Neumann, Franz L. b. May 23, 1900; Kattowitz (Silesia), Prussia d. September 2, 1954;Visp/Wallis, Switzerland
Refugee from Nazi Germany, he played a significant—if difficult to define—role in U.S. policy toward Germany during and immediately after World War II. Through his Behemoth: The Spirit and Structure of National Socialism (1942) he became widely known both within and outside academic circles as an expert on contemporary Germany.
Neumann was born into a Jewish family in Prussian Silesia. Serving in the army toward the end of World War I, he, like many others, was radicalized by the revolutionary forces unleashed by the war. After the war he earned a doctorate in law and public administration and became what is known in America as a “labor lawyer.” From 1927 to 1933 he served as legal adviser to the major German labor unions, the Social Democratic unions, as well as the party executive.
Shortly after the Nazis came to power, Neumann fled abroad. He acquired a second doctorate—in political science—from the London School of Economics. In 1936 he settled in New York, where he was employed by the Institute for Social Research. Neumann began work on Behemoth within the context of the institute’s research programs on authoritarianism and Nazi Germany. Relying principally on German source material, Neumann’s scholarly study in political science and contemporary history was widely cited during and immediately after World War II. In 1942, soon after the book’s appearance, he was called to Washington to serve on the Board of Economic Warfare. Less than a year later he was working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. He was one of the first refugees from Hitler employed in such a capacity. Numerous other scholars who dealt with German affairs joined Neumann in Washington. He and the Yale historian Hajo Holborn, both in their early forties in 1943, were among the highest-ranking foreign-born OSS officials.
Beneath them in the Research and Analysis (R&A) branch of the OSS toiled scores of young people, many of whom became prominent in the postwar generation of scholars.Although the R&A harbored few Marxists other than Neumann, he and his book were so highly regarded that Behemoth became unofficially a basic text for the Central European Section of the R&A. His conclusion that the Third Reich remained a capitalist society was shared, not simply by Communists, but also by many others. Behemoth provided anti-Fascist, nonCommunist intellectuals with an alternative to Soviet-oriented analyses of German fascism. Aside from many differences in style, tone, and approach, there were major differences in interpretation. For example, whereas Communists depicted the Third Reich as ruled directly by finance or monopoly capital, Neumann saw it as ruled by a coalition of four forces: the Nazi Party hierarchy, industrial capitalists, high state bureaucrats, and a military elite—to which he sometimes added a fifth group—large agrarians. These four or five groups agreed, according to Neumann, on basic policy despite many differences. Moreover, a certain fusion of groups was occurring. Thus, Hermann Goering, who began his political career as a party man, had gained control of an industrial empire, while industrialists established footholds in the SS and NSDAP.
Without interpretation, much of this analysis provided no direct guidance for the formation of U.S. policy. Although Neumann argued that the mass of the population in Nazi Germany had been so atomized that it was incapable of acting against the regime, he retained hope in the basic decency of the populace. He believed that once Germany was defeated, popular, left-of-center forces would reconstruct Germany—if the occupying armies permitted them to assert themselves and move against the old German elites and the Nazis. Neumann, and, in general, the R&A, took the position that Germany should be reformed, not destroyed—that it should be reconstructed as an essential part of European civilization.
Although influenced by this approach, U.S. policy took a different course.After the war Neumann continued in government service, but soon was appointed professor of political science at Columbia University. He attracted many fine graduate students, most of whom became historians. Although he retained his base at Columbia, he played an active role in German affairs, such as the founding of the Free University in West Berlin. His postwar scholarly writings, while thoroughly professional, lacked the inspiration that powered Behemoth, which remains a monument to a period of a few years in Neumann’s life when he produced a work that is still without a worthy successor.
Walter Struve
See also Holborn, Hajo; U.S. Plans for
Postwar Germany (1941-1945)
References and Further Reading
Coser, Lewis A. Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1984.
Hughes, H. Stuart. The Sea Change: The Migration of Social Thought, 1930—1965. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.
Katz, Barry M. Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942-1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1989.
Stoffregen, Matthias. Kampfen fur ein demokratisches Deutschland: Emigranten zwischen Politik und Politikwissenschaft. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2002.