The Mass Psychology of Fascism

As Wilhelm Reich notes, his The Mass Psychology of Fascism "was thought out during the German crisis years, 1930-33. It was written in 1933; the first edition appeared in September of 1933 and the second edition in April of 1934, in Denmark" (1970b, p. xvii). A genuinely burning question lay at the heart of the book: How did Hitler succeed in imposing himself ? More specifically, how could a people of seventy million cultivated, hardworking individuals let themselves be seduced by a manifest psychopath? Even beyond the period when it...