In 1944, when Hannah Arendt sat down to compose the notes for what would become The Origins of Totalitarianism, not two years had passed since news of the Nazi death camps had reached America. American troops were on their way to the beaches of Normandy to sledgehammer into Europe, but the streets of Paris were still under German control. After moving to Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1941, Arendt had begun working for a German-Jewish weekly called Aufbau, for which she wrote many of the essays that would become The Origins. As she described it, the project sought to explain a vague but widely shared agreement that “the essential structure of all civilizations is at a breaking point.” More specifically, Arendt set out to answer how death camps and a World War could be set in motion by “so small (and, in world politics, so unimportant) a phenomenon as the Jewish question.”
In order to do this, Arendt addressed two theses on the source of antisemitism, both of them held widely among the Jewish organizations lobbying Washington for European intervention, and equally among the impoverished emigrant Jews who were scrambling to rebuild their lives in the new world.
The first was the thesis of “eternal antisemitism”: the idea that “mankind has insisted on murdering Jews for more than two thousand years” in a historical chain reaching back to the sack of Jerusalem, the blood libels, and the Crusades. The second thesis, which she called the scapegoat theory, held that Jews had become the sacrificial lamb of totalitarian fascism almost by accident: that when a machinery of violence like the Nazis’ spins out of control, anyone could become the target of the bloody cleansing.
“Arendt argued that both theories were wrong.”
Arendt argued that both theories were wrong—indeed, they were facile ways for Jews to “escape the seriousness of antisemitism” by waving away the political conditions of European society with psychological explanations that veered into the mystical. With regard to the scapegoat theory, she noted that before the Jews were the victims of Nazi terror, they were the center of Nazi ideology, and an ideology that must convince people to mobilize cannot choose its victims arbitrarily. As for “eternal antisemitism,” she didn’t deny the long history of Jew hatred among the peoples of Europe, but she argued that modern antisemitism, of the variety produced by the Nazis, was categorically different from what had come before. The Origins of Totalitarianism presented her alternative view.
Facts Only
* The writing for *The Origins of Totalitarianism* occurred in 1944.
* American troops were moving toward the beaches of Normandy while German control remained in Paris.
* Hannah Arendt wrote essays for the German-Jewish weekly *Aufbau*.
* Arendt sought to explain an agreement that "the essential structure of all civilizations is at a breaking point."
* She addressed two theses on the source of antisemitism: eternal antisemitism and the scapegoat theory.
* Eternal antisemitism posits mankind has murdered Jews for over two thousand years.
* The scapegoat theory suggests Jews became the sacrificial lamb when violence escalated, such as with the Nazis.
* Arendt argued that both theories were wrong because they offered psychological explanations instead of political context.
Executive Summary
In 1944, Hannah Arendt was composing notes for *The Origins of Totalitarianism* while American troops were preparing for the invasion of Europe and German control persisted in Paris. Arendt had previously written essays for a German-Jewish weekly called *Aufbau*. The project sought to explain a shared agreement that "the essential structure of all civilizations is at a breaking point." She aimed to determine how death camps and World War could be initiated by the "so small (and, in world politics, so unimportant) a phenomenon as the Jewish question."
To address this, Arendt examined two theses regarding antisemitism: eternal antisemitism, which posits that mankind has insisted on murdering Jews for over two thousand years, and the scapegoat theory, which suggests Jews became the accidental sacrificial lamb when machinery of violence like Nazism spiraled out of control. Arendt ultimately argued that both theories were flawed, viewing them as psychological explanations that evaded the political conditions of European society. She contended that before Nazi terror, Jews were central to Nazi ideology, and modern antisemitism was categorically different from historical hatreds.
Full Take
Sentinel — Human
The text reads like an excerpt from academic writing that synthesizes complex historical and philosophical references, suggesting a human authorial intent to explore Arendt's specific arguments.