Books by Franz Neumann

Published by the United States Senate Special Committee to Study Problems of American Small Business in 1943, the preface opens with: "One of the secrets of fighting an effective war is knowing the enemy, how he operates, and what are his aims. Yet, although we have been officially at war with Hitler's germany for more than a year, there is still an insufficient understanding among the American people of the relationship between National Socialism and the cause of independent small business enterprise. "This study establishes two points that, in my opinion, deserve the closest attention of thoughtful Americans. "First, it shows that despite their wild promises to small business, the Nazis have systematically proceeded to destroy small business. Often it is done directly by forcing smaller concerns to close down. Still more often it is done by undermining the independence of smaller concerns; that is, by making them completely subservient to a giant cartel, a prime contractor, or the Third Reich itself. ... "Moreover, the study lays bare the fact that the neglect of small business by the pre-Hitler Government assisted Hitler in his rise to power. ..." Claude Pepper Member, Special Committee to Study Problems of American Small Business United States Senate

During the Second World War, three prominent members of the Frankfurt School--Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer--worked as intelligence analysts for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA. This book brings together their most important intelligence reports on Nazi Germany, most of them published here for the first time. These reports provide a fresh perspective on Hitler's regime and the Second World War, and a fascinating window on Frankfurt School critical theory. They develop a detailed analysis of Nazism as a social and economic system and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazism, as well as a coherent plan for the reconstruction of postwar Germany as a democratic political system with a socialist economy. These reports played a significant role in the development of postwar Allied policy, including denazification and the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials. They also reveal how wartime intelligence analysis shaped the intellectual agendas of these three important German-Jewish scholars who fled Nazi persecution prior to the war. Secret Reports on Nazi Germany features a foreword by Raymond Geuss as well as a comprehensive general introduction by Raffaele Laudani that puts these writings in historical and intellectual context.