Contribution
This is a 1941 magazine essay. It gives a typology of who would join a Nazi movement “in a showdown”, from a reporter who had watched the process in Germany, Austria and France. It adds no evidence, only a claim about where the dividing line runs. The line is inner disposition (code, security, happiness, “breeding, or happiness, or wisdom”), not race, nationality, religion or class. The claim is argued entirely through vignettes.
Key insight
“Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi” (§III). What protects a person is having “anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t”. Susceptibility comes from its absence, whether that shows as humiliation, fear, spoilt entitlement, appetite for power, or measuring value only by “success”.
Assumptions
These are premises and authorities, not formal conditions.
- Her own experience is the only evidence: “I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types.”
- Nazism “appeals to a certain type of mind” and “has nothing to do with race and nationality”. She supports this with anecdote: Jews “who are born Nazis”, and Jews who entered “Hitler’s secret service”.
- Nazism is also “the disease of a generation”, the “lost generation” of the post-1918 era. This is asserted as true across Britain, France, the US and Germany.
- She speculates about “direct biological factors” (education, feeding, physical training), hedged with “Sometimes I think”.
- Her types are distinguished by success in a Nazi movement as well as by susceptibility. B joins only “as a movement likely to attain power”, and C “would rise high”.
Key results
What the essay argues, sketch by sketch.
- Would not go Nazi. Mr. A, a poor editor from an old family with his own code. Mrs. F, a happy former actress, “as American as ice cream and cake”. James the butler, who considers Nazis “parvenus”. Bill, a City College engineering student and chauffeur’s grandson who scorns Lindbergh. H, a Midwestern historian of Dutch ancestry, who “will grab a gun and fight”. The young German émigré, a former Reichsbanner member who studied under Karl Barth and now works a night shift building planes for Britain. Mr. K, a Southern Jewish writer.
- Would go Nazi. Mr. B, the banker and sportsman, “early” once the movement looks likely to win. Mr. C, the humiliated scholarship-boy intellectual, who is “already a Nazi” but “not a born Nazi”: “the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery”. Young D, the spoiled son, “the only born Nazi in the room”. Mrs. E, a masochistic, humiliated wife looking for “the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women”. Mr. J, a rich Jewish financier, is drawn at once to C and “agrees with Mr. C wholly”. L, the labour leader, is “the strongest natural-born Nazi in this room”.
- Ambiguous. Mr. G, the rationalising ex-prodigy (see corrections).
- An inconsistency within the essay. Both D (“the only born Nazi”) and L (“the strongest natural-born Nazi”) are called born Nazis. That is a second internal inconsistency, beside the one about G.
- Conclusion (§III). “Nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.”
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Susceptibility to Nazism is not predicted by race or nationality | the author’s own observation; anecdote | ”I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis”; the German émigré |
| C2 | Secure, happy people with an inner code “never go Nazi” | assertion via constructed vignettes | the sketches are composites or inventions set at a hypothetical party; no cases are verifiable |
| C3 | Humiliation under a snobbish democracy produces Nazis (Mr. C) | informal argument | a single vignette |
| C4 | Opportunists join a fascist movement only once it looks likely to win (Mr. B) | informal argument | a single vignette |
| C5 | Nazism is “the disease of a generation” across Western countries | assertion | none |
| C6 | Biological factors (feeding, training) may produce the Nazi type | speculation, hedged by the author (“Sometimes I think”) | none |
| C7 | Social condition is not the criterion | assertion, but in tension with the sketches, which draw heavily on class position and class resentment (C, B, L, James, Bill) | the essay itself |
Concepts
- “go Nazi”: to join, or actively support, a Nazi movement “in a showdown”. The phrase covers early joiners (B), true believers (C, D) and apologists (G) without separating them.
- “born Nazi”: a person whose character is Nazi independently of circumstance (D, L). It is contrasted with those “whom democracy itself has created” (C) and “fellow-travelers”.
- code: A’s self-owned standard of behaviour, set against B’s “code is not his own; it is that of his class”.
Connections
The essay is widely recirculated as commentary on later politics. Harper’s own archive blurb pairs it with “Donald Trump calls for a ban on Muslims entering the United States”, which shows the modern news hook the dossier mentioned. It anticipates later psychological and social-psychological accounts of fascist support (authoritarian-personality research, status-anxiety explanations). I have not checked any of that literature against it, so any claim that later empirical work confirms or contradicts particular types is unverified here. It also predates, and does not engage, the voting-data literature on the social bases of Nazi support.
Bearing on the record
It carries nothing for ML practice and no instruction for the Anthology of the SOTA. In this reading record it belongs with primary historical texts on political psychology, and should be cited for what Thompson believed and argued in 1941. Any later document using it as evidence about who supports authoritarian movements should instead cite the empirical work that tested such typologies.
Limitations
- The “data” are vignettes of an imagined party (“let us look round the room”). Whether any sketch is based on a real person is not stated.
- Two internal inconsistencies (D and L both “born Nazis”; G both never a Nazi and a qualified Nazi) show the typology is not applied rigorously.
- Her claim that social condition is not the criterion (C7) sits badly with sketches that are largely about class position and class resentment, and with a portrait of a labour leader (L) that reads as a political attack on union “compulsion”.
- The generational and biological hypotheses (C5, C6) are offered without support and are not integrated with the character typology.
- It reflects its moment (August 1941, before US entry into the war). Its “showdown” is hypothetical.
Open questions
- Which of Thompson’s types, if any, correspond to groups that empirical studies of fascist and authoritarian support actually identify? That would take pairing it with that literature, which this reading did not do.
- Does the print (PDF) text differ from the HTML transcription? That is unverified.
Corrections to the seeded skim
- The dossier’s §II list omits Mr. K, a Southern Jewish writer whom Thompson places with the “immune” group (H, the German émigré and others). It also treats G as simply someone who “would explain Nazism away but never commit”. The essay says both that G “will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything” and, a few lines on, that “we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged”. Later she lists him among those who “would be spreading defeatism”. The essay is inconsistent about him. The dossier resolves the inconsistency silently.
- The dossier’s section labels are slightly off. The essay has an unnumbered opening section followed by “II” and “III”. The dossier’s “§I” is that unnumbered section, and it is also where the frame (the “parlor game”, race rejected as a criterion, “the disease of a generation”) is set out.
- Missing from the dossier: in the opening, Thompson floats “direct biological factors” (“a type of education, feeding, and physical training … His body is vigorous. His mind is childish.”). It is framed as “Sometimes I think”. The dossier’s summary leaves it out, and it cuts against a reading of her typology as purely characterological.
- Missing from the dossier: the essay’s own frame is ironic and self-limiting. It calls itself a “macabre parlor game” and ends “It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.” The dossier’s summary reports the conclusion without that frame.