The Jewish Experience as an Influence on Hans J. Morganthau’s Realism

Hans J. Morgenthau was probably the foremost exponent of the school of political realism in the academic discipline of international relations in the United States and has left a permanent imprint on the thinking of both theoreticians and practitioners in the field. A product of a European education, he fled Nazi Germany for the U.S. during the Hitler years, and had a distinguished career at the University of Chicago and the City University of New York. This article explores certain little known aspects of the Jewish experience which affected him such as the impact of searing anti-Semitism, and his subsequent activism in Jewish causes. It argues, based on a comparison and analysis of both Jewish and general writings, that the Jewish experience influenced Morgenthau's "realist" worldview in terms of a disillusionment with enlightenment expectations of harmony and progress, and accentuated his appreciation of the power phenomenon human relations.