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Articles

Bertrand Russell Stalks The Nazis

Thomas Akehurst on why Russell blamed German fascism on German philosophy.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is best known for his activities at the very beginning and at the very end of his working life. His philosophical reputation was made by his pioneering insights into logic in the first decade of the twentieth century, and he cut his political teeth through his pacifist opposition to World War I – an opposition which saw him jailed for spreading rumours harmful to the alliance between Britain and America. Forty years later, as an old man, he helped found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1950s. These facts, plus his brief flirtation with polyamory, which scandalized conservative elements in Britain and America, tend to be what we know about him. What is less well known is that in the 1930s and 1940s Russell’s attention turned to the idea that the origins of Nazism were primarily philosophical.

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