The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt is an in-depth analysis of the historical circumstances surrounding the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. It is split into three parts: Antisemitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism. The first two sections are devoted to the historical developments in modern society from the 19th century until the crisis of the first World War that marks the beginning of totalitarian success in Europe.
The first section, "Antisemitism," investigates why antisemitism and the figure of the Jew played such an integral role in Nazi and totalitarian propaganda. Arendt argues that it is not mere coincidence that they were chosen as the victims of the horrors of totalitarianism, and that by investigating their relationship to society as a whole, one might learn why they became the object of so much hatred. To do this, Arendt studies their roles as financiers to the state and a special group in society that was not fully integrated into the nation-state. This exceptional position put them outside of class society and seemed to connect them to the state, making them a target of hatred whenever a class or group came into conflict with the state. With the decline of the nation-state, the influence of the Jewish elite also declined significantly, but at the same time the influence of antisemitism as an ideology inexplicably seemed to grow. The loss of the nation-state in imperialism spelled doom for the Jewish people.
The second section, "Imperialism," characterizes the period of the disintegration of the nation-state that coincided with new imperial expansion in the late 19th century, and which eventually led to the first World War. Imperialism is a new phenomenon because for the first time the bourgeois class takes on political rule and raises expansion for expansion's sake to a governing ideal. This new political formation, characterized by ongoing movement and accumulation, gave rise to racism and bureaucracy for the first time as major ideologies of modern society. These were both major features of overseas imperialism and the "pan-" movements, which were the direct precursors to the totalitarian movements of the 20th century.
Finally in the third section, "Totalitarianism," Arendt uses the categories derived from her analysis of antisemitism and imperialism to parse totalitarianism. She discovers that, like imperialism, totalitarianism is defined by its emphasis on constant movement, which takes away the agency of individual men by making them merely cogs in a grand motor of history or nature. Through analysis of the tools and organization of totalitarianism, Arendt finds that its essence is terror and its purpose is to stamp out the spontaneity of the human spirit totally. In the midst of this darkness, Arendt still is able to maintain hope that humanity might be able to overcome such horror through the spontaneity of political action contained in the birth of a new generation.
