Introduction

What attributes did Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin possess that enabled them to become the supreme leaders of totalitarian regimes? What did these men achieve in the course of their totalitarian careers? Were the Führer and his Bolshevik nemesis essential or auxiliary to the regimes they led? What, exactly, do totalitarian leaders do that is quintessentially totalitarian, as distinct from simply tyrannical or authoritarian? Hannah Arendt answered all these questions, yet her theory of totalitarian leadership is among the least known and, in narrative terms, more fugitive aspects of her oeuvre. Instead of confronting the issue of leadership directly, she unravels it over the 150 pages that make up Part III of The Origins of Totalitarianism ([1951d] 1973). Arendt's rationale will be explained presently. But it indubitably makes large demands on readers who, bereft of a central statement, struggle to make sense of her labyrinthine account.

This chapter examines Arendt's theory of totalitarian leadership. It begins with her description of “the masses,” proceeds to her account of Hitler and Stalin as rulers of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and concludes with a discussion of Arendt as a covert sociologist: a thinker who recurrently resorts to sociological explanations, despite her express opposition to sociology as a discipline. Throughout this chapter, Arendt's notion of leadership is contrasted with the Weberian idea of charismatic domination, an idea she thought absurd when applied to totalitarian conditions.

Masses

Hannah Arendt's theory of totalitarian mass leaders – Hitler and Stalin – is integral to Part III of The Origins of Totalitarianism, yet its centrality is easy to underestimate. While her treatments of the “mob” and the “masses” are explicitly heralded in subsection titles to Chapters 4, 5 and 10 of Origins, totalitarian leaders receive no such explicit attention. What explains that asymmetry? For Arendt, leaders are not distinct from masses; they are entirely imbricated with them. Repeatedly, Arendt describes the totalitarian Leader – almost always employed in the upper case – as the “agent,” “impersonator” and “functionary” of the masses so that, in the totalitarian context, he who says masses, says leader too. Equally, totalitarian movements are mass organizations (323).