Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany in 1906, and was the only child to her Jewish parents. She became a 20th century political philosopher whose writings cover totalitarianism, revolution, freedom and the faculties of thought and judgement. Her work essentially undertakes the nature of political existence.

The Origins of Totalitarianism is Arendt’s first major work, published in 1951, and is a response to the devastating events that have occurred during her lifetime, such as the rise of Nazi Germany, and the mass genocide of the Jews, along with the rise of Stalinism and the annihilation of millions of peasants. Arendt insisted that these examples of political evil could not have come from previous models, but that they represent an entire new type of government, built upon terror and ideological fiction.
The book focuses on the two major totalitarianism movements of the 20th Century: Nazism and Stalinism.

The book describes the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the early and middle 19th century and continues with an examination of the New Imperialism period from 1884 to the outbreak of Worl War 1.

The word anti-Semitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism.

Along with bureaucracy, Arendt says that racism was the main trait of colonialist imperialism, characterized by its unlimited expanision, which necessarily opposed itself and was hostile to the territorially delimited nation-state. Arendt traces the roots of modern imperialism to the accumulation of excess capital in European nation-states during the 19th century. This capital required overseas investments outside of Europe to be productive and political control had to be expanded overseas to protect the investments. She then examines "continental imperialism"and the emergence of "movements" substituting themselves to the political parties. These movements are hostile to the state and antiparliamentarist and gradually institutionalize anti-Semitism and other kinds of racism. Arendt concludes that while Italian fascism was a nationalist authoritarian movement, Nazism and Stalinism were totalitarian movements that sought to eliminate all restraints upon the power of the State.

Ardent talks about the schematic outline of the Nation State in Europe and its dramatic rise and fall. She states that it takes places in these stages:
1) Under the leadership of a monarch, the 17th and 18th centuries saw a slow development in nation-states. Jews took over the financial transactions of the princes; however the slow development still majorly affected the masses who continued to live life in the feudal age.
2) After the French Revolution, nation-states emerged in the modern sense. Jews were not able to organise themselves into a separate group, financially supportive of their government, because of their numbers and the general backwardness of regions.
3) The rise of imperialism at the end of the 19th century brought an end to the relationship between the Jews and the government, a relationship based on the indifference of the bourgeoisie to politics.
4) Before the years of the war, western Jewry and the nation-state had disintegrated. After the war and the decline of Europe, the Jews were deprived of their original power in the state and society. In the imperialist age, Jewish wealth had become insignificant. Inter-European Jewish relations became a thing of universal hatred because of its ‘useless’ wealth and of contempt because of its now lack or power.

“Victory or death” – it is a policy that spelt the destruction of the Jews existence.
However, there is an argument that Jews would have become Nazis as easily as the German citizens if only they were allowed to join the movement – similar to when they joined the Italian Fascist Party right before the Italian legislation. This is true because of the individual views and thoughts of Jews, and these views did not differ much from the beliefs of their background. But, it is not true in a historical sense. Nazism, without anti-Semitism would have been the deathblow to the existence of the Jewish race in Europe.

Important ideas featured are that:

• Totalitarian leaders and their regimes command and rest upon mass support.
• Neither Hitler nor Stalin could have maintained leadership of large populations and faced other struggles without having confidence in the masses.
• The propaganda of totalitarianism rulers usually start their careers by boasting of past crimes and future plans. Unfortunately, this attraction of evil and crime in mob mentality is nothing new.
• Arendt says “totalitarian movements are mass organisations of atomised, isolated individuals”. These individuals were ordered to act on the will of their leader to achieve as part of the state.
• She also says “the insane mass manufacture of corpses is preceded by the historically and politically intelligible preparation of living corpses.”
• Arendt referred to the concentration camps as “medieval pictures of hell”
  

The book's final section is devoted to describing the mechanics of totalitarian movements, focusing on Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Here, Arendt discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form of government. Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, says Arendt, as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination. Arendt discusses the use of front organizations, fake governmental agencies, and esoteric doctrines as a means of concealing the radical nature of totalitarian aims from the non-totalitarian world.

A final section added to the second edition of the book 1958 suggests that individual isolation and loneliness are preconditions for totalitarian domination.

Sources
Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism
www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/
http://libcom.org/forums/history-culture/hannah-arendts-origins-totalitarianism-28072009
http://www.enotes.com/origins-totalitarianism-salem/origins-totalitarianism