The socialist revolutionary dilemma in emigration: Franz L. Neumann's passage toward and through the Office of Strategic Services

Abstract

Both after World War I and during World War II Franz L. Neumann confronted the question of how to bring about a genuine democratization of Germany. In both instances he advocated an economic and social revolution in theory but in practice he acquiesced in the failure of the revolutionary forces. The inconsistencies in Neumann's theoretical works, his double emigration and his passage through the Office of Strategic Services witness the German-Jewish socialist's revolutionary dilemma and the cycle of repetition-displacement that both sustained and trapped him in his troubled position. The trademark of the OSS Research and Analysis Branch, which was to misrecognize a stylistic "neutrality" for an institutional one, suited Neumann's emigration tactic of fighting a political battle under the cover of scholarly discourse. At the same time, with that he accepted a neutralization of his "radical" agenda for post-war German de-nazification and re-democratization.