Hans Morgenthau : intellectual in the political sphere

Abstract

This is an intellectual biography of Hans Morgenthau. Morgenthau was a German Jew who, in fleeing Nazi Germany, emigrated to the United States in the mid-1930s. He subsequently came to have an important impact upon the nascent discipline of International Relations in the United States in the immediate post-war period. His book Politics Among Nations was the first major textbook to be used in International Relations within American universities and through a number of editions it came to sell something like half a million copies. Morgenthau was also active as a public commentator on international politics and, in particular, American foreign policy and he became a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s. The central claim of this thesis is that Morgenthau's intellectual contributions and political activities can only be properly understood when set in the broader intellectual and political contexts both of Germany where he was educated and the United States where he spent the second half of his life.