Arendt, Hannah. "The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Reply". The Review of Politics, Vol.15, no.1 (1953): 76-84.

Arendt, Hannah. "The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Reply". The Review of Politics, Vol.15, no.1 (1953): 76-84.

• This a response from Hannah Arendt to a fellow Editor, Professor Eric Voegelin's, critique and review of her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism" in a previous issue of the journal.
• Dr. Arendt argues that the opening chapters of her book represent a new type of history of anti-semitism, which consciously tries to avoid the bias of previous works. The difference being that previous book attempt to use it as a lens to examine and preserve the history of Jews, purposefully neglecting any meaningful preservation of anti-semitism (77).
• With a knowledge that recording something historically serves to preserve it, Dr. Arendt recognizes that it would be difficult to write a history -- and thus preserve -- things such as anti-semitism and totalitarianism, which the author has a great personal desire to see destroyed (78).
• Thus, instead of directly looking at the history of the concepts of anti-semitism, totalitarianism, or imperialism, Dr. Arendt has written a history of the preconditions and scenarios which allowed for these ideas to become cohesive and prominent in the discourse of interwar Europe (78).
• Dr. Arendt defends the moralizing and biased character of her history, with consistent moral judgements and explanations of personal and human suffering, as necessary to understanding the contemporary mindset. As the author's goal was a history of an idea and situation, rather than technicalities, a look at contemporary emotions and sympathies is necessary (79).
• The key point which Dr. Arendt attempts to communicate through her book is that the actualization of totalitarianism is fundamentally different from all other forms of government. Dr. Arendt thus defends her history's focus on the realization of totalitarian practices in Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR as a better basis than ideology for the judgement of totalitarianism and an exploration of its nature (80).
• The fundamental nature of man and his general conceptualization changes under a totalitarian system. It is this change which is most dangerous and necessity to understand the distinctions made in the book. Dr. Arendt argues that 'the nature of man' is only revealed through action and circumstance, and totalitarianism displayed an entirely new circumstances in which men can act in ways which defied all previous expectations (83).