Democracy in Exile

Daniel Bessner

Description

Anyone interested in the history of U.S. foreign relations, Cold War history, and twentieth century intellectual history will find this impressive biography of Hans Speier, one of the most influential figures in American defense circles of the twentieth century, a must-read.In Democracy in Exile, Daniel Bessner shows how the experience of the Weimar Republic's collapse and the rise of Nazism informed Hans Speier's work as an American policymaker and institution builder. Bessner delves into Speier's intellectual development, illuminating the ideological origins of the expert-centered approach to foreign policymaking and revealing the European roots of Cold War liberalism.Democracy in Exile places Speier at the center of the influential and fascinating transatlantic network of policymakers, many of them German emigres, who struggled with the tension between elite expertise and democratic politics. Speier was one of the most prominent intellectuals among this cohort, and Bessner traces his career, in which he advanced from university intellectual to state expert, holding a key position at the RAND Corporation and serving as a powerful consultant to the State Department and Ford Foundation, across the mid-twentieth century. Bessner depicts the critical role Speier played in the shift in American intellectual history in which hundreds of social scientists left their universities and contributed to the creation of an expert-based approach to U.S. foreign relations, in the process establishing close connections between governmental and nongovernmental organizations. As Bessner writes: to understand the rise of the defense intellectual, we must understand Hans Speier.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• USA
• Sociology
• International relations
• 20th century
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501709395
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

DEMOCRACYINEXILE

Avolumeintheseries

TheUnitedStatesintheWorld EditedbyMarkPhilipBradley,DavidC.Engerman, Amy S. Greenberg, and Paul A. Kramer

A list of titles in this series is available at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

DEMOCRACYINEXILE

HansSpeierandtheRiseofthe Defense Intellectual

DanielBessner

CornellUniversityPress Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2018 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2018 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bessner, Daniel, 1984– author. Title: Democracy in exile : Hans Speier and the rise of the defense intellectual / Daniel Bessner. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2018. | Series: The United States in the world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017041352 (print) | LCCN 2017043061 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501709395 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501712036 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9780801453038 | ISBN 9780801453038 (print : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Speier, Hans. | Sociologists—United States—Biography. | Sociologists—Germany—Biography. | Exiles—Germany— Biography. | National security—United States—History— 20th century. | United States—Foreign relations—1945–1989. | United States—Intellectual life—20th century. Classification: LCC HM479.S (ebook) | LCC HM479.S B47 2018 (print) | DDC 301.092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041352 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwoodfibers. For further information, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cover image: Hans Speier’s Office of War Information identification badge, 1945–1946 (courtesy of the New School for Social Research).

Tomyparents,

Jody and Glen Bessner

Afree-floatingintelligentsia...isnotgoingtoshowustheway out of the crisis. —HansSpeier,asrecountedbyHenryKellerman,1990

[HansSpeierwas]ascholarwholookedmodernityintheeyeand

did not blink.

—IraKatznelson,1990

Preface

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction:Democracy,Expertise,andU.S.ForeignPolicy

1. Masses and Marxism in Weimar Germany

2. The Social Role of the Intellectual Exile

3. Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Democracy in Crisis

4. Psychological Warfare in Theory and Practice

5. The Making of a Defense Intellectual

6. The Adviser

7. The Institution Builder

8. Social Science and Its Discontents

Conclusion:Speier,Expertise,andDemocracyafter1960

ix

xi

1

15

44

73

102

126

156

177

204

225

viii

Contents

Abbreviations

ArchivalandSourceAbbreviations

Notes

ArchivesCited

Index

233

235

237

283

287

Preface

This book tells the story of a German-born academic who became one of the early Cold War’s most influential American defense intellectuals. It is a story of catastrophe, exile, and success; of rejecting youthful values for more “realistic” alternatives; of a scholar becoming an expert. It is above all a story about how an idea that we currently take for granted—that social scientists ensconced in think tanks and universities should have a voice in foreign policymaking—was institutionalized. FewhistorianshaveheardofHansSpeier(1905–1990).Heisatpresent what I call a “lister”—a person mentioned in lists of midcentury intellectuals (and usually toward the end). Though I cannot be certain exactly why this is the case, I have my suspicions. Speier never wrote a major book and was associated with the RAND Corporation’s Social Science Division, which has always been overshadowed by RAND’s more prominent Economics Divi- sion. Speier was bound to escape the attention of historians interested in examining intellectuals who clearly influenced theirfields and disciplines of study. Unlike many in his exile cohort, including Hannah Arendt (his class- mate at Heidelberg University), Hans Morgenthau (his realist associate), and Leo Strauss (his colleague at the New School for Social Research and one