Jewish Exiles Psychological Interpretations of Nazism

This book examines works of four German-Jewish scholars who, in their places of exile, sought to probe the pathology of the Nazi mind: Wilhelm Reichs The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Erich Fromms Escape from Freedom (1941), Siegfried Kracauers From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947), and Erich Neumanns Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (1949). While scholars have examined these authors individual legacies, no comparative analysis of their shared concerns has yet been undertaken, nor have the content and form of their psychological inquiries into Nazism been seriously and systematically analyzed. Yet, the sense of urgency in their works calls for attention. They all took up their pens to counter Nazi barbarism, believing, like the English jurist and judge Sir William Blackstone, who wrote in 1753 - scribere est agere ("to write is to act").