The Nature of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

This book brings together three texts by Hannah Arendt that follow in the immediate wake of her major work, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which it helps to illuminate and extend.

Two articles from 1953, "Understanding and Politics" and "Religion and Politics," develop a more detailed analysis of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second text challenges the portrayal of communism as a "secular religion." The central text, "The Nature of Totalitarianism," is the subject of lectures Hannah Arendt gave in 1954 at the New School for Social Research. The author extends, from a philosophical perspective, the reflections on The Totalitarian System and continues the analysis of terror and the unique nature of totalitarianism.

This book also brings together earlier preparatory documents: the "Concentration Camp Research Project," a synopsis of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and the plan of this work as the author conceived it in 1946.