From the founding of the Weimar Republic to the advent of the Cold War, embattled German socialist intellectuals worked to explain the new European dictatorships. Historian William David Jones traces their efforts and explains how they pioneered new approaches to the analysis of totalitarianism. Key socialist thinkers discussed include Rudolf Hilferding, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Karl Korsch, Ruth Fischer, Richard Löwenthal, and Franz Borkenau. Their writings often anticipated the better-known Cold War-era books by Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, and others.

This is the second edition, revised and updated. The American Library Association named the first edition to its Choice list of Best Academic Titles in 2001.