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Critical Sociology 35(5) 629-635
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Es Kommt Die Nacht:1 Paul Massing, the Frankfurt School,
and the Question of Labor Authoritarianism
during World War II
Mark P. Worrell
SUNY Cortland, New York, USA
Abstract
During World War II, Paul Massing, a research assistant at the Institute of Social Research (the
famous ‘Frankfurt School’), helped conduct one of the most important research projects in the
history of Marxist sociology. Following on the Institute’s earlier work on family and authority
dynamics as well as the Weimar proletariat study, the wartime American labor anti-Semitism study
resulted in a massive report that was never published. This article introduces Paul Massing, his role
in the labor study, and some important findings regarding the effect of union affiliation and other
key variables in regard to working-class authoritarianism.
Keywords
anti-Semitism, Frankfurt School, labor, Paul Massing, solidarity
Paul W. Massing (1902–79) was an associate of the wartime Institute of Social Research
(ISR), the author of Rehearsal for Destruction, and is perhaps best remembered by students of Cold War politics as the husband of Hede Massing, Soviet agent and star in the
Whittaker Chambers/Alger Hiss drama (Massing, 1987 [1951]; Worrell, 2006a). When
Rehearsal was published in 1949 Massing had just ended his association with the ISR,
where he had been employed for several years, and was embarking upon his new career
as an academic sociologist at Rutgers University.2 Massing’s formal ties to the ‘Frankfurt
School’ stretched back 20 years to when he was one of Carl Gruenberg’s students.3 After
graduating in 1928 Paul briefly accepted a position at the Agrarian Institute in Moscow4
and, in the spring of 1931, returned to Berlin to teach and resist the Nazis as a member
of the KPD. He was ultimately captured in an early morning house raid during August
1933 and sent to the Oranienberg concentration camp. Upon his release five months
Copyright © The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sage.pub.co.uk/journals.permissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0896920509337610
630 Critical Sociology 35(5)
later he fled to the USA, was pulled into an orbit with the New Masses crowd, and published an account of his imprisonment under the pseudonym ‘Karl Billinger’ (see Worrell
2006b for a more comprehensive account of the above).5 Billinger’s Fatherland (1935) and
Hitler Is No Fool (1939) are not much considered by intellectual historians or students of
authoritarianism these days but both are valuable and, in the latter book, one can find a
brilliant, embryonic analysis of the social psychology of Judeophobia that would figure in
his still unsurpassed analysis of German political anti-Semitism a decade later.
The ten-year run from 1934 to 1944 represented a kind of variegated limbo for
Massing as he drifted from one venture to another: instructor at Commonwealth College
in Mena, Arkansas; translator for Henri Barbusse; author and freelance writer for periodicals such as The Nation, New Republic, and New Masses; research assistant for both
Solwyn Schapiro (City College) and Institute associate Karl Wittfogel; farm and boarding house operator; and ‘prison guard’ doing undercover anti-Nazi work.6 In 1943,
Massing was awarded two grants of $750 each from the Emergency Committee for
Displaced Foreign Scholars and he began working for the ISR on the massive antiSemitism project, the whole of which is summarized in the Institute’s unpublished
memorandum ‘Studies in Anti-Semitism’ (ISR, 1944). One of the major planks in the
anti-Semitism program was an ambitious study of American labor first proposed by
Franz Neumann.7 Essentially, the venture ran concurrently with the well known Berkeley
authoritarianism study that ultimately resulted in The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno
et al., 1950).
For the labor anti-Semitism study the Institute gathered data from major metropolitan
areas including New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Their targets were
CIO, AFL, and non-unionized workers engaged in what they called defense-related
industries. They collected data on skilled, semi-skilled, and manual laborers. There were
also data regarding professionals and office workers, i.e. non-factory employees, but their
main interest lay in comparing CIO workers with non-CIO workers of various hues and
stripes. It was assumed that the CIO represented the cutting edge of labor radicalism and
anti-fascism in the USA at the time. The ISR wanted to know if, at the decisive moment,
the rank and file would be capable of defending democracy against an authoritarian
onslaught on the domestic front. The problem of anti-Semitism was central to the ISR’s
perspective because it represented, in their words, the ‘spearhead of fascism’ or the
advanced guard in a possible future confrontation between fascism and bourgeois democracy. In important respects, the American labor study was related to the Institute’s earlier
analysis of the Weimar proletariat.8
The Institute gathered data from 967 separate people but the bulk of the research was
based upon what they termed ‘screened’ interviews of 566 workers conducted by 270 volunteer interviewers. A screened interview was one where the interviewers were operating
‘under cover’ as participant observers. Interviewers came from the shop floors themselves
and were acquainted with the interviewees. They memorized a battery of questions and
then engaged in open-ended interviews (and follow-up interviews) with other workers.
Workers from 26 AFL and CIO unions were selected for this study – although non-union
Worrell: Es kommt die Nacht 631
workers were also interviewed (the sample composition, in terms of unionization, was
AFL = 28.8%, CIO = 38.5%; non-Union = 29.5%).
Interviewees were initially asked to memorize 10 ‘basic’ and four ‘optional’ questions.
But the technical requirements necessitated simplification and the final questionnaire
was as follows:
1) Do Jewish people act and feel different from others? What do people say about them?
2) Can you tell a Jew from a non-Jew? How?
3) Do you mind working with Jews on the job? Why? Have you ever worked with
any? (a) How about working with Negroes (not posed to black workers)?
4) Did you know any Jews before you started in your first job? At school or in your
home town? What were they like?
5) How do you feel about what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany?
6) Are there people in this country who would like to see feelings against the Jews
grow? What groups? Why do they want it?
7) Do people think the Jews are doing their share in the war effort? What do you think?
Close to 4500 questionnaires were distributed in one way or another over the life of the
project. Approximately one half of the questionnaires distributed to the target sample were
ultimately completed. In survey research, completion rates of 80–85% are typically
expected. The reasons for the Institute’s low completion rate were due to a number of factors including the unwillingness of union officers and management to allow ‘horrifying’
and ‘shocking’ responses to be returned to the field workers. Had the Institute been able to
incorporate the unreturned questionnaires the gloomy interpretations may have been
weighted further to the anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi end of the spectrum.9
The ISR categorized workers into eight basic types:
Type A: Exterminatory (10.6%): ‘Actively violent, vicious anti-Semites who openly favor
the extermination of all Jews.’
Type B: Intense Hatred (10.2%): ‘Definitely and unwaveringly hostile toward Jews but
avoid openly advocating the extermination of Jews or would prefer if Nazis exterminated
Jews on a smaller scale or just deported them en masse. Taken together, Type A and B
constitute beliefs that are essentially fascist or “Nazi-like”. Workers in the B category were
glad that Jews were killed by the Nazi regime but hesitated to recommend that the same
methods of dealing with Jews should be adopted in the U.S.’
Type C: Inconsistently Hostile (3.7%): ‘Outspokenly hostile to Jews; desire to see Jews regulated or controlled but inconsistent in this attitude; exhibit an inner conflict over how Jews
should be controlled and regulated. Prone to rhetorical violence more than actual violence.
Potentially an easy convert to fascism within the right social conditions.’
Type D: Intolerant (6.2%): ‘Wants to avoid Jews, get away from them, and to see legislative action taken to separate Jews from everyone else. Discrimination against Jews should
be organized and enforced.’
632 Critical Sociology 35(5)
Types A + B (20.8%) represented pro-fascist or Nazi-like sentiments; Types C+D (9.9%)
represented sharply anti-Jewish feelings; Types A + B + C + D comprised 30.7% of the
sample. The remainder of the sample fell into categories E – H:
Type E: Ambivalent (19.1%): ‘These people can’t make up their mind. While they are
potentially anti-Semitic, they can go both ways in terms of their tolerance of Jews. This
type feels that Jews have too much power or money, and that something ought to be done
about it, but they don’t know what should be done. They are undecided.’
Type F: Consciously Tolerant/Emotionally Inconsistent (19.3%): ‘These types are opposed to
anti-Semitism at the level of humanitarian ideals and distaste for injustice. Type F may be
mildly intolerant of Jews but are opposed to it at the level of “conscious intentions” so they
try hard to control any prejudice they may havez at the level of emotions.’
Type G: Anti-discriminatory/Tolerant (10.8%): ‘These people do not harbor any dislike
of Jews, are opposed to discrimination but do criticize some character traits commonly
ascribed to Jews. Their criticism is based on reasoning if not in facts.’
Type H: Absolutely not anti-Semitic (20.1%): ‘No resentment, no criticism whatsoever.’
Including the ‘ambivalent’ workers, those that harbored milder forms of anti-Jewish
prejudice but who could potentially be swayed toward more extreme positions, the
number of affected workers was exactly 50%.
Naturally, there were significant differences between workers in, for example, the A and D
categories. Nonetheless, in practical terms, ‘D’ workers may have been less hostile to Jews but
clearly supported some measures adopted by Nazis and could be counted on to lend passive
support for totalitarian measures against Jews. However, this raises the problem of how to
classify workers into categories. How did the Institute ‘label’ a worker as anti-Semitic, ambivalent, or non-anti-Semitic? How did the researchers deal with the complexity of gradation? As
Gurland stated, ‘classification of different types of attitudes requires care and caution’.
Generally speaking, it could be carried through on the basis of different criteria. People can
be classified according to their opinions on Jews, or according to their emotional propensity
to like or dislike Jews, or according to the action they want taken with respect to Jews.
For the purposes of a general survey of our sample, it seemed advisable to combine these
three criteria for classifying the workers interviewed. But how should such a combination
be designed to fit statistical requirements?
Such were the difficulties, however, their novel method of ‘screened’ interviewing
allowed for the interviewees to ‘state, develop and illustrate their opinions’ rather than
conform to a pre-selected and ‘rigid pattern of single “Yes”, “No” or “Maybe-some”
answers to which the analyst could assign score values’ (ISR, 1945: 161).
The resulting report was a semi-polished, four-volume behemoth authored primarily
by Arkady Gurland and Massing (they were responsible for exactly 75% of the report)
Worrell: Es kommt die Nacht 633
with smaller sections written by Leo Lowenthal and Friedrich Pollock.10 The effort was
politically out of step with the goals of the Horkheimer Circle (Worrell, 2006a) and it
was ultimately abandoned (Amidon and Worrell, 2008; Worrell, 2008a). Flaws aside, the
study was a monument of critical sociology and, arguably, among the best work the
Institute ever engaged in. At the conclusion of the war, the problem of working-class
racism, political attitudes, and the dialectics of class hegemony were richly explored but,
in my estimation, the labor anti-Semitism study was the single most important piece of
research in, perhaps, the history of 20th century Marxist sociology.
Paul Massing’s piece, ‘Union Influence on Worker Anti-Semitism during World War
II’ (in this issue), represents a fragment from Anti-Semitism Among American Labor,
1944–45: Report on a Research Project conducted by the Institute of Social Research (Columbia
University) in 1944–1945. Specifically, this piece is derived from Volume Three, Part
Three (‘War, Fascism, and Propaganda’), Chapter 12 (‘Propaganda, Politics, and the
Worker’), Part Six (‘Union Influence’) (ISR, 1944–45: 878–900). Here we find rare data
pertaining to worker conceptions of class and authority, of union education, key variables
such as age, gender, affiliation, duration of membership, etc. Elsewhere in the report
Gurland and Massing indicated that while their sample of the American working class
possessed virtually no capacity at all for genuine radical thought (historical materialism
was nowhere to be found) and was, on the contrary, deeply afflicted by authoritarianism,
it was also their contention that the trend line was toward democracy, however limited.
The labor movement, they postulated, would continue to reflect growing participation by
women and younger workers with higher levels of education. And the ‘amazingly liberal’
attitudes held by white-collar workers pointed toward significant differences between
American workers and their European counterparts. Moreover, excluding older male
immigrants of recent arrival in the USA, even though many workers in the Institute’s
sample harbored anti-Semitic tendencies, their thoughts and feelings were not identical
with key themes found in European Judeophobia typical since the early 1870s.11 Almost
completely absent, for example, was any reference to Jews as sexual deviants. The future
may not have been exactly ‘bright’ but it was also not the moral and political abyss that
Horkheimer believed it would be. The cautious optimism exhibited by Gurland and
Massing was vindicated, at least in good measure, by the realities of late Fordist America.
Toward the end of 1943 Massing perceived a debilitating darkness enveloping the west – a
future confrontation between fascism and democracy on American soil was felt to be, if
not inevitable, a very real possibility. By 1945, though, Massing and Gurland arrived at a
different conclusion based on solid research and sound interpretations: workers may be
plagued by authoritarianism but the phenomenon was dynamic and could be diminished
with education, integration, and democratic practices.
Notes
1 In a 15 November 1943 letter to his friend Joseph Freeman, Paul Massing wrote: ‘The time of gesundbeten
is gone and what is not done now may never be done. Es kommt die Nacht, da niemand wirken kann.’
634 Critical Sociology 35(5)
2 Massing worked at the ISR as research associate until July or August 1947 when his funding finally
ran out. The American Jewish Committee and the Institute kicked in some money to keep him at
the ISR until July 1948 so that he could finish his book. In 1948 Paul began teaching at Rutgers as
an adjunct and, later, as a permanent member of the faculty. During the summer of 1949 Massing
also worked part-time for the Bureau of Applied Social Research (Lazarsfeld’s organization) at
Columbia University. At Rutgers Massing taught political sociology, social movements, and stratification and upon retiring in 1967 he and his second wife, Herta Herzog, moved to his childhood
home, Grumbach, Germany. He died of Parkinson’s disease in 1979 (Fischer, 1979).
3 In 1923, after a bike tour of Italy and southern Germany, Massing enrolled in night courses at the
University of Cologne, spending his days as an apprentice in a rubber tire factory. In 1924 he moved to
Frankfurt and earned his first degrees in 1925 and 1926. In 1927 he enrolled at the Sorbonne and
remained there until the spring of 1928 at which time he returned to Frankfurt to complete his studies.
4 The International Agrarian Institute had ties to the Frankfurt School and Massing’s stint in Moscow
may have overlapped with that of Henryk Grossman who was also a student of Gruenberg’s and
who had held a position within the Institute at Frankfurt since 1924 (Kuhn, 2007: 111, 140).
5 Julian Gumperz seems to have been a major conduit between some Institute affiliates and the
extended New Masses network in the middle of the 1930s. Not only did he connect Hede and Paul
with the front magazine and its resources but it was apparently also one of the first places Wittfogel
stopped upon arrival in the USA. According to Wittfogel’s 1951 testimony in front of the HUAC
it was Gumperz who was his liaison. For more on Gumperz and his important role in relocating the
Institute to Columbia University see Wheatland (2004a, 2004b).
6 Massing worked for Major Sanford Griffiths, the 20th Century Fund, and the American Jewish
Committee for eight weeks during 1942 investigating subversive (Nazi, fascist) organizations in
America. He was embedded under the alias of ‘Paul Hoffmann’ as an under-cover security guard and
investigated enemy aliens interned at Ellis Island. ‘Hoffmann’ was one of roughly 70 other aliases he
used over the years including Paul Evans (he borrowed ‘Evans’ from his friend Joe Freeman who used
this moniker during his time as an Amtorg employee); Massing also used the names Paul Wenck,
Paul Massik, Paul Gumperz, and Payton Winkle, among others. His wife, Hede (they were married
in 1936), used over 150 aliases during the same period. During the war Massing also served as a
consultant to the Survey of Foreign Experts in New York and the Office of Strategic Service (OSS),
Research and Analysis Department on problems of German agriculture and rural sociology.
7 Neumann was the ‘father’ of the labor study but was no longer a paid associate at the time of its
execution (see Wiggershaus, 1994 for more information on Neumann’s activities at this time).
8 For more on the ISR’s Weimar worker project see Smith (1998). For a panoramic view of how the
Institute’s wartime studies fit into the development and trajectory of authoritarianism research see
Worrell (1998, 2008a).
9 Only limited space can be devoted, here, to a discussion of the ISR’s data and methods. The
Institute’s own data and methods section, written by Massing, consisted of roughly 80 pages of the
fourth volume. For a more complete analysis see Worrell (2006c, 2008a, 2008b).
10 Pollock’s chapters dealt with the thinking of union leaders while Lowenthal’s very interesting contributions were published years later in a completely rewritten form (1987). A number of reasons have been
put forth as to why the labor report was abandoned, most of which are covered by either Jay’s seminal
study (1996 [1973]) or the monumental history by Wiggershaus (1994). I stray from received wisdom
in that I believe political conflict between the Horkheimer circle and the fringe members (the ‘Other
Frankfurt School’) was decisive in suppressing the labor study findings (Worrell 2006a).
11 Smith (1997) does a good job summarizing the nature of post-1870 anti-Semitism in Europe.
Worrell: Es kommt die Nacht 635
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For correspondence: Mark P. Worrell, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, SUNY Cortland,
Moffett Center, 2122, Box 2000, Cortland, NY 13045, USA. Email: [email protected]