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2019 Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's Reports for the OSS: A Strange Chapter of Intellectual History Del Martin Herman

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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

“Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, and Herbert Marcuse’s Reports for the OSS: A Strange Partnership in Intellectual History”

By: Del Herman

A Thesis Submitted to the Department of History in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. George Williamson first for his course “Fascism and Modern European Thought” which got me interested in the social, cultural, and ideological analyses of fascism that many great 20th century European intellectuals pursued. I would also like to show my gratitude to him for all the sturdy mentorship, smart advice, and patient editing that he provided as the thesis director on this project. Lastly, I want to thank him for all the enlightening conversations he was nice enough to have with me on both the Frankfurt School and the history of ideas more generally. The intellectual impact of these conversations have inspired and informed the author in ways that go beyond the content of this thesis. I would also like to thank Drs. G. Kurt Piehler and Martin Kavka for their patient and helpful work as committee members. Special thanks goes to Dr. Piehler for his course “United States: 1920 –1945” which got me interested in that time period of American history and about the unusual alliances that developed as a result of the Second World War. Special credit must also go to Dr. Kavka for his insightful questions and careful, patient proofreading which have helped make this thesis a much better project. I truly could not have asked for a better committee. Finally, I want to thank Megan Gillman and the team at the Honors Program for their help in procuring funding for me to visit the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The archival sources made this thesis a much better product and their help and advocacy for my research was the direct cause of that. Such funding also allowed me to visit an archive for the first time, an experience that is invaluable for any scholar of History.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….. 5

2. Franz Neumann…………………………………………………………………. 17

3. Otto Kirchheimer……………………………………………………………….. 37

4. Herbert Marcuse………………………………………………………………… 56

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………. 75

6. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….. 82

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INTRODUCTION

I. Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) evolved out of US President Franklin D.

Roosevelt’s appointment of the energetic William J. Donovan (a civilian) to Coordinator of

Information (COI) in July 1941. The purpose of that position was to organize intelligence related to national security concerns as the world situation grew increasingly more intense in the lead-up to the United States’ involvement in World War II beginning in December of that year. After war actually broke out, however, a larger intelligence agency was needed. The OSS was officially created on June 13, 1942 by virtue of a wartime order from President Roosevelt meant to bolster the quality of American intelligence during the pressing situation of World War II. The OSS was moved under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with William Donovan as chief.1 The organization was meant to gather information about the enemy for various military operations.

Its primary role in the American war effort was its unprecedented ability to handle intelligence in a systematic way for military operations. Along with those functions, the organization also helped with the espionage, subversion, and propaganda operations that the executive branch of the American government wanted completed. Its dissolution on September 20, 1945 by President

Harry Truman would lead to much of its institutional structure being carried over in a replacement organization: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).2

The Research & Analysis Branch (R&A) was one of the main divisions of the OSS. Its principal task was to gather strong and credible data about various subjects of interest, both for the immediate American war effort and the federal government as a whole. Its purpose was not

1 Central Intelligence Agency, “What was OSS?,” Accessed April 3, 2019, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/intelligence-history/oss/art03.htm 2 “Office of Strategic Services,” in Encyclopedia Brittanica. Accessed April 3, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Office-of-Strategic-Services. Herman 6 just the acquisition of facts, but also the analysis of those facts by a corps of experts in different fields. This meant that the analysts were primarily scholars, recruited from various areas of academia (mainly the social sciences). These scholars provided the academic rigor and intellectual insight necessary to synthesize all available credible information about whatever they happened to be studying into a cogent analysis of the subject at hand, providing specific policy recommendations in their reporting. This need for clear research and serious, cogent analysis demanded a high standard of objectivity with little room for intellectual experimentation but a lot of room for sincere scholarly opinion.3 These analysts in total produced over two thousand reports during the OSS’s time of operation, on subjects as disparate as the conditions of railways along the Russian front to the attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary to the relationship between business and aggression in Weimar Germany.4

In order to accomplish these increasingly disparate and specialized tasks, R&A divided the analysts into distinct groups: examples of these included the Europe-Africa Division and the

Far-East Division among many others. These divisions were then be further split into sections addressing even more specific areas; among these was the Central European Section—a distinguished group of analysts who focused specifically on Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.5

The corps members who were staffed in the Central European Section therefore needed to be social scientists who were familiar with Central Europe and who could provide expert scholarly analysis of it. By 1943, the R&A leadership became desperate for researchers who could provide this kind of in-depth scholarly analysis and began to look for refugee scholars

3 See Barry Katz, “Military Discipline,” in Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942-1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 1–29. 4 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 18. 5 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 23, 34. Herman 7

across the political and linguistic spectrum. Naturally, one of the first to catch their eye was the

Marxist legal expert Franz Neumann, who was at that time employed at Columbia University.

Neumann’s dense scholarly analysis of Nazi Germany, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of

National Socialism, showed his unique expertise. He was therefore one of the first analysts to be

brought aboard, followed in May by his friend and colleague Herbert Marcuse and in June by

Otto Kirchheimer.6 Both of these men were also Marxists who were affiliated with the Frankfurt

School, an intellectual movement which will be addressed below. In total, there were at least 16

scholars working within the section, including some others such as Sinclair Armstrong, Felix

Gilbert, and Edgar Johnson.7 Their job as a section was to provide their unique scholarly insight based on the most reliable information of what was happening in Central Europe at that time; this could include reports in the European press, radio broadcasts from the Third Reich, cables from

OSS outposts all over friendly areas of Europe which could be utilized to produce even newer information, prisoner of war interrogations, and even materials from the Library of Congress.8

With this great wealth of resources, the scholars applied their own intellectual insight and credentials to top-quality analysis of whatever needed to be reviewed. The topics of analysis

could be dictated within the section itself but could (and often were) dictated by the needs of the

OSS as well as both the State and War Departments. Work was dealt out to particular analysts

based on their academic credentials and much of the intellectual labor was handled

collaboratively between the various scholars.

A history of the Central European Section as a unit, written by the section chief Eugene

N. Anderson, is very helpful in piecing back the environment that each of the Central

Europeanists worked in. First of all, the section was run in a democratic fashion. Each analyst,

6 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 32–33. 7 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 34. 8 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 34. Herman 8 according to Anderson, “has not had views or judgments imposed upon him.” The analysts worked together in a cooperative fashion, had very little “hostility” or “backbiting” between any of them, and each were able to express their opinions fully. This environment was encouraged by both Neumann and Marcuse, who did a good job of encouraging democratic cooperation among the various scholars. Secondly, their work program was actually quite successful in mapping out a wide array of relevant social patterns in the Third Reich as they were able to prepare a number of Civil Affairs Guides for the War Department on various aspects of the Nazi regime, in addition to the individual reports. As Anderson put it, what made the work of the section unique was their “background analyses in terms of the total social setting” of whatever they happened to be analyzing.

None of this is to say that there were not problems. Anderson described these in full detail as well. One was simply the fact that the section did not have enough hands to do all of the work that the government was asking of them. There were simply not enough secretaries or analysts to handle the massive workload. Another, of more interest to this study, was that the personnel office within the OSS wanted to run the section like a hierarchical bureaucracy, whereas the research group actually worked better when it was a democratic and cooperative endeavor between equally capable scholars. What all of this taken together shows is that the

Section was a place where the various intellectuals were able to work together, though not without some restraints put upon them by the hierarchy above.9

While the work done by the Central European Section often proved useful for officials in the executive branch, their ideas were taken with a grain of salt to say the least.10 However, the analysts did sometimes have real effect on the government. Neumann, for example, was one of

9 “A History of the Central European Section under the Incumbency of Eugene Anderson as Chief,” February 17, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2). 10 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 34. Herman 9 the experts who helped Justice Robert Jackson’s legal team at the Nuremberg trials, despite the ideological differences between Neumann and Jackson. They were also taken seriously by leading personnel in the OSS, as Chief William Donovan (a registered Republican) defended the very left-leaning personnel of the Research & Analysis Branch when it became an issue retrospectively during the McCarthy era. However, for the most part, their recommendations were not implemented by the American government in practice.

This is not to say that the Central European Section bore no fruit resulting from its labors.

One concrete accomplishment that the Central European Section managed to achieve was an analysis of how totalitarianism and fascism functioned under Nazi rule. With the resources provided by the American government, the scholars in the Central European Section were able to craft distinctive arguments about how totalitarian rule functioned, why it was so destructive, and how Europe could move forward after the Second World War was finished and the Allies had won.

The three scholars that this thesis focuses on are Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, and

Herbert Marcuse and the reports that the three of them wrote during their tenure in the OSS.

These reports reflect their insight as scholars and their willingness to unite their theories with practice by aiding the US government in defeating Nazi Germany. All three were affiliated to varying degrees with the Frankfurt School, the other institution that collided with the Office of

Strategic Services during this strange chapter of intellectual history.

II. The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School’s institutional beginnings can be traced back to 1922 when the political science scholar and socialist thinker Felix J. Weil conceived of the idea for an institution Herman 10 that would be a hub for social scientists with Marxist inclinations to carry out an independent research program. The Institute was meant to be a place where theory could develop without the need to conform to a specific party line (which both the Bolsheviks and Social Democrats were privy to uphold) and therefore have an independent integrity.11

The Institute for Social Research first came into existence in 1923 but did not receive its official building in Frankfurt until 1924. The Institute was loosely affiliated with the University of Frankfurt am Main. It took up a number of different social problems, analyzing everything from anti-Semitism to the structure of the Weimar Republic to bourgeois society itself. The key feature of the Institute was its focus on independence in the scholarship that it sponsored. The socialist left outside of the Institute found itself divided between those Social Democratic moderates who were generally opposed to the radical, revolutionary politics of the Bolsheviks and the Communists who were loyal to the USSR and supportive of more outright revolutionary measures. The Institute, on the other hand, sought to create a “Third Way” Marxism which did not immediately side with either and created an independent program of study.

This led to the Institute drawing a number of independent left-wing thinkers into its orbit.

These included Max Horkheimer (who became the Institute’s director in 1930), Theodor Adorno,

Walter Benjamin, and Erich Fromm. All of these thinkers shared a commitment to Marxism as a methodology but were often experimental in their approach and had differing ideas on a wide range of issues. They also were very willing to incorporate other currents from the intellectual and cultural milieu of the time into their work. These included psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy, and twentieth-century analyses of technology and mass culture.12

11 See Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its Histories, Theories, and Political Significance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 16. 12 See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School, 1923-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 44, 86. Herman 11

The intellectual output of this scholarly renaissance was the creation of Critical Theory, the main accomplishment of the Frankfurt School. Critical theory developed in what the historian

Martin Jay would call a “genesis as dialectical as the method it purported to apply to social phenomena.” What Jay meant by this was that Critical Theory evolved in a dialectical way through interaction with different scholarly traditions and approaches as well as through continued interaction between the different scholars that participated in its development. The term was first defined by Max Horkheimer in a 1937 essay called “Traditional and Critical

Theory.” In this article, Horkheimer argued that traditional theories of social research had sought to develop general principles about the world and had merely sought to add to human knowledge without being tied in any way to action. Critical Theory on the other hand, rejected this disinterested approach: it sought to unite knowledge and action.13 Understanding had to be used in the act of changing and emancipating the social world. A critical theory had to be explanatory, practical, and normative at the same time. It had to explain what was wrong with the world, identify ways to fix it, and provide the means of effectively criticizing and changing it. It aimed to unite theory and practice, social science and philosophy, explanation and understanding.

Moreover, its methods could be heterodox in many ways; it was open to new ideas as it saw the fluidity of the Hegelian-Marxist dialectical method as the best way to understand the world.

Lastly, it was a project that sought human liberation, aiming at liberating human society from all that prevented it from complete freedom and self-actualization.14 One of the guiding mottos of the Frankfurt School could certainly be Karl Marx’s 1845 quote from his Theses on Feuerbach:

“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

13 See Jay, Dialectical Imagination, 80 –81. 14 “Critical Theory,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 2005, accessed April 17, 2019, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/. Herman 12

The intellectual movement of the Frankfurt School at the Institute for Social Research was cut short when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power. The Institute was shut down in

Frankfurt by 1933 and had to be moved to Geneva in Switzerland. This move would be short- lived, however, as the Institute would relocate in 1935 to New York City at Columbia

University. Here the Frankfurt School established the scholarly journal Zeitschrift fur

Sozialforschung (Magazine for Social Research, later renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social

Science). Many of the scholars affiliated with the Frankfurt School would use this journal to expound upon the nature of Nazism and the causes for it.

As the early 1940s came along, two critical moments occurred that affected the trajectory of the Frankfurt School. The first was that World War II pitted both the liberal democracies and the USSR into war with Nazi Germany. The second was that the Institute’s resources at

Columbia began to dry up around 1942, leading many of the scholars associated with it needing work. While the second event no doubt would have driven the scholars associated with the

Institute to look for work in unexpected places, the first is the most important for understanding how the OSS and the Frankfurt School became intertwined.

For Neumann, Kirchheimer, and Marcuse—all committed Marxists—the opportunity to unite theory with practice was essential. As the historian Barry Katz has argued, there was no place better to unite theory and practice in the battle against fascism than working for the OSS.

The OSS, while somewhat begrudging of their Marxism, needed their insights as great scholars and they needed the institutional structure to be able to have the chance to make their thoughts a reality. The surprising and counterintuitive conclusion of all this is that Neumann, Kirchheimer, Herman 13 and Marcuse were drawn to the OSS not in spite of their Marxism but in that topsy-turvy historical moment because they were Marxists.15

III. The Reports

During their tenure with the OSS, Neumann, Kirchheimer, and Marcuse were tasked with producing reports on various topics related to the situation of Central Europe, and obviously almost all of them revolved in some way around the Third Reich. The reports were written mainly between 1943 and 1945, beginning when Nazi Germany was beginning to lose the advantage in the war but was still a very real threat and extending to the point in the war when it was obvious that the Allies would prevail and a new postwar settlement would have to be come to. It is these reports that will be the object of this thesis’s analysis, as the next three chapters will analyze each thinker’s particular reports and their unique contributions.

The reports themselves have only recently been attributed authorship to the three thinkers being looked at in this study. Even though the section often assigned particular analysts to write certain reports based on expertise, individual authorship was not important within the OSS and the original reports themselves do not have the author’s name on them. The authorship of these reports could only be ascertained through other documentation, such as the submission forms that the section had to send to the Projects Committee in order to get certain report topics approved.

This supplementary documentation tells the reader quite a bit about the nature of the reports. One document, which asked for approval on a report co-authored by Herbert Marcuse and Felix Gilbert on the subject of “Prussian militarism,” displays this fully. Mainly, it shows how structured these projects were. On these forms, the subject to be discussed in the report had

15 See Barry M. Katz, “The Frankfurt School Goes to War,” Journal of Modern History 59.3 (1987), 443. Herman 14 to be described and justified in a few concise sentences, while the length, due date, level of priority, man hours, and the number of maps and photos had to be laid out in order for the report to be approved. The environment in which these reports were written then was a strict one. It demanded the reports be useful, concisely written, almost entirely planned out, and for there to be little to no surprises in the final product. The reports themselves reflect these requirements, being very methodical, objective, and lacking ambiguity. This surely reflected the OSS’s demands on the intellectuals under discussion.16

At the same time, however, the supplementary documentation makes clear that the reports do largely represent the opinions of the analysts writing them. Neumann, for example, remained in correspondence with many in the R&A leadership and in the State Department, freely presenting his opinions on a wide range of issues. For example, he shared his views about postwar reconstruction in conversations with James Riddleberger, a State Department official and a later US diplomat. All of this makes sense when one considers why these three were brought into the OSS in the first place. They were there because they were prominent thinkers and scholars and could help the United States government understand Nazi Germany better.

Therefore, they were given free range to express their views, albeit professionally and with military discipline, on the subjects that they were considering. The reports are therefore a mostly accurate, if stiffly written, indication of their views as left-wing German intellectuals.17

The relevant nature of the reports is what makes them so interesting as a chapter within the intellectual history of the Frankfurt School, as its members both continued to wrestle with the realities of Nazi totalitarianism and entered new ground with their need to confront the extent of

Nazi atrocities and a post-World War II world. However, the somewhat stifling environment of

16 Eugene N. Anderson, “Approval Form for ‘Prussian Militarism’ Report for Projects Committee,” September 23, 1943 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2). 17 Franz Neumann, “Discussion with James Riddleberger,” May 22, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2). Herman 15 their creation also adds to their interest, since it shows the conflict between not only intellectual creativity and institutional efficiency, but also between theory and practice, as well as (and perhaps most importantly) between the OSS and the Frankfurt School. It is precisely for all of these reasons that the reports deserve analysis as pieces of scholarly work in their own right, as a unique chapter in the life of the mind of each of the three thinkers under discussion.

The reports can be divided roughly into three groupings, based on the main issues occurring in Central Europe which were confronting the section at the time they were written.

The first is the analysis of Nazi Germany and its techniques of psychological warfare. These reports were generally written in 1943 or the earliest parts of 1944, as the war was beginning to go in the Allies’ direction but Nazi Germany still remained a formidable force. These reports analyze how Nazi totalitarianism worked—how it exerted control over its citizens, what role terror and anti-Semitism played in its functioning, etc. The second group of reports dealt with

Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust, as the details of atrocities began to come in and the OSS began to be tasked with acquiring information for the United States government to use in a future tribunal. These reports began around January 1944 and would continue well into 1945. Finally, the third group of reports treated the problem of how central Europe- specifically Germany-

should be rearranged going forward. These reports contain the thinkers’ ideas on denazification

and the restructuring of German society. Even though another scholar, the historian Barry Katz,

proposed these groupings, they are not artificial categories but seemed to be conscious parts of

the work program of the Central European Section.18

Each of the reports are of varying amounts of length, some as short as five pages and others as long as forty. They came with titles of what they were to address and tended to group their discussions into clearly defined sections. While the Central European Section worked

18 See Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 34–35. Herman 16 collaboratively on these reports, each one did bear evidence of the primary author’s original thoughts. The body of this thesis will focus on each of these three thinkers’ reports divided along the three aforementioned categories, with each thinker getting his own chapter. Finally, a conclusion will be presented at the end which will sum up the major original points to be gathered big picture from an analysis of the reports.

The reports provide each of the three thinkers’ unique explanations of Nazi totalitarianism, often informed by their Frankfurt School background. Diving into class conflict or technical rationality or the impact of technology on human consciousness, each of the three thinkers lay out provocative analyses of totalitarian fascism. Along with this exploration of totalitarianism, the three thinkers also laid out their thoughts on dealing with Nazi atrocities and their views about how a post-WWII Europe needed to look. These subjects would provide areas for each of these thinkers to come to intellectual grips with the sheer inhumanity of the Nazi regime and to explore their political and social philosophy of what a better world moving forward might look like. All three of these subjects, in effect, would draw out a number of incredibly important insights from each thinker, insights that the OSS was certainly lucky to have.

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CHAPTER ONE: FRANZ NEUMANN

I. Biography and Background

Martin Jay, in his book The Dialectical Imagination, describes how Franz Neumann’s

Marxism meshed with the thought of the rest of the Frankfurt School. Neumann’s work was “less

dialectical” and “more mechanistic” but clearly came from an “analytically probing mind.”1

These descriptions apply not just to Neumann’s Marxist views but often jibe well with his

general character as an intellectual, especially in his reports on Nazi Germany for the OSS. His

work was strikingly original and grounded in a conviction that a mechanical form of Marxian

social science could properly explain the thoroughly irrational and almost incomprehensibly

inhumane phenomena of Nazism.

Before undertaking an analysis of Franz Neumann’s reports, some biographical and

background information needs to be given about him as a thinker, intellectual, and individual.

This helps to give some context to his particular contributions throughout the reports.

Franz Leopold Neumann was born May 23, 1900, in Kattowitz, Silesia in the then-

German Empire to an assimilated Jewish family. As a young university student, he became

involved in left-wing politics toward the end of World War I, joining the Soldiers’ Councils that

were assembled during the November 1918 German Revolution which consisted of delegates

from both the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the more radical, pro-Bolshevik Independent

Social Democratic Party (USPD).

His education and early intellectual career were primarily legal; he studied law at various

universities around Germany and was a student of the well-known jurist Hugo Sinzheimer in

1 See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 145. Herman 18

Frankfurt. This was different in many ways from the more prominent members of the Frankfurt

School (including Marcuse), whose academic backgrounds mainly came from philosophy and the social sciences.2 Neumann’s scholarly career at this time would include articles for journals such as Die Arbeit and Die Gesellschaft as well as a professorship at the German College of

Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in Berlin. As might be expected, he was very involved in the German political scene, working for the center-left Social Democratic Party, even while he leaned to the left of its more accommodationist, gradualist socialist program.3

All of this was shattered when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power. He was briefly imprisoned by the Nazis for his outspoken political views in April 1933, but managed to escape to England. He resumed his scholarly career at the London School of Economics studying under

Harold Laski, earning a doctorate in 1936.

Shortly after this, Neumann began his engagement with the Frankfurt School through his contributions to their journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. In this journal, Neumann started his scholarly contributions to Critical Theory through the distinctive lens of his legal training and more “mechanistic” brand of Marxism.4 It was also here that Neumann turned his focus to the rise of National Socialism in Europe, along with many of the other exiled members of the

Frankfurt School at that time. Two articles from this period are of particular interest: “The

Change in the Function of Law in Modern Society” and “Types of Natural Law.”5

The former, Neumann’s first contribution to Zeitschrift, was an attempt to trace the thinking on the function of the law in Western society. He used these pages to give a critique of liberal legal theory, attacking liberalism’s view that justice can be attained through equality

2 See Jay, 144. 3 See Jay 144. 4 See Jay 145. 5 Franz Neumann, “The Changing Function of Law in the Modern Society,” and “Types of Natural Law,” in The Democratic and Authoritarian State, ed. Herbert Marcuse (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957), 22–68, 69–95. Herman 19 before a distant law. For Neumann, this just masked the reality that the law is made by human beings with distinct socio-economic interests. Liberalism was not as negative or judgment-free as it claimed to be. He made this point explicitly clear: “One would, however, fall victim to a historical fallacy if one were to identify ‘negativeness’ with ‘weakness’. The liberal state has

always been as strong as the political and social situation and the interests of society

demanded.”6

Neumann’s assessment of liberalism’s doctrine of equality before the law, however, was

not completely pessimistic. He did emphasize the importance of liberalism’s formalistic take on

the law, placing emphasis on how the concept of the law’s general application does lend itself to

establishing the conditions for justice. However, this notion of the law’s generality had been

done away with by the fascists and increasingly by liberal democracies due to the rise of

monopoly capitalism, which needed no equality before the law simply because it had no other

parties to compete with. This insidious turn in both legal theory and legal reality marked the shift

toward an irrational ‘decisionism’ which characterized the anarchic state of fascism.

His second essay, “Types of Natural Law,” proposed an alternative course to fascism’s irrational embrace of decisionism. Decisionism was a legal view advocated by Nazi-friendly legal theorist and intellectual Carl Schmitt, which argued that the body making the decisions, rather than the contents of the decisions themselves, justified them in the eyes of the law.7

Instead of the decisionism embodied by the current state of fascism or the nature of monopoly

capitalism, Neumann advocated for a legal theory based on reason rooted in a broadly-conceived

natural law tradition. In his article, Neumann showed how natural law theories, while often very

different from one another, shared a basis in seeing humans as rational animals worthy of rights

6 Franz Neumann, The Democratic and Authoritarian State, 23. 7 “Carl Schmitt,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed April 2, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/ Herman 20 in themselves. Neumann was indeed aware that natural law theories could be employed for

“entirely reactionary aims.” However, he thought that natural law’s focus on reason as the source of proper law and on individual rational creatures as opposed to “corporations or states” could serve an effective theoretical foil to the irrational decisionism embodied in regimes under fascist dictatorships or the control of monopoly capital. While Neumann subjected much of the historic natural law theories to heavy critique, he did think that these aspects could be useful in the fight against fascism.8

All of these growing thoughts on fascist irrationalism, the anarchy of authoritarianism, and the class-based causes for the rise of the patterns of law seen under fascism reached their peak in Neumann’s 1942 book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism.

This is where Neumann put forward a complete scholarly analysis of the Third Reich. He grounded his analysis largely in the particulars of class structure and what he saw as the continuation of monopoly capital under totalitarian rule. To Neumann, National Socialism was not, as the Nazis themselves sometimes claimed, a repudiation of capitalism but rather an intensification of the current class structure of German society, giving big business and industrialists even more of a monopolistic stranglehold than before. This led to Neumann’s classic point that Nazi Germany did not represent the tyrannical “Leviathan” of absolute state power but was rather “a non-state, a chaos, a rule of lawlessness and anarchy.”9 For Neumann, it was the intensification of existing structures of class domination and oppression that shaped the profoundly new beast of National Socialism most effectively.

8 Franz Neumann, “Types of Natural Law,” in The Democratic and the Authoritarian State, 91. 9 Franz Neumann, “Note on the Name of Behemoth,” in Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1942

Herman 21

In the context of the reports, there are several important points to glean from Neumann’s previous intellectual biography. First, while Neumann saw National Socialism as a new beast, he was also confident in the ability of Marxist class analysis to make full sense of it. This is made manifest throughout the reports. Secondly, Neumann diverged from the other, more central members of the Frankfurt School (including Marcuse) in important respects, he kept much more to a traditional Marxist approach, attacking any focus on subjective psychology, “bourgeois” psychoanalysis, and the growth of technology or mass culture in his analysis. Along with this,

Neumann’s political and legal approach ended up on the ideological spectrum somewhere between leftism and liberalism, which is important to bear in mind when looking at his views in the reports on postwar reconstruction. Lastly, his legal background gave a distinct focus and flavor to his reports, as he focused much on legal institutions and his background in Weimar law to draw conclusions about the Nazi regime. This set him apart from Marcuse in important ways because of their differing academic backgrounds.

It was after the publication of Behemoth and as the Institute’s funding began to dry up that Neumann took an offer to work as an analyst in the Central European Division of the

Research & Analysis (R&A) Branch at the Office of Strategic Services, beginning his work for the organization in 1943. This chapter analyzes the recently declassified reports whose authorship has been attributed to Franz Neumann.

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II. Analysis of Nazism (1943-1945)

Neumann’s reports started in May 1943 as his service for the OSS only begun in early

1943. At this time, the Research & Analysis Branch had been tasked with developing reports on the use of psychological warfare by the Axis powers on both their own populations and occupied areas.10 The OSS made this a topic of concern because as the war started to go in the Allies’ favor, the leadership wanted to get an idea of how difficult it would be to disentangle the German

people from the totalitarian system they lived under. This meant that one of the first tasks that

Neumann and the other analysts of the Central European Section embarked on was an analysis of

Nazi totalitarianism and how it controlled the populations it governed.

Neumann’s analysis of the Nazi regime was rooted, along with the Comintern’s stiffer

Marxist position, in the view that fascism was the organized reaction of the ruling classes to consolidate their power.11 However, Neumann also held the view that Nazism was indeed something new in the history of class conflict, insofar as it went beyond simply being a reactionary pushback of the ruling classes. It was also a state-directed machine that wanted the

abolition of all forms of independent expression under the dominion of the ruling class, i.e. a

totalitarian dictatorship. While Neumann was not less of an orthodox Marxist for claiming that

the rise of fascism was a special point in the history of class conflict—Karl Marx himself made

very similar claims about the pre-fascist movement of Bonapartism in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis-Napoleon—his position was unique among Marxist thinkers in fully expressing what

Neumann saw as the deeply totalitarian character of Nazism while keeping his analysis grounded in a rationalistic assessment of class conflict.

10 Rudolph Winnacker to William Langer, “Weekly Analysis of Psychological Warfare,” January 9, 1943 (RG 226, Entry 1, Box 2: Office of the Chief, General Correspondence, 1942 –1946). 11 See Jay 163. Herman 23

Building off his analysis in Behemoth, Neumann argued that Nazism was fueled by the

reaction of the ruling classes (particularly monopoly capital) to consolidate their power.

Neumann made this point in his report on “German Cartels and Cartel-like Organizations,” in

which he showed that the Nazi regime had encouraged the increased cartelization and

rationalization of the German economy, consolidating power to a few of the ruling elites

controlling industrial combines: “The growth of the combines has been furthered under National

Socialism by the Aryanization of Jewish businesses, the Germanization of foreign enterprises,

and the elimination of small and medium-sized firms.”12 While the state exercised a larger degree of control over the cartels as the war continued, the power of the cartels continued to be consolidated to a small private elite: “The consolidation of cartels under the Nazis may be viewed as part of the general policy of reducing the number of private business entities with which the government must deal.”13 The alliance between the ruling elites and the Nazi Party was an important element to the regime, as it allowed the state to consolidate its control by streamlining industry and keeping the ruling class in the Nazi camp. It also allowed the ruling elites to use government power to keep their rule in place. In this limited sense, Neumann viewed the rise of National Socialism as no different than a reactionary pushback of the ruling classes.

Indeed, as he states in his report on “The Treatment of Germany,” four separate groups of the ruling classes were behind the Nazi Party to begin with: “the Junkers, the industrial and financial leadership, the German Officer corps, and the high bureaucracy.”14 While they supported the

Nazis for different reasons, each viewed the Nazi regime as the ideal vehicle for allowing it to

12 Neumann, Franz. “German Cartels and Cartel-like Organizations,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 265. 13 “ Neumann, Franz. German Cartels and Cartel-like Organizations,” 269. 14 Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. by Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 440. Herman 24 regain the place in society it had enjoyed before World War I. They also viewed Nazi conquests as congenial to their interests of expansion for conquest or money.15 Neumann’s insistence on the alliance between the Nazi Party and the ruling classes certainly meant that he was somewhat sympathetic with the official Comintern position that fascism was the open terrorism of reactionary finance capital.

However, Neumann’s view that class structure and relations were the key to understanding Nazi Germany was not quite as simple as the Comintern position, as his

September 1943 report “Possible Patterns of German Collapse” indicated. It was here that

Neumann developed an argument showing how the Nazi totalitarian system originated in class relations but was fundamentally a different kind of regime than previous reactionary authoritarianisms. What differentiated the totalitarian system of the Nazis from the prewar authoritarianism of the German Empire was the eradication of any groups of possible resistance from German society. For Neumann, this involved a complete suppression of any class interests other than those of the ruling regime. Big business, industrialists, and the ruling elites had to be happily consolidated into the party and given the power and influence they wanted so that they remained satisfied. Similarly, the lower-middle and working classes had to be given what

Neumann referred to as a “social escalator” through the machinery of the party to satisfy their demands and to give up any interests they might have had separate from the regime as a class.

All independent groups in civil society had to be completely destroyed: “No voluntary

15Neumann, “The Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports, 440.

Herman 25 organization—except the churches—are left above ground; any attempt to form them or to express discontent is met with ruthless terror.”16

This process created an atomization of class interests in which all classes were subsumed under the regime and either coaxed or terrorized into complete submission. The repression of any class expression was a critical part of the totalitarian rule of the Nazi party. Nazi Germany was therefore very distinct from pre-WWI Germany in that the Nazis had atomized and rebuilt society in all of its different socio-economic expressions by transforming society, rather than imposing an order from the top down. This had consolidated all classes under Nazi rule and created a machine that was far harder to defeat than a simple despotic dictatorship.

Totalitarianism had leveled all independent opposition. This was why Neumann believed that the

Nazi state would be able to hold on during Allied bombings, because they had so thoroughly consolidated all aspects of society so as to make the possibility of any domestic overthrow impossible, thus separating the situation in the Nazi era from the situation in 1918, when a domestic revolution happened. Further, Neumann believed that the totalitarian structure of Nazi society had so suppressed the “subordinate strata” of society that it made impossible any kind of

individual or small-scale resistance since morale was so deeply controlled by the Nazi regime:

“The morale of the subordinate strata is not conditioned by their thinking and feelings but rather

by the institutional controls of Nazi society which compel the subordinate strata to work and

fight no matter what may be their attitudes toward Nazism.”17

16 Neumann, Franz. “Possible Patterns of German Collapse,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School’s Contribution to the War Effort, ed. by Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 108. 17 Neumann, Franz. “The Attempt on Hitler’s Life,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School’s Contribution to the War Effort, edited by Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 134.

Herman 26

The complete pulverization of class interests was what made National Socialism so unique in Neumann’s view. It also underlined Neumann’s understanding of the horrors of the

Nazi regime. This is evident in his report “Anti-Semitism: The Spearhead of Universal Terror,” in which he argued that what made the Nazis’ treatment of Jews different from other forms of anti-Semitism was that the Nazis used the Jews as a testing ground for their more universal terror

on all independent sections of society. Neumann saw everything horrific about the Nazi regime

as rooted in class conflict, but argued that this particular iteration of class conflict created

something entirely new: a ruthlessly modern, anarchically predatorial totalitarianism which

eliminated all forms of independent expression. What is important to note is that Neumann never

completely diverged from what can be considered a broadly orthodox Marxist viewpoint, but he

did view Nazism as something fundamentally new as well.

III. Dealing with Nazi Atrocities

Since the course of the war made it more and more apparent that Germany would be conquered by the Allies, the subject of how to deal with German war crimes became an ever more pressing subject for the scholars under discussion. Neumann, in particular, took a large part in these debates as his scholarly opinions on it were valued by the OSS, enough to get him promoted to a special War Crimes Committee in the Europe/Africa Division of the Research &

Analysis Branch.18 This committee would be involved in supplying material to the Nuremberg

Tribunal of Nazi war criminals between May and December 1945, overseen by Chief Justice

Robert Jackson. Neumann’s legal background and analytical insight would serve the tribunal well, even while his views often clashed with Jackson’s. In the meantime, the crimes against

18 Mr. Richard Hartshorne to Lt. Carl E. Schorske, “War Crimes Committee,” June 6, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 54, Box 2: Correspondence of the Division Chief, 1942–1945). Herman 27 humanity committed by the Nazi regime became a focus of Neumann’s reports as early as May

1943.

While Neumann’s views on the definition of a war criminal and the practical prosecution of such people were based on standard definitions developed by either international or relevant municipal laws, his view on the causes of war crimes was influenced in tandem with his

Marxism.19 Neumann’s take on the causes of Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust was in continuity with his overall analysis of the deeper causes of the Nazi regime. Even in the face of the Third Reich’s horrific crimes, he never bent from an orthodox Marxist viewpoint in understanding how these crimes could have occurred. Moreover, this orthodox Marxist understanding would prevent him from seeing anti-Semitism itself as the primary cause of Nazi crimes against humanity, but would lead him to think that anti-Semitism was just a symptom of a deeper problem that created National Socialism. This point (which he had already began developing in Behemoth) would make the interpretation of Nazi atrocities he developed in his reports the subject of much controversy.

Neumann never diverged from a traditional Marxist analysis in his interpretation of why these particularly heinous crimes occurred. This is an important point to grasp because it will led him to see Nazi atrocities as an occurrence which, while uniquely vicious, did not need a separate category of explanation in order to understand.

Neumann developed his most interesting and compelling argument related to Nazi atrocities in “Anti-Semitism: The Spearhead of Universal Terror,” a report written early in his service for the OSS. While Neumann wrote another report on the subject of war crimes,

“Problems Concerning the Treatment of War Criminals,” this report contained more pragmatic

19 Franz L. Neumann to Phoebe Morrison, “Definition of a War Criminal,” March 8, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2); Franz Neumann to Lt. James S. Donovan, “Penalties to be given out by the International Military Tribunal,” May 26, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 54, Box 2). Herman 28 observations about how the United States could advance the case most efficiently against Nazi perpetrators. This work is important, however, as it does show Neumann’s development of a legal theory which could be used to identify war criminals. In his report on the Spearhead theory however, he developed a broader sociological theory as to the reasons for Nazi crimes.

The basic content of Neumann’s “Spearhead” theory of terror can be understood in opposition to what he called a “scapegoat” theory, which he believed was widely accepted. In the scapegoat view, the Jews were made into scapegoats for all of the problems that plagued German society at that time. For Neumann, this view underestimated Nazi terror and was far too simplistic. The scapegoat view would imply for Neumann that anti-Semitism was the end to which the terror of the Nazi regime was going. However, Neumann argued that the persecution against the Jews was merely the beginning of the regime’s ultimate plan, as the Nazis used the

Jews as guinea pigs of sorts in an expedition to launch terror against all independent members and institutions in society. Therefore, the Jews were only the “spearhead” for an even more comprehensive form of terror: “the persecution of Jews, as practiced by the National Socialists, is only the prologue for more horrible things to come.” What underlay this spearhead view was the theory of totalitarianism based on class domination mentioned above. Neumann believed that the reason the Nazis initiated this spearhead model of torture against the Jewish people was to negotiate and quash class antagonism for the purpose of building their totalitarian project headed by the ruling classes. Ultimately, what everything came back to for Neumann was class conflict and the needs of the Nazi regime that “can integrate the antagonistic groups within this [German] society.”20 The critical point here is that Neumann saw this terror as rooted in National

20 Neumann, Franz. “Anti-Semitism: Spearhead of Universal Terror,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 28. Herman 29

Socialism’s impulse to muffle any class consciousness under the consolidation of their totalitarian, monopoly-based dictatorship led by the ruling classes.

This leads into a broader point about Neumann’s thought on anti-Semitic terror and the

Holocaust. It followed from Neumann’s view that the persecution of the Jews stemmed from the desire to stomp out every other independent member of society that anti-Semitism was a symptom of a deeper issue in German society at the time. This was a view, however, that

Neumann supported with evidence, presented below.

While Neumann completely agreed that anti-Semitism was a consistent and defining feature of the Nazi regime, he argued that “all-out anti-Semitism” came in waves. The first wave was the period of “SA anti-Semitism,” which broke out in April 1933 and involved the anti-

Jewish boycott. This breakout was met by strong economic disincentive from other European countries though, which caused the Nazis to call it off. However, it was the period leading up to

Kristallnacht in November 1938 that Neumann found distinctly interesting. He noted that “each and every correspondent who had occasion to observe the pogrom agrees that there was no spontaneity” to it.21 Neumann argued that this meant that the regime itself orchestrated the anti-

Semitic terror and not ordinary Germans. The causes of this release of terror in 1938 he tracked back to two primary causes: the lack of pressure from the Allies against it and the concurrent measures taken by the regime against the middle-class. Neumann saw the terror against the Jews as lining up with the Nazi measures against any independent mobilization of class interests, seeing even the extermination of Jews in the spring of 1943 as aligned with the Labor

Mobilization Act of January 27, 1943 which “deprived hundreds of millions of middle-class men

21 Neumann, Franz. “Anti-Semitism: Spearhead of Universal Terror,” in Secret Reports, 28. Herman 30 of their independence.”22 Nazi anti-Semitism, on Neumann’s argument, lined up with a much wider line of totalitarian ruling-class oppression.

For Neumann then, anti-Semitism was a symptom of a wider problem within German society and was a top-down arrangement that did not implicate ordinary German citizens or imply a particularly German anti-Semitic impulse. This view came into practical application with his later September 1944 report “Problems Concerning the Treatment of War Criminals,” in which he emphasized the importance in punishing superiors or those who had discretion to call for the carrying out of war crimes.23 While Neumann argued that individuals “just following orders” should be prosecuted, his focus was on the ones giving the orders. This reflected

Neumann’s previous argument that anti-Semitic terror was a top-down affair and indirectly reflected his view that the Nazi apparatus, rather than ordinary Germans acting on distinctly

German anti-Semitic impulses, was what needed to be held responsible. He rejected any view that tried to disentangle Nazi anti-Semitism from the larger apparatus of Nazi Germany and certainly rejected a view like Winston Churchill’s that the nastiness of Nazi ideology stemmed from a distinctly “Teutonic barbarism.”

It should be mentioned that Neumann’s view of anti-Semitism has earned him a great

deal of criticism from later scholars, due to his somewhat prominent legal role in the Nuremberg

tribunal. Shilom Aronson has even went so far as to argue that Neumann had influence during the tribunal and therefore, the spearhead theory took emphasis off the particularly genocidal nature of the Nazi regime during the Nuremberg trials. Petra Marquardt-Bigman has argued that

Neumann did not sufficiently factor in the irrational elements of the Nazi regime into his analysis. Even Barry Katz, a scholar more sympathetic to Neumann and his Institute colleagues’

22 Neumann, Franz. “Anti-Semitism: Spearhead of Universal Terror,” in Secret Reports, 29–30. 23 Neumann, Franz. “Problems Concerning the Treatment of War Criminals,” in Secret Reports, 457–463. Herman 31 arguments, has been highly critical of the spearhead model. However, while the arguments have been panned as overly simplistic by most of the scholars who have looked over them, they are still referred to as an example of using the methods of social science to analyze the deeper processes behind surface events, even for ones as horrific and massive as those of Nazi terror and the Holocaust.24

IV. Postwar Reconstruction

The final challenge Neumann and his colleagues had to consider was the reorganization of Europe after the end of the Second World War. This was again a result both of their commitment to shaping a post-fascist Europe and the Research & Analysis Branch’s wish to get a comprehensive view of how postwar Europe would develop.25

Neumann’s view on postwar reconstruction involved a hawkish argument on Allied occupation of Germany, a promotion of the democratic forces within German society to remove

“causes of German aggression,” and an ideological program which ran between a liberal and a radical view on how to restructure German society. These measures would, for Neumann, not only accomplish the goal of keeping Germany from re-arming but would also promote a changed

German society in which the non-democratic classes of society would be unable to impose their rule and re-create the totalitarian system mentioned above.

First, Neumann thought the Allies should go about restructuring Europe by completely taking control of Germany and imposing harsh treatment of the country as a whole. This approach naturally fit with his view that the causes of Nazism were deeply rooted and needed

24 Salzer, Michael. “The Visibility of the Holocaust: Franz Neumann and the Nuremberg Trials” in Social Theory After the Holocaust (Liverpool University Press, 2000), 197–218. 25 “The Work Program of R&A,” August 1, 1944 (RG 226, Entry 1, Box 2). Herman 32 extensive action to undo. Neumann would propose many actions that the Allies should take against Germany. Most of these are contained in his report “The Treatment of Germany.”

“The Treatment of Germany” divided recommendations for Allied sanctions against

Germany into short-term measures, conditional measures for a probationary period after the temporary Allied military government, and permanent measures against Germany.26 All of these measures indicate Neumann’s hawkish view that Germany had to be radically reconstructed by the Allies in order to effectively denazify the German population and build a better German state.

Neumann divided his short-term measures into negative and positive objectives. The negative objectives included the destruction of Nazism, the destruction of Germany’s military, and the trial of war criminals. The positive objectives included the restitution of looted property, the repatriation of displaced persons, the preparation of a new German government which would be permanently democratic and non-aggressive, and the complete takeover by the Allied military

occupation of the German economy and finances. These sanctions, many of them in line with the

Allies’ actual agenda for denazification and subsequent German reconstruction, needed to be

accomplished with a severe hand. Neumann thought that relentlessness and even ruthlessness in the application of this short-term process of denazification and the restructuring of the German economy and military would only “strengthen the democratic forces, psychologically as well as organizationally.”27

He went further with his conditional measures for a longer-term probation period after

the end of Allied military occupation. These measures included his more radical objectives of

restructuring German society (which will be discussed below). For now, what is important to

note is that Neumann believed that the Allies should continue in the work of reshaping Germany

26 Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany,” Secret Reports, 436–447. 27 Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports, 443. Herman 33 long after the initial military occupation was over: “The occupation of Germany by Allied military forces is indispensable for the consolidation of our victory and for the complete elimination of the organized forces which have made war against us.”28 The Allies should have continued in imposing harsh terms long after the war was over on Neumann’s view.

This included permanent measures against Germany, which would have involved a complete ban on Germany’s maintaining of armed forces, some Allied control over German economic policy and foreign relations, and an international alliance to maintain such terms against Germany. These stern sanctions against Germany (as well as his tough recommendations for the Probation period) prove that while Neumann certainly did not believe the German national character particularly needed repression, he believed that a libertarian approach to rebuilding Germany would not work, since the deeper problems that created National Socialism needed significant Allied intervention in order to be rooted out.

This observation leads into the second point about Neumann’s view of postwar reconstruction: his belief that only significant changes within the contemporary German society would lead to a proper democratization of Germany. For him, this involved a decisive strike against the ruling classes who constituted the “aggressive elements within German society.”

These groups included officers in the military, the bureaucracy and the judiciary, big business, and the Junkers. For Neumann, an adequate reconstruction plan would go about tackling these groups’ power in a long-term maneuver.29 This all comes back to his view that the ruling classes had helped Nazism come to power in order to regain the power they had lost in the aftermath of the First World War and because their interests were inherently imperialist. For Neumann, it was not enough for the Allies to control Germany and make sure that Nazi ideology was eliminated.

28 Neumann, Franz. “Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports, 442. 29 Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports, 445. Herman 34

What had to be attacked was the power of the ruling classes who had a vested interest in promoting Nazi ideology: “The occupation troops may be withdrawn and part of the Allied control machinery be disestablished when… this government must have furnished adequate proof that it has seriously undertaken the elimination of aggressive elements from German society.”30 Along with this negative program of attacking the ruling classes, there also had to be an initiative to give power to the democratic forces in society. Neumann indicated that these democratic forces would include groups such as the Social Democratic Party, the labor movement, and possibly Communist Parties.31 Neumann was optimistic specifically about trade unionism in Germany, arguing that the Allies should promote them in Germany given that they were a “united, thoroughly democratic movement of workers and salaried employees.”32 Only when forces whose interests were truly democratic took over would Germany move beyond fascism. However, this could not be accomplished without a restructuring of the German society:

“The forces of democracy can, however, not be set free without a radical change in the social structure of Germany which would deprive these groups [the ruling class] of the economic basis of their social and political power.”33

This leads into the final point about Neumann’s views on postwar reconstruction which was his ideological orientation took a course between liberalism and radicalism. While Neumann was a Marxist, he generally believed that the establishment of what can be termed “liberal institutions” was the best path going forward for Germany. He could be very pragmatic in his advocacy for this; while he opposed the United States dismantling left-wing governments in denazified areas, he signed on to some limitation of Soviet-friendly communist influence in those

30 “Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports, 445. 31 Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany,” in Secret Reports, 440. 32 Franz L. Neumann to David Williamson, “Suggested Topics for Das Neue Deutschland,” October 16, 1944 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2). 33 Neumann, Franz. “The Treatment of Germany” in Secret Reports, 441. Herman 35 governments, as he recommended in the case of Austria.34 Though Neumann believed in transforming elements of Central European society, he thought that promoting free political life in denazifying countries was a very important objective. In “The Revival of German Political and Constitutional Life under Military Government,” Neumann advocated the re- enfranchisement of independent political parties and elections as a chief element of denazification. “German political life should be revived through a process of democratic evolution from below.”35 It is clear that Neumann believed that despite all of liberalism’s flaws, its belief in social and political pluralism was an important remedy to Nazism’s iron totalitarianism. Whatever his critiques of the particulars of liberal democracy, he agreed with many of its principles on pluralism, liberty, and equality as important paths going forward for postwar Germany.

That being said, Neumann still leaned in some respects toward radicalism. This was due to his belief that the deep-seated problems in the contemporary German society could not be undone through a libertarian approach. They required extensive government intervention to uproot them from the classes that they had emerged from. A policy that undermined the power of these anti-democratic elements and somewhat restructured German society was thus absolutely necessary, no matter how much resentment and economic dislocation it might cause. He worried that if these measures were not taken, some variant of Nazi ideology would re-emerge again.

It is fair to say then that Neumann had a foot in both the liberal and radical camps on the

subject of postwar reconstruction, much as he did in other aspects of his intellectual career.

34 Franz L. Neumann to Lt. Richard Hartshorne, “State Department Visit- May 1, 1945,” May 2, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2). 35 “Neumann, Franz. “The Revival of German Political and Constitutional Life under Military Government,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 422. Herman 36

V. Conclusion

Neumann’s reports for the OSS reveal a continued belief that the only way to effectively carry out the war effort against fascism and the horrors of Nazism was to focus on its deeper causes, which that lay almost exclusively within larger structural and institutional problems. This reflected the underlying Marxism that guided his methodology. It also reflected his mechanical understanding of what Marxism meant, which separated him from the dominant trends of the

Frankfurt School which pushed for a more dialectical and non-orthodox understanding of

Marxism.

However, alongside his commitment to a tight brand of Marxism, Neumann’s reports also show a commitment, to a degree, to many aspects of liberal institutions. He attacked Nazi totalitarianism on the basis of its rejection of pluralism, he advocated for open elections and diverse political parties, and he saw the horrors of Nazi anti-Semitism as rooted in Nazism’s desire to squash all independent actors. At core, Neumann kept a foot in both liberal and Marxist ideologies and used both to guide his unique analysis of the Third Reich during his time in the

OSS.

While most scholars of the Third Reich today would reject his overly simplistic views on the role of monopoly capital and his relegation of anti-Semitism as a mere symptom of deeper issues in German society, his willingness to apply a rigorous social scientific lens to the analysis

of fascism made his method intellectually valuable, even if the particulars of his analysis

deserved the criticism it has received. Herman 37

CHAPTER TWO: OTTO KIRCHHEIMER

I. Biography and Background

While Otto Kirchheimer wrote the fewest number of reports for the Central European

Section of the three thinkers treated in this thesis, his distinct voice still shone in the ones that he did write. Kirchheimer’s background as a lawyer and criminologist would allow him to offer unique insights into the Central European Section’s understanding of the Third Reich.

Otto Kirchheimer was born November 11, 1905 to a middle-class Jewish family in

Heilbronn, Germany. He went to school through his adolescent years in Heilbronn, Heidelberg, and Ettenheim. After that, he subsequently attended the Universities of Muenster, Berlin,

Cologne, and Bonn, eventually earning a law degree from Bonn with Latin honors in 1928. He began his intellectual career by contributing articles to Die Gesellschaft, a political magazine closely affiliated with the Social Democratic Party.1 Like Neumann, these early years would push Kirchheimer into a skeptical ideological limbo between liberalism and leftism, as he witnessed the failures of liberal democracy in the Weimar Republic, particularly under the

“presidential dictatorship” of Hindenburg. Even within the Social Democratic Party itself

Kirchheimer witnessed institutional failures to live up to a key promises; he remarked that power in the party tended to concentrate in the leadership and subsequently left behind the masses to

which the party claimed to be dedicated.2

After briefly working as a lawyer in Berlin, Kirchheimer moved to Paris after the rise of

Adolf Hitler to the position of Chancellor. In Paris, he worked at the exiled Horkheimer Institute

1 “Biographical Sketch,” and “Chronology of Events,” at Otto Kirchheimer Papers, https://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/ger006.htm#chronology 2 Andre Krouwel, “Otto Kirchheimer and the Catch-All Party,” West European Politics, vol. 26, no. 2 (April 2003): pp. 23 –40. Herman 38 as a researcher, developing what would later become he and co-author George Rusche’s book

Punishment and Social Structure (1939).3 His work there would also involve criticisms of the various French Third Republic governments who he believed acted unconstitutionally and without regard for the rule of law, much like many politicians in the Weimar Republic.4

Kirchheimer’s main undertaking of this period, the 1939 book Punishment and Social

Structure, would not be published until after Kirchheimer emigrated to New York City in

November 1937 to continue his work at the Institute for Social Research. In the book,

Kirchheimer and Rusche tracked the history of punishment through what Martin Jay refers to as a “mechanistic Marxist” approach, seeing all phenomena through the spectrum of economic determinism. The book argued that the mode of production determined the ways in which different time periods applied punishment for crimes. The book began its account in the early

Middle Ages and worked its way into the modern penitentiary system, explaining that, for example, continued economic development led to the creation of workhouses in the 16th century to provide forced labor for the state and push down the oppressed classes. When the Industrial

Revolution came about, the need for manpower lessened and was often replaced by machines.

This led to prisons being created rather than workhouses, as the working-class could be threatened more by wage cuts under capitalism than forced labor.5 Changing modes of production, rather than inherent ideas of justice or “humanitarian revolutions,” were what drove ideas of criminal justice to their present form.6 All of this is relevant to a study of Kirchheimer’s

3 Otto Kirchheimer/Georg Rusche, Punishment and Social Structure (New York, University of Columbia Press: 1939). 4 See Krouwel, 25. 5 See “Review of ‘Punishment and Social Structure’ by Otto Kirchheimer and George Rusche” in Washington University Law Review, 25, no. 1 (1939). 6 See Rusche/Kirchheimer 5. Herman 39 reports because it shows the emphasis that he put on economic factors as driving force of historical events, leading right into his reports on Nazi Germany.

The book is all the more relevant in that it contained a chapter on the development of criminal law under fascism written by Kirchheimer himself. In the chapter, Kirchheimer reached the same conclusions on fascist penal law that Neumann did concerning political theory under fascism: that monopoly capitalism contributed to the development of illegality and irrationalism, both of which lent themselves to the growth of fascism. In other words, Kirchheimer saw the penal policies adopted by fascism as a result of the economic system that helped to create it, not as a result of any increases in crime or its purported intentions to order society.7

Beyond his book (the major long work of his career), Kirchheimer contributed articles on

National Socialism during his tenure at Columbia from 1937 to 1942. Two articles from this period are of particular interest: “Criminal Law in National Socialist Germany” and “The Legal

Order of National Socialism.”8

In “Criminal Law in National Socialist Germany,” Kirchheimer separated the development of Nazi legal theory into two stages. The first stage was the authoritarian phase, which lasted only until the immediate aftermath of the Nazis taking power. In this phase, legal decisions were made based on subjective criteria such as the motivations of the defendants rather than the objective character of their actions.9 The authoritarian phase was quickly replaced by the racist phase, which came to legal judgments based on the identity of the defendant regardless of their actions. This latter type of legal thinking Kirchheimer tracked back to a form of legal theory

7 See “New Trends in Penal Policy Under Fascism” in Otto Kirchheimer/Georg Rusche, Punishment and Social Structure (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 177 – 193. 8 Kirchheimer, "The Legal Order of National Socialism," SPSS IX (1941); Kirchheimer, “Criminal Law in National Socialist Germany,” in The Rule of Law under Siege: Selected Essays of Franz L. Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer, edited by William Scheuerman. London: University of California Press, 1996. 9 See Jay 158. Herman 40 developed by a group of legal theorists known as the Kiel School who employed a

“phenomenology” that tried to intuit the nature of the defendant rather than the character of his or her actions as the way to make proper legal decisions. The result of this form of hard essentialist legal thinking was rendering the judiciary little more than a form of institutional bureaucracy which depended on state ideology rather than an independent agent of reasoned jurisprudence as it should be.10

In “The Legal Order of National Socialism,” Kirchheimer plunged into a deeper analysis of Nazi legal structure. Here Kirchheimer dissected the notion that Nazi legal theory bridged the gap between law and morality, which the Nazis claimed was the central issue of liberal political and legal thought.11 However, Kirchheimer showed that many Nazi policies were actually not very concrete and that most policies were developed in line with “technical rationality,” a concept developed by Max Horkheimer which referred to the instrumentalization of reason in the service of the ruling apparatus. This form of technical rationality negated the Nazi’s concrete ideological claims, making “law and legal practice an instrument of ruthless domination and oppression in the interest of those who controlled the main economic and political levers of social power.”12

Kirchheimer’s thinking and writing about Nazism occupied a large portion of his time during the Columbia years. By 1942 however, as with both Neumann and Marcuse, the drying up of the Institute’s funds caused Kirchheimer to take his scholarly talents elsewhere. Kirchheimer subsequently began teaching at Wellesley College and accepted a part-time position as a research

10 See Jay 158–159. 11 See Jay 159. 12 Otto Kirchheimer, “Legal Order of National Socialism,” from Law, Politics, and Social Change (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1969), 99. Herman 41 analyst in the Research & Analysis Branch in 1943, which eventually became a full-time position by 1944.

There are a few important points that can be gathered from looking at Kirchheimer’s intellectual work before his subsequent service with the OSS. To begin with, there is the unique lens that he had as a legal theorist (much like Neumann). While most of Kirchheimer’s notoriety after World War II was in political science, most of what he wrote prior to his service in the OSS was in legal theory and analysis. Kirchheimer’s reports therefore bear the mark of a mind with an interest in the law and an added respect for proper legal institutions. Furthermore, the economic

determinism and mechanistic side of Marxism formed much of Kirchheimer’s analytic

perspective, as indicated by his Punishment and Social Structure. That being said, Kirchheimer

was also more willing to diverge from orthodox Marxism to the more fluid ideas of the Frankfurt

School than Neumann. This can be seen in his embrace of ideas like “technical rationality” and

his willingness to treat state power as opposed to private entities as being integral to

understanding the Third Reich. Lastly, Kirchheimer shared with Neumann a commitment to an

analysis that fell between Bolshevism and liberalism on the ideological spectrum and that was

skeptical of many established institutions, such as the Social Democratic Party.

II. Analysis of Nazism

Since Kirchheimer did not become a full-time analyst with the Central European Section until 1944, he did not focus on providing an analysis of the enemy in the heat of the conflict.

Most of his reports concern the items that the OSS was concerned about as the war began to tilt in favor of the Allies: war crimes and postwar rebuilding. However, even within the reports not Herman 42 directly related to an analysis of National Socialism, Kirchheimer’s unique insights into the Nazi regime still can be deciphered.

What is most notable in Kirchheimer’s thinking on Nazism within the reports are the novel concepts that he brought to his analysis; he clearly applied his view of “technical rationality” throughout the reports and employed the interesting concept of the “leadership principle” as well. 13 For Kirchheimer, all of these horrors could be understood as being byproducts of what he had earlier defined as “technical rationality.” This term described the instrumentalized use of reason to benefit those who are in power, rather than asserting the universalizing truths that true reason ought to. For Kirchheimer, technical rationality was what described Nazi totalitarianism best; a bending of the rules of reason to serve the Party and the

Party alone, at the expense of anyone who did not fit into what the Party thought was correct.

What is novel about this concept for Kirchheimer is that it had come about as a result of monopoly capital.14 As a Marxist, Kirchheimer believed that all social phenomena ultimately could be explained in reference to the modes of production. Monopoly capitalism provided the economic base for a form of reasoning which made no pretext even to try to apply to all individuals. As Max Horkheimer (who influenced Kirchheimer heavily) explained it, “Fascists have learned something from pragmatism. Even their sentences no longer have meaning, only a purpose.”15 Kirchheimer put the point even more drastically in terms of the Nazis: “Rationality here means only that the whole apparatus of law and law-enforcing is made exclusively serviceable to those who rule.”16 While Kirchheimer does not mention the term “technical rationality” in his reports, he clearly applied it to understanding the nature of Nazi

13 See Jay 158. 14 See Jay 160 for Kirchheimer on monopoly capital. 15 Quoted from Jay 156. From Max Horkheimer’s article “The Jews of Europe.” 16See Kirchheimer, “Legal Order of National Socialism,” reprinted in Politics, Law, and Social Change, 99. Herman 43 totalitarianism. What Kirchheimer draws most from his analysis of Nazi institutions is their complete twisting of reason and legality to the demands of the Party, a phenomenon which he saw rooted in class structure but which was also intimately wedded to the management of the state under National Socialism.

Kirchheimer provided a comprehensive analysis of the Nazi use of technical rationality in

“Nazi Plans for Dominating Europe.” In this report, Kirchheimer included a full account of Nazi

crimes and critically discussed how the Nazis justified them. Along with that, he offered a legal

strategy of how to prosecute them most effectively. The first place that he looked to accomplish

this task was at Nazi notions of legality, which Kirchheimer showed had developed a different

meaning for the Nazis than is normally attributed to the term. Kirchheimer quoted a German

newspaper claiming that “Everything is legal which will effect the salvation of the German

nation.”17 Here Kirchheimer showed that Nazi ideas of legality already were under the influence

of technical rationality. This was displayed in the fact that under the Nazis, laws lost any notion of applying to people universally but instead implied “that once in power they [the Nazis] would have the right to do as they pleased.”18 This quote showed an important instance of technical

rationality at work- the naked self-interest of the ruling apparatus becoming embodied in the idea

of reason itself. For Kirchheimer, many of the relevant Nazi crimes that occurred followed from

this line of reasoning. These included the organization of terrorism against dissidents, the

suppression of all opposition groups or parties in society, and the Nazis’ crimes against

humanity. All of them were a result of a process of technical rationality in which reason became

instrumentalized to serve the ruling apparatus at the expense of anyone outside of their vision of

17 Kirchheimer, Otto. “Nazi Plans for Dominating Europe: Domestic Crimes,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 533. 18 Kirchheimer, Otto. “Nazi Plans for Dominating Europe,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany, 533. Herman 44 how the world should be. This applied not just to specific groups but to any form of individual identity or expression out of bounds with what the regime preferred. Nazi racial laws, for example, were rooted in “the right of an elite to rule without restrictions over the mass of the population.”19 Even though oligarchies have of course been in power for a large stretch of human civilization, what made technical rationality so distinctive was its grounding in monopoly capital.

Monopoly capital provided the economic base for the extreme rationalization and standardization that came into play under the Nazis and the form of rationality that privileged the ruling apparatus at the expense of all others. In contrast to Neumann, however, Kirchheimer attributed these developments to the actions of the state. This is most clearly seen in Otto Kirchheimer and

John Herz’s report “Leadership Principle and Criminal Responsibility.”

While Kirchheimer argued that monopoly capital provided the economic basis for the technical rationality in National Socialism, he contended that the Nazis had used the hierarchical but rationalized structures of the state to implement their own order onto society, which itself was distinct from the mode of production created by monopoly capitalism. Kirchheimer thought that the Nazi state had managed to create its own order through violence against the institutions that had supported them into power. In the “Leadership Principle” report, Kirchheimer argued that the Nazi state was designed according to the idea that Party leaders would have unbounded authority over the entire Reich. As Kirchheimer puts it, “Leadership is the general structural element in the public life of the Reich.”20 Furthermore, it “determines not only specific realms but dominates all organizations, institutions, and associations which participate in the communal

19 Kirchheimer, Otto. “Abrogation of Nazi Laws During Early Period of Military Government,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 234. 20 Kirchheimer, Otto and Herz, John. “Leadership Principle and Criminal Responsibility,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany, ed. Raffaele Laudani,(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 465. Herman 45 life of the people.”21 So for Kirchheimer, the Third Reich was not simply a puppet of monopoly capital but rather an independent force actively changing the underlying structure of society.

Once the National Socialists gained power, they quickly overtook all private institutions of society: dictating them from the top-down through an ideology which placed its entire emphasis on “the three basic pillars consisting of the Nazi Party, the state machine, and the military.”22 It seems then that Kirchheimer did subscribe to Max Horkheimer’s view that “whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism” but did not think that

Nazism was reducible to the reactionary elements of capitalism. Instead, it was a new phenomenon that used the institutions created under monopoly capitalism to come to power, but subsequently began reshaping all institutions in society through violence and state strength. For

Kirchheimer, fascism was a new phase in modern European history, one in which state power could reshape the base of society in an unprecedented way. It was, to put it shortly, a totalitarian phase.23

III. Dealing with Nazi Atrocities

Kirchheimer’s views on Nazi war crimes were more pronounced in the reports written after the Central European Section began to focus its attention on the subject of war crimes around the time he became fully employed in the OSS. While in the OSS, he helped provide legal counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, which allowed him to comment in his reports on Allied policies on Nazi atrocities. The most distinctive aspect of Kirchheimer’s analysis of Nazi atrocities was his emphasis on the “the leadership principle” and its role in the

Holocaust. While all three thinkers discussed in this thesis saw the leadership principle as a basic

21 See Kirchheimer/Herz in “Leadership Principle and Criminal Responsibility,” in Secret Reports, 465. 22 Kirchheimer/Herz in “Leadership Principle and Criminal Responsibility,” in Secret Reports, 465. 23 For explication of this view of Kirchheimer’s, see Jay 160. Herman 46 component of Nazi totalitarianism, Kirchheimer was the one who elaborated most on how it actually worked, using it to develop a “general theory of responsibility” that would help in the prosecution of war criminals. This leadership principle led Kirchheimer to develop what scholars today would call a moderately functionalist view on the Holocaust. The functionalist view contends that while leadership was the basic structural component in the carrying out of orders in

Nazi society, various subordinates were given considerable latitude of interpretation when it came to carrying out directives from the top. Kirchheimer was seeking to understand the full scope of Nazi atrocities by finding a way both to implicate the individual agents involved in the atrocities and to implicate the larger structure of the Third Reich as a whole within the same theory of responsibility.

Kirchheimer argued that the identification of an individual as a “war criminal” should be based on standard definitions provided by international law and certain local statutes, provided they were agreeable. He thought that the prosecution of war criminals should proceed with respect to the particular legal procedures of the international community, but should not provide amnesty to those guilty of atrocities and should have some serious teeth in terms of enforcement.

Kirchheimer outlined these views in “The Moscow Statement of Atrocities,” which approved the joint statement by the Allied powers on the subject of war crimes. He applauded the efforts of the

Allies to develop a united effort and a concrete plan to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

Kirchheimer also thought that the Statement could be used tactically so as to undermine the Nazi government’s legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Germans and to “induce many Germans to dissociate themselves from the orders or demands of their superiors.”24 He also praised efforts by the Allies to make the capture of war criminals as lawful as possible and dole out responsibility

24 Kirchheimer, Otto. “Moscow Statement on Atrocities,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany, ed. Raffaele Laudani, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 455. Herman 47 on an individual rather than a collective basis, so as to not fill Germany with fears of mass reprisals. These positions show that Kirchheimer had carefully considered ideas on how the situation in Germany should be handled; revolutionary change could wait so long as the individual perpetrators of genocide and atrocities were brought to justice. This indicated his view that responsibility in Nazi society did to a certain extent correspond to the power that it gave certain individual leaders. This leads into the discussion of Kirchheimer’s views on “the leadership principle.”

When it came to explaining the sheer enormity of Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust,

Kirchheimer elaborated on what he referred to as “the leadership principle.” As mentioned earlier, the leadership principle referred to the view that Nazi Germany was fundamentally organized according to the unlimited powers of Hitler. In “Leadership Principle and Criminal

Responsibility,” Kirchheimer sought to reconcile this larger structural point about Nazi organization with the individual responsibilities of the various sub-leaders who participated in atrocities. He began this point by explaining that unlimited authority in Nazi Germany was vested in the Fuhrer: “Hitler as Fuhrer concentrates in his person all political power, unrestricted by any group or institution, whether of state, Party, or otherwise.”25 This “decisive structural element of the leadership principle” was for Kirchheimer at the core of Nazi authoritarianism, embodied not just in the Fuhrer’s power but also in the German “leadership economy” under

Hermann Goering and in the structure of Nazi municipal government which was typically run according to one “community leader.”26

This “leadership principle” embodied in the Third Reich would seem to imply a “clear- cut system of responsibilities” where it would be very easy to assign blame to various leaders for

25 Kirchheimer/Herz, “Leadership Principle and Criminal Responsibility,” in Secret Reports, 464. 26 “See Kirchheimer/Herz, “Leadership Principle,” in Secret Reports, 466–467. Herman 48 atrocities being committed. However, Kirchheimer did not believe that this was the case. It was here that Kirchheimer argued that the leadership principle often coincided with another feature of the Third Reich, which was the state of lawlessness with which acts of the state proceeded: “the

Nazi totalitarian system is characterized by a somewhat far-reaching exemption from legal restriction which the various organizations and agencies possess, and which gives their ‘leaders’ not only unlimited authority but also practically unlimited latitude of action.”27 For Kirchheimer, a key element of Nazi totalitarianism was its lawlessness. This often meant that orders from up top were often vaguely defined and based around different Nazi principles rather than concrete orders. One example that Kirchheimer cited of this was Nazi police law, which gave the police unlimited authority not bounded by any legal considerations. He quoted Werner Best, the SS leader: “The activity of the police is neither lawless nor illegal… if it deviates from former police law, it creates new police law.”28 Police law gave the leadership unlimited authority but also gave them so much latitude that specific directives were vague and could be left to interpretation by different agents. This is what Kirchheimer thought was going on in the committing of Nazi atrocities, which led him to believe that individual responsibility on the part of lower-down officials could be reconciled with the structural point about the leadership principle. This would therefore lead Kirchheimer to develop what later scholars would refer to as a moderate functionalist view of how the Holocaust was carried out.

The debate between functionalism and intentionalism is a historiographic debate about the origins of the Holocaust and the workings of the Third Reich. Functionalists argue that the initiative for the Holocaust, while certainly being strongly influenced by Hitler’s leadership, came from the improvisations of lower level officials. Intentionalists, on the other hand, argue

27 See Kirchheimer/Herz, “Leadership Principle,” in Secret Reports, 467. 28 See Kirchheimer/Herz, 467. Herman 49 that the Holocaust originated mainly from a master plan implemented by Hitler with the cooperation of lower level officials.29 In the reports, Kirchheimer took a moderate functionalist position, arguing that while criminal responsibility was accruable to the leadership, the orders from up-top were often vague and subject to improvisation by lower-level officials. In this,

Kirchheimer’s view of responsibility was an early example of what historian Ian Kershaw concluded when he stated that “‘Intention’ and ‘structure’ are both essential elements of an explanation of the Third Reich, and need synthesis rather than be set against each other.”30

Kirchheimer thought that this view could reconcile “the hierarchical structure of Nazi leadership organizations on the one hand, and the wide and indefinite realm of discretion given to each leader in the implementation of fundamental policies on the other hand.”31 This view could hold the leadership responsible because they could be shown to have implemented the broad policies such as the destruction of European Jews. On the other hand, it could also hold lower-down officials and agents for the improvised execution of such policies. While

Kirchheimer does consider the view that it might be more desirable to prosecute the higher branches of the leadership rather than lower officials, he ultimately dismissed it: viewing it as essential to hold all Nazis accountable to their breaches of “what an overwhelming majority of peoples and nations consider as fundamental standards of law and decency.”32

What made Kirchheimer’s views so interesting on the subject of Nazi atrocities was his willingness to reconcile both structural and individual factors in his understanding of how the

Third Reich worked. Kirchheimer wanted to bring individual actors to justice and clearly thought

29 See Bessel, Richard. “Functionalists vs. Intentionalists: The Debate Twenty Years On,” in German Studies Review, vol. 26, no. 1 (Feb. 2003) for a recent historiographic review of the debate between intentionism and functionalism. 30 See Bessel, “Functionalists vs. Intentionalism,” in German Studies Review, 15. 31 See Kirchheimer/Herz “Leadership Principle,” in Secret Reports, 470. 32 Kirchheimer/Herz, “Leadership Principle,” in Secret Reports ,471-472. Herman 50 this was essential both to any theory of Nazi responsibility but to any program dedicated to implicating war criminals. On the other hand, he still emphasized larger structural concerns; his

explication of the leadership principle was an evolution of his belief that state fascism was now

driving the economic base of society. This blend of structural and individual considerations

showed his conscientiousness in achieving justice and foresaw later historians’ attempt to blend

the two. It also shows his willingness to look beyond the deterministic structure of Marxism,

demonstrating his intellectual independence and ingenuity.

IV. Postwar Rebuilding

Along with an analysis of Nazi war crimes, Kirchheimer also contributed to the thinking

of the Central European Section on the subject of postwar rebuilding. His reports provide an

analysis of how an occupying military government should go forward after the war. These reports on postwar rebuilding tended to focus around legal considerations, which makes sense considering his background in the law.

For Kirchheimer, the central evil behind fascism was its use of technical rationality to justify any and every action of a ruling apparatus that had so centralized the institutions of the state that they had unlimited power to exploit, oppress, and devastate. It was therefore imperative that the Allies destroyed the power of the Nazi totalitarian state and its institutions. Unlike

Neumann, who placed emphasis on resetting the class structure and breaking the back of the ruling elites, Kirchheimer believed that only by striking at the totalizing institutions of the Nazi state could Nazism be repelled. This reflected Kirchheimer’s view that the state was the most important driving force of fascism as it presently existed rather than private capital. What needed reforming then for Kirchheimer was the state and the laws/institutions under it, as opposed to Herman 51 class structure in Neumann’s view. First and foremost, this reform of the state involved striking back at discriminatory legislation, legislation restricting political and civil liberties, any legislation embodying the furthering of Nazi ideology, and the denazification of the judiciary along with a concerted effort to reorganize the German state. In sum then, Kirchheimer’s view of postwar reconstruction was generally more reformist rather than revolutionary: proposing the destruction of Nazi policies and influence but being more pragmatic in proposing an overhaul of

German society. This could be seen to be a logical by-product of his view that the state held more influence under fascism than private forces. In three different reports, Kirchheimer put forward postwar recommendations: “The Abrogation of Nazi Laws under Early Military

Government,” “Administration of German Criminal Justice Under Military Government,” and

“General Principles of Administration and Civil Service in Germany.”

To begin with, Kirchheimer saw discriminatory legislation naturally as being the rotten core of National Socialism. On a more theoretical level, it can be surmised that Kirchheimer saw this as being a product of technical rationality, in which reason was so instrumentalized to serve the ruling apparatus that it manifested itself into seeing some people as inherently more human than others. This can clearly be seen in both the Aryan legislation and the discriminatory laws forcing non-Germans to work for the Third Reich. For Kirchheimer, this could also be observed in the discriminatory legal system under the Third Reich as the Nazis “completely obliterated the protection of the accused in order ruthlessly to assert state authority.”33 Kirchheimer believed that military government needed to be forthright in asserting non-discrimination, forcing for example financial authorities to end all discriminatory practices against non-Aryans.

33 Kirchheimer, Otto. “The Abrogation of Nazi Laws in the Period of Early MG,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany, 237. Herman 52

Kirchheimer also saw the restoration of civil liberties as being an important piece of abrogating Nazism. This would include the restoration of both separate political parties and various institutions related to social, economic, and cultural life such as the establishment of a free press and free religious institutions. This process would require forcible work by the military government to assure that the country would not simply re-Nazify, as Kirchheimer did believe that the military government would have the right to censor if a publication “endangers public safety” so that Nazi opinions could no longer become influential.34 Generally however,

Kirchheimer believed the Military Government should restore German social, economic, and cultural life to their pre-1933 standards.

A third objective which Kirchheimer considered imperative was getting rid of any institutions that were symbolic in any way of the Nazi state. This included the banning of Nazi symbolism as well as the curtailing of Nazi labor and eugenics legislation. Kirchheimer thought that eliminating these types of legislation would not act so much as a security measure for the military government as it was a step to “abrogate the ‘civil configuration of fascism’ symbolized by such laws.”35 The abolition of Nazi symbolism, for instance, would help quell the rise of the mystical mass politics that was associated with the Nazi era. Kirchheimer thought that these reforms were less essential to the survival of a military government but were still important in reworking the culture of Germany in the postwar period.

Another key aspect which Kirchheimer seemed to think was very important in reforming the Nazi state was the overhaul of the judiciary system. This was partially because of the practical conditions involved of protecting the military government and also because the Nazi legal system on all levels disregarded the rights of the individual in favor of the collective.

34 See Kirchheimer, “Abrogation,” in Secret Reports, 240. 35 See Kirchheimer, “Abrogation,” in Secret Reports, 241. Herman 53

Kirchheimer advocated that the Nazi jurists be purged, that court activities be shut down until military government could get them working again, and those prisoners or concentration camp inmates who were kept on unjust Nazi laws be released as well, including political prisoners.

This laundry list of suggestions that Kirchheimer put forward to the military government showed that his approach to postwar reconstruction was more reformist than revolutionary. This seemed to be an incidental result of his view that the fascist state, rather than private institutions, was the culprit for much of the Third Reich’s destructiveness. Whereas Neumann put more stock in the view that private interests behind the Nazi Party were more influential than the state,

Kirchheimer thought that the state was the most influential element of the Third Reich. However, even when it came to state policy, Kirchheimer tended to have a moderate view as to what needed to be done. For instance, Kirchheimer argued that the Allied military government should not abolish all Nazi laws given that not all of them were related to pro-fascist causes and repealing them would actually be harmful to the German people. Kirchheimer applied the same type of thinking toward the various agencies of government under the Nazis. In his report

“General Principles of Administration and Civil Service,” Kirchheimer made a list of German governmental agencies. While some agencies Kirchheimer considered necessary to automatically terminate such as the Office of the Reich Chancellor or the Reich Ministry of Church Affairs, some such as the Reich Chamber of Physicians or the Reich Genealogical Office only needed to be reorganized on Kirchheimer’s view.36 Even on criminal law, Kirchheimer tended to be more pragmatic, recommending only that the Military Government install policies that were necessary for its own security, the maintenance of law and order, or that were required by the United

36 Kirchheimer, Otto. “General Principles of Administration and Civil Service in Germany,” in Secret Reports in Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Herman 54

Nations.37 Kirchheimer, in sum, was more in favor of a reformist approach to rebuilding

Germany: being content with whatever was pragmatically necessary for eliminating Nazism and not being all that invested in a total, wholesale change in German society.

In sum, Kirchheimer’s belief that the period of fascist control in Europe was an era in which state power suppressed all dissenting institutions led him to believe that reform of the state was the most important area to address in reference to postwar reconstruction. This meant that he was less interested in wholesale reforms in German society than some of his other colleagues.

What also comes across in Kirchheimer’s reports on the postwar period is his cautious, pragmatic attitude toward the policies of military government. As long as the Allied policies kept fascism from regaining influence in Germany again, he tended to agree with them. He preferred stability, law, and order over approaches that would destabilize Germany, which is an interesting view from a Marxist.

V. Conclusion

Otto Kirchheimer’s reports reveal a willingness to think outside of the bounds of orthodox and strictly deterministic Marxism and to expand into concepts that were more central to the novel approach of the Frankfurt School, such as a focus on state power and the leadership principle. The former concept was clearly informed by his view of technical rationality, about which he agreed with Horkheimer. He also showed a careful conscientiousness in his views on dealing with Nazi atrocities and the path forward for Germany. On the former subject, he developed a very well thought-out theory of responsibility which attempted to balance individual and structural factors in the carrying out of atrocities. On the latter, he advocated for the

37 Kirchheimer, Otto. “Administration of German Criminal Justice Under Military Government,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. by Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Herman 55 destruction of fascist influence in law and state policy but also attempted to develop ideas on structuring postwar Germany which would keep internal stability.

Herman 56

CHAPTER 3: HERBERT MARCUSE

I. Biography and Background

Herbert Marcuse was born July 19, 1898 in Berlin to a well-off family of assimilated

Jews (just like Neumann and Kirchheimer). He served briefly on the German side during World

War I and would become involved in politics soon after his service by joining a Soldiers’

Council in Berlin. In this period toward the end of the First World War, he was involved with the

Social Democratic Party but quit the party in 1919 because he felt that it had betrayed the

working class. After the failure of the more radical Spartacist Uprising, which he had supported,

Marcuse turned his attention away from politics to academic philosophy. He studied at both

Berlin and Freiburg, receiving his doctorate from Freiburg in 1923 on the subject of

Künstlerromane (novels that feature artists as main characters). After his graduate education, he

moved back to Berlin where he tried to practice book selling and publishing from 1923 to 1929.

After this period was over, he returned back to the world of philosophy by moving to Freiburg to

study under both Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.1

It was in this period after 1929 that Marcuse began his intellectual career. He began

publishing articles in the journals Philosophiche Hefte and Die Gesellschaft. Philosophiche Hefte

was a scholarly journal that generally published articles in phenomenology, while Die

Gesellschaft was a political publication affiliated with the Social Democratic Party. While

Marcuse dabbled in phenomenology, the influence of his mentor Heidegger could be seen most

clearly in his first published book Hegel’s Ontology and the Foundations of a Theory of

Historicity (1932). However, within the same year of the book’s publication, the relationship

between Heidegger and Marcuse began to break down. Though there were probably many causes

1 See Jay, Dialectical Imagination, 28. Herman 57 to the dispute, the growing ideological divide between the Marxist Marcuse and the right-wing

Heidegger was certainly a large part of it.2

Marcuse left Freiburg again in 1932, but was eventually recommended to Max

Horkheimer on Husserl’s initiative. While both Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno both felt that

Marcuse’s thought was still somewhat corrupted by Heidegger, the Institute agreed to take him on. Marcuse was hired by the Institute in 1933 at their Geneva office just as the main Institute in

Frankfurt was being shut down by the new Nazi regime. In 1934, Marcuse emigrated to the

United States, where he became a citizen in 1940. He then became a prominent scholar at

Columbia University in the exiled Institute.

Before turning to the American stage of Marcuse’s work which, like that of Kirchheimer and Neumann, was preoccupied in its initial period with the analysis of National Socialism, it is important to take note of some important points about Marcuse’s earlier intellectual career that are essential for analyzing his particular contributions to the reports. First, Marcuse was educated in a decisively philosophical background rather than the legal one from which Neumann and

Kirchheimer came. This altered both the subjects that he was tasked to analyze within the OSS and the intellectual lens with which he approached the problems he was investigating. Second,

Marcuse was far more open to a dialectical and heterodox form of Marxism due to the early intellectual influence of Heidegger and Husserl on him. This can be seen in his use of

Heideggerean concepts such as Dasein (being-there) and Entschlossenheit (resoluteness), his openness to combining Marxism with more mystical ideas in metaphysics, his wish to use

Marxism to defend a more organic view of nature, and his openness to squaring Marxism with other currents in 20th century philosophy.3 While Neumann and Kirchheimer stuck to a more or

2 See Jay, Dialectical Imagination, 28. 3 See Jay Dialectical Imagination, 71-72. Herman 58 less mechanistic and traditional brand of Marxism, Marcuse brought more heterodox ideas from

20th century philosophy to his approach, creating a unique blend of Marxist theory,

Heideggerian philosophy, and phenomenology, even by the standards of the Frankfurt School.4

During his time in New York, Marcuse became involved in the Institute’s task of analyzing social thought and practice in the Nazi era in their journal Zeitschrift. For the journal, different analysts were often tasked with analyzing different aspects of the Third Reich. Erich

Fromm and Theodor Adorno, for example, handled the psychology of the regime, while juristic and socio-economic aspects were analyzed by scholars like Neumann and Kirchheimer.

Marcuse’s job was to analyze academic philosophy in the Third Reich, which gave him ample opportunity to lambaste Nazi-friendly academics such as Carl Schmitt and Hans Freyer, as well as to undertake analysis of logic, metaphysics, and history of philosophy as they were being studied and taught in the Third Reich.5

In the course of this task of analyzing philosophical scholarship under the Third Reich,

Marcuse constructed a broader analysis of the Nazi state. Like Neumann and Kirchheimer, he believed that the totalitarian project of Nazi fascism was a continuation of trends that had begun under liberalism. Following Horkheimer, Marcuse argued that new developments in conceptions of rationality played a crucial role in this relationship between liberalism and fascism. As monopoly capital continued to consolidate the bourgeoisie as a class, the formalisms that liberal ideology put forward—for example, the recognition of private property—could be instrumentalized by the group in power to provide an ideological mask for their rule. Monopoly capital led to an authoritarian phase of capitalism in which the institutions of liberalism remained but the “total mobilization of individual and economy is required,” which meant that the most

4 See Jay, Dialectical Imagination, 71–73. 5 See Barry Katz, Marcuse and the Art of Liberation (New York, NY: Verso Press, 1972), 91. Herman 59 seemingly progressive ideas of liberalism were used by the fascists as ideological garb for their very opposite. This is what Marcuse believed was happening under fascism.6

During this period, Marcuse also wrote Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of

Social Theory (1941), his second book on Hegel’s philosophy. In this work, he attempted to rebut the accusation that Hegel was linked to German authoritarianism. The book attempted to show that while some of Hegel’s propositions taken at a surface level might lead one to think of him as a precursor to authoritarianism, Hegel actually formulated a method (the dialectic) that revealed the dynamic nature of reality and undermined traditional formal logic and “common sense’s” mistaken interpretation of reality on a surface level. This in the end undermined authoritarianism and promoted reason since it showed the world in a less dogmatic way and interrogated the deeper structures underneath our common sense.7 Since Hegelian philosophy was dialectical, it could move more fluidly to incorporate new ways of thinking about the world.

This made it less authoritarian, not more so, than the majority of Western philosophy.

What all of this adds up to is that Marcuse saw the causes of fascism in much the same way as Neumann and Kirchheimer. All three of them saw fascism as emerging out of monopoly capitalism (although all three had somewhat different analyses of this), and each of them saw fascism as being understandable through the lens of class struggle, even if again they saw this coming to light in different ways. However, Marcuse’s analysis of fascism was different from

Neumann and Kirchheimer’s; while they looked at the law and socioeconomic data, Marcuse focused more on the role of philosophy and ideology. This can be seen in the fact that many of

Marcuse’s reports addressed the growth of certain aspects of Nazi ideology and in the case of his reports on postwar Europe, analyzed the ideological roles played by the political parties

6 See Barry Katz, Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation, 91–92. 7 See Katz, Marcuse and the Art of Liberation, 102–103. Herman 60 emerging during denazification. This mostly just reflected the difference in their fields of expertise, but it was also rooted in Marcuse’s attachment to philosophical idealism and other non-Marxist trends in social science and philosophy, such as technology and psychoanalysis.

Marcuse was in Santa Monica, California by the second half of 1942 when he began to be in contact with OSS agents. Seeing the project of the Research & Analysis Branch of building a full portrait of what was going on in Nazi Germany as in line with his own attempt to use the dialectical social science to understand the true underpinnings of the Third Reich, Marcuse began expressing interest in working for the OSS in the former half of 1942. It took a recommendation of Neumann to get Marcuse work with the Office of War Information in the later part of 1942.

The post would not last long however, as he would be invited to join the Central European

Section in the OSS itself shortly after.8

II. Analysis of Nazism

There are three important points to Marcuse’s analysis of Nazism. First, like both

Neumann and Kirchheimer to varying degrees, Marcuse saw Nazi totalitarianism as rooted within the oppressive structures established by the ruling classes. Second, Marcuse employed a wider conceptual toolkit in analyzing the new beast of Nazi totalitarianism than what orthodox

Marxism generally provided: claiming that Nazism was a new beast due to its technocratic dictatorship and profoundly modern character. Lastly, Marcuse’s analysis was more politically radical than Neumann or Kirchheimer’s, more closely associating liberalism and fascism than either Neumann or Kirchheimer had done.

Marcuse provided an explicit class analysis in his report “Social Stratification in

Germany,” in which he explicitly broke down how the class structure of Germany functioned. In

8 See Katz, Marcuse and the Art of Liberation, 113–114. Herman 61 the report, Marcuse divided the ruling groups into five basic classifications: the leadership of the

Nazi Party, the top strata of the government and political bureaucracy, the high command of the

Wehrmacht, the leadership of big business, and the landed aristocracy. Marcuse did not leave these categorizations vague; he identified the specific groups that belonged to each class and gave an account of how many of each group there were. For example, he accounted for the landed aristocracy by describing them either as “the owners of the great estates, especially in

Northern and Eastern Germany” or “the new peasant elite, perhaps best represented by the

Bauern-fuehrer in the Reich Food Estate.”9 He then gave his best account of precisely how many

people fit into both groups.

He attributed the power of these groups to differing causes. The power of both the Nazi leadership and big business was created through a reciprocal relationship between political and economic power strengthening each other. Marcuse broke this down concretely, giving several examples of political and economic power being intertwined in the Third Reich. Among other things, he cited the positions of both financiers and industrialists in the government and the role that Nazi Party members played on the boards of large industrial and financial enterprises.10 The bureaucracy and military leadership fed off of the strong national government which coordinated all labor functions in the totalitarian state.

The powers of the civil service and the army, on the other hand, were united by the presence of a strong central government. The strong national government was able to maintain the power of both of these groups because without it, “the apparatus in its prevailing structure and composition would either have no function or could be reduced considerably.”11 The high

9 Marcuse, Herbert. “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 79. 10 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 78. 11 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 79 Herman 62 bureaucracy and the army command thus had their interests with the Nazi regime and were also allied with big economic power, as Marcuse cited the fact that “in the armament council, five generals sit together with eight industrialists.”12 The army and the civil service were tied through economic and political interest with the Nazis.

Finally, the landed aristocracy, while not as important in the industrialized Nazi state, had also managed to cash in on their traditional political power as well. The Nazi regime had generally aligned themselves with the class interests of the aristocracy, giving them a number of different privileges. This kept the aristocrats on the side of the regime.

What Marcuse witnessed in the composition of the totalitarian ruling apparatus of the

Third Reich was the increasing dependence of political power on economic power. Marcuse identified three reasons why this happened: (1) the Nazis wanted to stamp out the class conflicts inherent in the Weimar Republic “between big business and small business, capital and labor,

‘new’ and ‘old’ industries” as well as provide “living space” for a monopolized economy; (2) war economies generally moved “to rationalize the entire economy under the leadership of the most efficient and advanced industrial enterprises”; and (3) the efficient control of labor which

Marcuse defined as “one of the most urgent goals of the Nazi regime.”13 Marcuse insisted on identifying economic power as a central element of Nazi totalitarianism since it was largely overshadowed on a superficial analysis due to the more obvious “terroristic apparatus.” By this,

Marcuse meant that the financial and industrial structure behind the Nazi regime was not as noticeable as the more obvious components of it. Therefore, they would be able to escape notice after the war was over since it would be easier for them to dissociate themselves from the Nazis themselves. Marcuse wanted to go deeper than just implicating the Nazi leadership themselves.

12 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 79. 13 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 80. Herman 63

Instead, he wished to label all the supports for the regime within the class structure as a means of identifying the source of Nazi totalitarianism.

For Marcuse, this represented an amplification of trends that were already present in the

Weimar Republic. Aside from the particular leadership of the Nazi Party itself, Marcuse saw the industrialists, big land owners, and even the bureaucracy as largely unchanged from the Weimar era. For Marcuse, the Third Reich represented the tightening of control among the ruling classes.

This was a trend that existed under the Weimar Republic but that had been expanded massively

under the Nazis: “One may say that, under the Weimar Republic, the political decisions were the

result of a compromise between ruling and the ruled, whereas, under the Nazi regime, the result

from a compromise among the ruling groups.”14

The operative word in Marcuse’s account of the dictatorship of the ruling classes under

the Nazis was consolidation. The ruling groups became increasingly consolidated under the

Nazis because preserving the Nazi regime allowed them to maintain and increase their power.

Marcuse stated this explicitly: “The Nazi regime has tremendously strengthened the class

consciousness of Germany’s ruling groups; the establishment of this regime was in itself the

expression of a united and strengthened class consciousness.”15 These groups were the force that

led to Nazi totalitarianism: “These groups agreed on the setting up of a totalitarian regime and

submitted to stern regimentation of their affairs because they saw no other way of disciplining

labor and carrying through a steam-lined imperialistic policy.”16 These ruling groups consented

to fascism in order to more effectively console and dominate the ruled groups, which Marcuse

14 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 81. 15 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 82. 16 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 82. Herman 64 identified with over 90 percent of the German population—“the mere objects of totalitarian regimentation”: labor, artisans, wage earners, lower-down civil servants, etc.17

However, for Marcuse, Nazism was not merely a reactionary pushback of the ruling classes against encroachment on their power. It was also had a fundamentally modern, technocratic character, shaped to a considerable degree by a concept Marcuse helped to develop:

“technological rationality.” This point is made explicitly in his report “The Significance of

Prussian Militarism.” This report was written in response to a Winston Churchill speech that claimed that Nazism came from an ancient form of Prussian barbarism, an idea that Marcuse and his co-author historian Felix Gilbert sought to disprove. In this report, Marcuse argued that

Nazism in power hardly resembled the semi-feudal leadership of the Prussian Junkers and that it was instead something fundamentally different and modern.

Marcuse saw the difference between the semi-feudal authoritarianism of the Junkers and the totalitarian dictatorship of the Nazis as rooted in the nature of modern, industrial capitalism versus traditional feudalism. Before even touching on his more profound points on modern technocracy, Marcuse and Gilbert showed that much newer developments such as the vested interests of German heavy industry, ultra-nationalism, and government desires to unify antagonistic social groups were much more behind Nazi aggression than anything native to

Prussia. By tracking the history of Prussia as a distinct entity and showing how distinctly

Prussian influence actually declined under the Nazis, the authors were able to develop an alternative view about what actually did constitute the sources of Nazi aggression.

Marcuse and Gilbert identified a handful of reasons why Prussia had declined in power under the Nazis. All five reasons were related to the modernization of Germany, whether that was exemplified in the centralized state or in the development of a war economy. What is most

17 Marcuse, “German Social Stratification,” in Secret Reports, 83. Herman 65 fascinating here is that what is described is not merely technological change, but change in the ideology and even rationality of society: “This state has adopted a new ideology oriented to the standards of technocratic efficiency regardless of traditional status and privileges. The Nazi state functions through the organization and manipulation of masses and machines.”18 As Marcuse states later on, “the technocratic morale of industrial super-organizations has replaced the semi- feudal ideology of Prussianism.”19 This relates back to a concept that Marcuse had formulated in his 1941 article “Some Social Implications in Modern Technology,” in which he posed the idea of “technological rationality.” Technological rationality described changes in rationality itself when the ruling classes had gained the ability to manipulate masses and machines through technology and had developed a new series of logics and ideologies based around this ability.

What is important here is that Nazism for Marcuse was not simply the reactionary pushback of the ruling classes but clearly something very new, something brought about as a result of modern advances. This view of Nazism as both reactionary and ultra-modern is part of what made

Marcuse’s take in the reports unique and insightful. It also seemed very much in the spirit of the more experimental side of Critical Theory. Lastly, it was distinctive in seeing Nazism not as something rooted in particularly German character, but as something which was more deeply rooted in the operations of a modern, industrial society.

Finally, Marcuse’s reports does not feature the distinction between liberalism and fascism that one finds in the reports by Kirchheimer and Neumann. While both Kirchheimer and

Neumann believed that fascism developed from deeper class conflicts that had developed under liberalism, Marcuse was much more willing to think that Nazism was intimately connected with

18 Marcuse, Herbert and Gilbert, Felix. “The Significance of Prussian Militarism for Nazi Imperialism: Potential Tensions in United Nations Psychological Warfare,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 67. 19 Marcuse/Gilbert, “Prussian Militarism,” in Secret Reports, 68. Herman 66 the state of affairs under liberalism and to subsequently doubt Allied efforts at denazification

(addressed later).

Marcuse’s willingness to link certain aspects of liberalism to fascism is apparent in his

1943 report about the changes in the German government as the Allies began to take the advantage in the war: “Possible Political Changes in Nazi Germany in the Near Future.” Unlike both Kirchheimer and Neumann, who were more positive that the problems of fascism could be changed with certain measures, Marcuse was pessimistic about whether Nazism could be rooted out of Germany effectively. He thought that this was the case because Nazism had no formal structure of its own and that it could easily masquerade itself behind liberal institutions.

According to Marcuse, there were two facts about the Nazi system that made Nazism so difficult to dissolve effectively. One was that the Nazi Party itself lacked any institutional structure other than that Hitler was the unquestioned leader: “There is also no institutionalization within the Party… there is no supreme Party institution other than Hitler himself.”20 Nazism therefore had an irrational formlessness that allowed it to blend into liberal institutions wearing an ideological mask. The second fact was the complete and unquestioned control of the Nazi

Party over society. This formlessness of Nazi organization and this complete supremacy of the party over the state allowed Nazism to overpower liberal institutions, making it incredibly difficult to completely eliminate since it could easily infiltrate liberal institutions.

What is important to note about Marcuse’s analysis of Nazism is that while he saw the phenomenon of Nazism as rooted in a ruthless, monopolistic dictatorship of the ruling classes, he also saw Nazism as more than simply a reactionary pushback of the ruling classes. Even though

Marcuse certainly put plenty of emphasis on the link between the ruling classes and Nazism, he

20 Marcuse, Herbert. “Possible Political Changes in Nazi Germany in the Near Future,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 34. Herman 67 also thought that the Third Reich had a lot to do with processes that were fundamentally modern and technological as well. Finally, he viewed Nazism as being harder to divide from bourgeois liberalism than either Neumann or Kirchheimer. Even though Neumann was insistent that the ruling classes had to have their power uprooted, Marcuse was even more insistent that the ruling classes would return right to fascism if liberalism comes back to power: “It must therefore be accepted that a political reorganization of Germany under the auspices of the ruling groups will continue the Nazi Party as a means… of manipulating the masses.”21

III. Dealing with War Crimes/The Holocaust

Marcuse’s work on war crimes was nowhere near as exhaustive as the work of Neumann and Kirchheimer, who both provided extensive legal advice for the Nuremberg tribunal. Marcuse did however contribute his own analysis as to how much the Nazi plan was premeditated, which he offered in his report “The Nazi Master Plan.”

In this highly interesting report, Marcuse tracked the history of the National Socialist movement through several distinct phases of seizing power under the NSDAP (1920-1933) with the objectives of establishing a racist totalitarian state from the beginning. Though Marcuse provided an excellent historical account here, the narrative he spelled out is pretty standard for anyone who knows the history of Nazi Germany. He also pointed to groups that supported the

Nazi seizure of power--noting that Nazi efforts were aided by the Freikorps, the Reichswehr, and big industrialists. He then chronicled the Nazi establishment of a totalitarian regime in place of

Weimar democracy, showing how precisely the Nazis dissolved democratic institutions and developed domestic and foreign policy programs based on aggression and domination, all of which did not take any thought as to the legality of the actions involved.

21 Marcuse, “Possible Political Changes” in Secret Reports, 34. Herman 68

Marcuse’s analysis of Nazi war crimes against Jews was written with a passion peculiar to the reports. Marcuse began by stating the manifest fact that Nazism was unique in the history of anti-Semitism in that it strove for nothing less than the complete annihilation of the Jews. As

Marcuse passionately added: “Reconciliation is therefore impossible: Jewry and Nazism cannot coexist; the war between them is a life and death struggle all over the world.”22 After this,

Marcuse argued that there were five reasons that anti-Semitism “was one of the most effective instruments for the world-wide infilitration and expansion of Nazism.”23 The first was that the

Jew was the weakest enemy the Nazi state could find, making the scapegoating of them the most promising and the least risky of all possible groups. It is of note here that Marcuse accepted this

view while Neumann rejected it. Neumann saw the Nazi persecution of Jews as a “spearhead”

for a greater form of terror against all independent aspects of society rather than seeing it as a

“scapegoating” of the Jews themselves.24 The second reason was that the Jew could unite

disparate groups of Germans against a common “other.” The third rationale was that the Jew

posed economic competition for members of the petty-bourgeoisie who were the biggest part of

the Nazis’ mass support. (The theory that the petty-bourgeois were the most important element

of Hitler’s support has since been shown wrong, but Marcuse was convinced that eliminating the

Jew as an economic competitor was also one of the chief motivating factors of their persecution

alongside more ideological forms of anti-Semitism.25). Fourth, since Jews could be found in

almost all countries, they could be used as a scapegoat to recruit allies internationally. Finally,

the Jews provided a justification for the Nazis’ imperialist conquests in Communist Russia and

22 Marcuse, Herbert. “Nazi Plans for Dominating Germany and Europe: The Nazi Master Plan,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 499. 23 Marcuse, “Nazi Plans for Dominating Germany and Europe,” in Secret Reports, 499. 24 Neumann, “Anti-Semitism: Spearhead for Universal Terror,” in Secret Reports, 27. 25 Paxton, Robert. Anatomy of Fascism (New York, Vintage Books: 2005), 210. Herman 69 the Western democracies since Jewish stereotypes could be linked both to liberal capitalism and

Soviet communism.

In a later section of the report, Marcuse also provided an account of Nazi crimes of imperialist expansion. Even though this part of the report does not contain anything particularly new or insightful given current knowledge of the Third Reich’s atrocities, it did provide an early and damning account of how the Nazis had planned their brutal conquest of Europe from the beginning. Marcuse managed to demonstrate that Nazi imperialism was “not conceived ad hoc, but conceived beforehand as part of the Nazi master plan for the domination of Europe.”26

What is notable about Marcuse’s account of Nazi atrocities both in the extermination of

Jews and in the imperialistic policies of Nazi Germany of attempting domination over Europe is

that he contrasted both with Kirchheimer and especially with Neumann. He contrasted with

Kirchheimer because he placed more emphasis on the top-down execution of a master plan rather

than arguing that the Nazi state was so disorganized as to leave interpretation to lower level

officials: indeed the purpose of his report on the Nazi Master Plan is to show that the Nazi

leadership orchestrated their atrocities in line with a centralized plan that was in place from the

beginning. Whether Marcuse fell into the category of functionalism or intentionism in his

evaluation of the Holocaust is not entirely clear from his analysis in the report, but the report

describes the plan to exterminate the Jews as integral to the Nazi program from its inception. His

contrast with Neumann was even starker. Whereas Neumann thought that anti-Semitism was

driven by another agenda, namely the destruction of free and independent institutions, Marcuse

believed that anti-Semitism, while certainly driven by a large array of forces, was at the end of

the day about the hatred of Jews. Marcuse did not agree with Neumann’s “spearhead” theory and

instead accepted the view that Jews were really the scapegoat of an anti-Semitism that was

26 Marcuse, “Nazi Plans for Dominating Germany and Europe” in Secret Reports, 514. Herman 70 primarily concerned with them. While he very clearly believed there were explanations that could be found as to why the Nazi state committed so many atrocities, he did not use standard

Marxist categories to do so. What is most remarkable about Marcuse’s report is the passion with which he drives at the issue, making it clear that he regarded Nazi genocide with an emotion that could not be reduced to purely mechanistic categories.

IV. Postwar Reconstruction/Denazification

As mentioned earlier, Marcuse differed from both Neumann and Kirchheimer in that he was much more pessimistic about the possibilities of denazification. This was because he believed that any proper take on Nazism had to acknowledge that “every sphere of public and private life was shaped by the Nazi system.”27 Liberal institutions simply would not be able to counter fascism because it would be able to camouflage itself within different institutions.

However, Marcuse also believed that outside intervention would not be enough either: only an organic left-wing movement from inside Germany that did not have ties to an occupying power would be able to fully democratize German society: “At the end of the present war the importance of indigenous political movements for the disarmament and pacification of Germany will be even greater than in 1918.”28

The first point that Marcuse made about denazification is that it could not be done easily at all. He made this argument in “Policy toward Revival of Old Parties and Establishment of

New Parties in Germany.” In this report, he warned about the possibility of other right-wing

27 Marcuse, Herbert. “Dissolution of the Nazi Party and Its Affiliated Organizations,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 254. 28 Marcuse, Herbert. “Policy toward revival of Old Parties and Establishment of New Parties in Germany,” in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 286. Herman 71 nationalist parties that might avoid association with the Nazis but still appeal to Western sentiments during occupation. This appeal to Western sentiments would take the form of anti- communism: “They may appear as national democratic parties, and their program may be centered on what they will picture as a struggle against the Bolshevization of Germany and a fight for Germany’s cultural tradition, freedom of enterprise, the elimination of politics from the administration of public life… Their real aim, however, is likely to be the maintenance of the privileged position of the old ruling groups.”29 Marcuse was in effect afraid of the fascist agenda taking on the mask of the reasonable right.

Marcuse’s worries went deeper than merely political parties. He also thought that private institutions of society could possibly carry the mantle of fascism further as well. Marcuse divided these into two main groupings. The first comprised business organizations that could exercise power over politics in a covert way after the defeat of the Nazi regime: “The professional organizations in Germany are powerful potential pressure groups which can easily transform economic, technical, and administrative problems into political issues.”30 This would be especially relevant after the war and given the fact that, according to Marcuse, much of the business class was antidemocratic in its tendencies, there was much to worry about there. The second grouping included sports, educational, and cultural organizations. He thought these would be candidates because the Nazis would seek to hide their fascism in more discrete cultural ways rather than explicit political action: “Anti-Semitism can easily be combined with this education program [of German culture] by propagating the teachings of such ‘great Germans’ as Luther,

Fichte, and Treitschke.”31 Fascism could take a number of different guises, both explicitly political and hidden within the course of daily life. This was why Marcuse believed some

29 Marcuse, “Policy toward Old and New Parties,” in Secret Reports, 289 30 Marcuse, “Policy toward Old and New Parties,” in Secret Reports, 290. 31 Marcuse, “Policy toward Old and New Parties,” in Secret Reports, 290. Herman 72 restrictions on the political and cultural activities of both the right-leaning parties and the different institutions of civil society needed to be closely monitored or even put down by an occupying government.32 Marcuse thought denazification would be a very difficult task, though of course the first measure an occupying government could take would be to purge the actual

Nazis.

In “Dissolution of the Nazi Party and its Affiliated Organizations,” Marcuse argued that the first concrete steps that an occupying military government should take was to dissolve the

Nazi Party and arrest high-ranking members of the party. Even though this step would cripple the regime which was based on the supremacy of the Party over society, it would not so easily cripple fascism: “Nazism was not confined to the activities and institutions of the Nazi Party…

The system was promoted and supported by elements outside the Nazi Party.”33 Other than this

obvious step, Marcuse also recommended that the military government go further in identifying

“active Nazis” who were not actively involved in leadership positions. For Marcuse, an Allied

government could take this measure to punish those elements which Marcuse believed had

pulled the levers for Nazism but had remained outside of the Party. Marcuse developed five

different criteria for identifying these allies of Nazism. The first group were those that

denounced political opponents to Nazi rule. The second grouping would be those that instigated

violence against scapegoated groups in Nazi society such as Jews, prisoners of war, and workers.

The third group was anyone who disseminated Nazi ideology. The fourth type were those that

willingly received any honors from the Nazi Party. Finally, those that accepted any property

acquired through “Aryanization” should also be noted. Marcuse also alternatively identified (1)

those who were representatives of the German Labor Front and (2) those who joined the Nazi

32 Marcuse, “Policy toward Old and New Parties,” in Secret Reports, 297. 33 Marcuse, “Dissolution of the Nazi Party,” in Secret Reports, 254. Herman 73

Party prior to 1933 as important to surveil “unless and until their good faith is established.”34

Whether these different groupings would be detained or just put under watchful surveillance by

the military government was up to the discretion of the MG itself.

However, even all of these different measures would not be enough to denazify the

country properly. Marcuse saw them only as being a start to a more proper denazification which

had to be led by democratic movements from within Germany itself. These movements would

have to restructure German society so as to undermine the ruling classes and would have to

impress an anti-fascist ideology that would actually change the way Germans interacted with the

world.

The two parties that Marcuse looked at for that task were the Social Democratic and the

Communist Parties, each of which Marcuse provided a report on. Marcuse tracked the history of

both parties and looked at their potential as democratic institutions. In his analysis of the

prospects for the Social Democratic and Communist Parties, Marcuse attempted to show an

objectivity toward both of them, evaluating how likely each of them was to take power rather

than evaluating them in terms of his personal opinion. It is clear, however, from the fact that

Marcuse devoted so much space to the analysis of these two parties that he saw both as

candidates to promote democratic change in Germany. It also seems likely that Marcuse favored

the Social Democrats above all. His report on the Social Democratic Party was flagged for not

meeting R&A’s standards of “mature and objective scholarship” and the report does seem to

speak well of the Social Democrats’ policies, even if it does so in a subtle way. Regardless of

whether Marcuse favored the Social Democrats or the Communists, it is clear that he remained

34 Marcuse, “Dissolution of the Nazi Party,” in Secret Reports, 260.

Herman 74 left of the moderate socialists but not quite a committed Bolshevik, as he considered both parties to be legitimate options for the future of Germany and central Europe.

V. Conclusion

Marcuse’s reports display his unique intellectual lens. His analysis of Nazism reflected the Marxist emphasis on class conflict but also included Marcuse’s more original reflections on technology and modernity as shaping consciousness and rationality: he had the keen sense that

Nazism was both something reactionary and ultra-modern simultaneously. Marcuse was therefore more willing than Kirchheimer and Neumann to analyze Nazism inside the innovative paradigms of Critical Theory. He was also much more willing than Neumann to move out of a hard determinist Marxism when discussing issues related to the Third Reich. His views on the extent of Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust also reflected his willingness to analyze the issues through more than impersonal Marxist categories but rather saw it in a very intimate and personal light—writing very passionately in his lone report on war crimes about it. Lastly,

Marcuse thought denazification could only be properly executed through domestic democratic movements and was less optimistic about the ability of military government to impose such change.

Herman 75

CONCLUSION There are two important points to be gathered from a study of Marcuse, Neumann, and

Kirchheimer’s reports. To begin, each of the thinkers seemed to express thoughts on the various topics under discussion in continuity with their work as intellectuals prior to their engagement with the OSS. The odd partnership between the OSS and the Frankfurt School was actually one in which the Frankfurters could develop their thoughts on the Third Reich and Central Europe without too much restriction. This leads to the first important point of this study, which is that the partnership between the OSS and the Frankfurt School was actually a fruitful one for both groups under consideration. The OSS was able to solicit advice from top-notch social scientists on the situation in Germany, which was a benefit to the organization’s pool of available intelligence. The Frankfurt School thinkers, on the other hand, were able to use the forum to develop their thoughts as scholars without much significant restriction. Second, all of them developed their own individual courses in thinking about Nazi totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and the post-war situation. These differing courses covered a wide range of issues, but often were centered upon differences in their deployment of Marxism.

There are three main arguments that can be put forward as to why engagement with the

OSS was actually a fruitful experience for the Frankfurt School. The first argument would be the intellectual value of the reports themselves and their congruence with their scholarship outside of the OSS. Neumann’s reports hold to the views in his scholarly publications on monopoly capital as the driving force of fascist politics, of anti-Semitism as a superficial “spearhead” for deeper goals of the Nazi state, and the need for a full-scale reconstruction of German society after the war. All of these ideas were ones that Neumann could claim were his own. Kirchheimer’s reports show that he was willing to apply ideas from his contributions to Critical Theory such as technical rationality into his work for the OSS, not being afraid to express the more heterodox Herman 76 opinions of the Frankfurt School if they contributed to a more precise understanding of the Third

Reich. Finally, Marcuse explored his own idea of technological rationality in the reports, using it to explain that the Third Reich was a fundamentally new beast as compared with other authoritarian regimes. While the reports were written in an objective style dictated by government norms, the qualities and insights of each scholar come to the surface in the reports themselves. They also were clearly constructed very meticulously and the arguments within them tended to be rigorous in their analysis. This shows that the intellectual output was substantive and that ideas were being developed in an original and intellectually serious way.

The second argument that could be made for this conclusion was that the environment of the Central European Section successfully encouraged fruitful intellectual inquiry. This was indicated in Eugene Anderson’s history of the section, which claimed that the analysts worked together in a “spirit of cooperation” which allowed them to be “remarkably effective.”1 The analysts were “entitled to express their opinion fully” and “to take the initiative in improving the work of the section.”2 Overall, the environment was one in which each scholar was encouraged to be the best intellectual they could be.

This makes sense when one considers that this was in line with the intentions of the OSS as a whole for their different analysts, the third argument for the “fruitfulness” conclusion. The

OSS’s institutional obligations encouraged them to refine their very well-thought out views on the Third Reich and on the various other relevant subjects discussed in the reports in order to boost the quality of intelligence the organization could work with. Allowing Neumann,

Kirchheimer, and Marcuse to be the best intellectuals they could be was therefore part of the

1 A History of the Central European Section under the Incumbency of Eugene Anderson as Chief,” February 17, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2), 1. 2 A History of the Central European Section under the Incumbency of Eugene Anderson as Chief,” February 17, 1945 (RG 226, Entry 37, Box 2), 1. Herman 77 common sense interest of the OSS. If that meant allowing them to embrace and expand Marxian theories of society, then so be it.

Moving on to the second contention of this study, Neumann, Kirchheimer, and Marcuse displayed different approaches in their analyses of the Third Reich, even as they worked as a cohesive unit within the Central European Section. The differences occurred along every major issue discussed in the reports and generally revolved around the ways in which they deployed

Marxism in their reports. Neumann was by far the most loyal to a mechanistic version of

Marxism: economic determinism and class conflict drove virtually every aspect of his analysis, even of the worst of Nazi atrocities. Kirchheimer and Marcuse both showed a willingness to diverge from this more mechanistic Marxism but for different reasons. While Kirchheimer did believe that monopoly capital and fascism were intertwined, he thought that fascism had become a force of its own, independent of the monopoly capital that helped create it. Kirchheimer’s refusal to reduce the causes of Nazism to mere economic determinism was demonstrated by both his belief that state power mattered in its own right and his willingness to factor in individual agency when thinking about Nazi atrocities. Marcuse, on the other hand, tended to diverge from traditional Marxism more out of a fondness for the innovations of Critical Theory. Indeed,

Marcuse was the most closely affiliated with the Frankfurt School of the three thinkers under analysis. His use of concepts such as technological rationality and his focus on the psychology of mass politics clearly showed his fondness for the innovations of 20th century Critical Theory over a more traditional Marxism, something his friend Franz Neumann was less willing to do. In essence then, while each thinker was interested in applying Marxist methods to understanding the Third Reich, they diverged in the degree to which they subscribed to the traditional theories of Marxism to explain what was going on. Herman 78

Marcuse, Neumann, and Kirchheimer diverged on the subject of Nazi totalitarianism. All three brought Marxism to bear on the subject but did so in different ways. Neumann’s analysis remained the most traditionally Marxist: locating the roots of the Third Reich within the context of class conflict and the total dictatorship of the ruling class. At the same time, Neumann would display a free-thinking form of Marxism, as he grasped the horror of Nazi totalitarianism fully and did not reduce Nazism to just another form of reactionary politics, as the Comintern had done throughout the 1930s. Kirchheimer and Marcuse, on the other hand, were willing to break out of the categories of traditional Marxism: bringing in more novel ideas from Frankfurt School

Critical Theory to make points about the Nazi dictatorship. Kirchheimer for example applied ideas of “technical rationality” to his understanding of the Nazi regime. Marcuse focused more on the technocratic aspects of Nazi rule: attributing to Nazism a distinctly modern, if utterly reactionary character. That being said, they were also very similar in some ways: as can be glimpsed in their commitment to Marxist theory as well as their understanding that Nazi totalitarianism really was a new force in history, what Hannah Arendt would call a “novum.”

In their discussion of the topic of Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust, Neumann,

Kirchheimer, and Marcuse shared a strong desire to bring to justice the perpetrators of genocide.

When dealing with the immensity of these crimes, though, they developed different views on the causes and nature of these events that can be seen as being different within the reports.

Kirchheimer and Marcuse seemed to have different thoughts on how to think about the carrying out of the Holocaust. Kirchheimer believed that lower-down officials were more to blame directives from above were often interpreted in ad hoc ways by officials lower down in the party.

Marcuse, on the other hand, believed that in some ways the institutional structure of Nazi totalitarianism was so deeply repressive of the individual that the highest up leaders had to be the Herman 79 starting point for figuring out criminal responsibility. Neumann and Marcuse also spoke about anti-Semitism in different terms. Neumann saw anti-Semitism as a symptom of deeper causes, sometimes going so far as to downplay the role of anti-Semitism altogether as a causal explanation for atrocities. Marcuse seemed to see it less within the lens of class conflict as

Neumann did but seeing it as its own independent, abhorrent phenomena. These differing points of analysis show how these different men reconciled certain aspects of their ideologies with an atrocity that seemed to go beyond its simple social scientific categories: there clearly was some intellectual conflict with how to reconcile the almost incomprehensible atrocities of Nazism with the formulations of economic determinism and class conflict that traditional Marxism posited.

Finally, the three men had differing arguments about what should happen in postwar

Germany. All three obviously believed that changes needed to be made in Germany to undercut fascism. However, there was some difference between them about how those democratic changes were to be brought about. The main disagreement in this case was Kirchheimer and Neumann with Marcuse. Kirchheimer and Neumann were both in favor of harsh military government by the Allies that would permanently restructure German society. For Neumann, this meant breaking the backs of those massive economic ruling class interests which had brought the Nazis to power. For Kirchheimer, this meant the abrogation of all forms of discriminatory legislation and a return to democratic practice through the power of the state. While Marcuse did not disagree with either military government or radical change to German society, he was of the mind that the transformationally democratic forces in German society had to come from within: for this task he viewed both the Social Democratic and the Communist Parties with skepticism.

The disagreement did not come so much in the argument that radical change was needed, but in Herman 80 how such changes should be implemented and with what mechanisms should they be accomplished.

After their service with the OSS, Neumann, Kirchheimer, and Marcuse took very different paths. Neumann became a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University in

1948 and continued to support the Social Democrats in Germany, even if from their left flank.

He would tragically pass away in 1954 from an automobile accident in Switzerland, being survived by his widow Inge Werner (who would subsequently marry Herbert Marcuse in 1955) and his two sons Osha and Michael (who are still alive today).

Otto Kirchheimer would continue working in the State Department until 1955, eventually becoming a director of Central European research within the US government. He would also take up part-time teaching positions at both Harvard and American University, becoming a prominent political scientist in the post-World War II period. His most famous contribution as a political scientist was the idea of the catch-all party, a political party which tries to bring together people of all different views and ideologies. He would formulate, perfect, and research this concept until his death in 1965.

Herbert Marcuse would also work at the State Department until 1951. After he left the

State Department, he achieved astronomical fame as a social scientist and thinker: his books

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955), Soviet Marxism: A Critical

Analysis (1958), and One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Society (1964)

became well-recognized titles in post-World War II social thought. He continued to move ever

leftward politically, becoming an intellectual hero to the New Left in the 1960s and was a

professor to such famous names to the protest left of the 1960s as Angela Davis and Abbie

Hoffman. He died in 1979. Herman 81

All three men continued to a certain extent down the ideological and intellectual trajectories that they developed during their service with the OSS between 1943 and 1945.

Neumann’s more scientific, mechanistic Marxism would move more in the direction of a rationalist left-wing liberalism, a development that could be anticipated in much of Neumann’s writing and correspondence during the period of the reports: though he was adamantly left-wing, he clearly was no revolutionary and wanted rational, legal solutions for the massive problems he identified. Kirchheimer, like Neumann, would continue more in a pathway toward liberalism: working as a reformer in studying the nature of liberal politics. Finally, Marcuse’s continued move both leftward and toward a more heterodox and revolutionary form of politics can also be gathered from the reports: given both his pessimism about liberalism and his willingness to use more experimental ideas in social science in the reports.

All of these trajectories in the thought of each of these three prominent thinkers show that the period of the OSS’s engagement with the Frankfurt School was one which would shape the development of Critical Theory (one of the most important intellectual movements in the 20th century) and consequently a small piece of the intellectual history of philosophy, sociology, political science, and legal theory of post-World War II America. This all was facilitated by the strange alliance between the OSS and the Frankfurt School.

Herman 82

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