is important today not only for historical reasons, but also because it gives a unique view of the world within a totalitarian society and the unique political danger that such totalitarian movements and institutions causes for the modern world.

I will say that this book is very dense reading. The author is supremely well versed in her subject matter. She is very adept at examining the historical roots of a vast and complicated problem. Her analysis could well be applied to modern Pan-Arabic movements (which seem so close to Nazism in their lack of concrete political goals) which are so prevalent today. Similarly, the analysis she provides sheds light on the racist aspects of Zionism. Her analysis of imperialism is dead on. Her realization that anti-semitism has its roots partly in a narrow minded desire to blame someone for certain societal problems and partly from certain historical behaviors of the Jews themseleves is enlightening
As a useful book for understanding many aspects of the modern mob mentality, it is a wonderful book. However, this book is not a light read that gets to its point quickly.

I did not finish reading this book because due to its title I expected something different. Mrs. A. writes basically about Judaism and Jewshisness which does interest me because I'm married to a Jewish woman. But I really do not want to acquire such a detailed knowledge which borders boredom.

My wife bought this book years ago and I inherited it from her after she passed. It is an excellent primer on the nature, history and psychology of Fascism, especially the history. Subsequent readings in psychology and sociology have born out her observations on totalitarian and authoritarian behavior. And there are chilling parallels between the world she describes, especially starting with the Dreyfus Affair on, and the current world we live in.

There are several books about the theme of totalitarianism, but this is one is the best. Hannah Arendt trascends all traditional concepts of "left" and "righ". You could feel the malignancy of this political pathology and understand how it works.

I am sure that there are some important points made in this book, but its turgid prose is so difficult to understand, it is not worth the effort. It takes its place on my bookshelf next to Being and Nothingness. Next time you see it on someone's bookshelf, ask them to summarize it, or discuss what they thought of it. You will probably get a few uncomfortable looks.

There's no question Arendt is brilliant and inspired, but I should read the Arendt for Dummies or choose a shorter book. I began to read this volume, which covers Origins of Antisemetisim and Origins of Imperialism also, and got bogged down, so I began skimming. Definitely important stuff in there, and I did glean information that was new to me, but in the end I shelved the book because it is too long. Choose it if you are "studying", not just an inquiring person.

Although the book is brilliantly written, it is clear from the onset that Arendt is arguing backwards, taking the finished form of the Soviet and Nazi Germany regimes, in order propogate her own theory on how totalitarianism managed to crystalize within these two vastly different societies.

Given the scope and reputation of this book, it should have been an enthralling read.

However I found the first section on Antisemitism very unclear and unstructured. Whilst an impressive array of historical opinions, analysis and facts are presented, they are all tied together in a very jumbled and verbose way.

Midway through the second section on Imperialism, I surrendered and abandoned reading the book.