Behemoth ─ The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944

Franz Neumann's classic account of the governmental workings of Nazi Germany, first published in 1942, is reprinted in a new paperback edition with an introduction by the distinguished historian Peter Hayes. Neumann was one of the only early Frankfurt School thinkers to examine seriously the problem of political institutions. After the rise of the Nazis to power, his emphasis shifted to an analysis of economic power, and then after the war to political psychology. But his contributions in Behemoth were groundbreaking: that the Nazi organization of society involved the collapse of traditional ideas of the state, of ideology, of law, and even of any underlying rationality. The book must be studied, not simply read, Raul Hilberg wrote. The most experienced researchers will tell us that the scarcest commodity in academic life is an original idea. If someone has two or three, he is rich. Franz Neumann was a rich man. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Franz Neumann was a political activist and labor lawyer in Germany who became a political scientist in exile. He studied in Germany and the United Kingdom, and spent the last phase of his career in the United States. Peter Hayes is the Theodore Z. Weiss Professor of Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University and the author or editor of seven books, including From Cooperation to Complicity and a prize-winning study of the IG Farben corporation.