| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article traces the development of Reinhold Niebuhr's growing alarm over the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan leading up to World War II, and his corresponding warnings to the United States and allied powers of the need to confront fascist aggression. The theme of the "prophetic" shaped Niebuhr's perception of the threat of fascism, both through his concern over the religious liberty of Christian and Jewish voices to bring prophetic judgments against totalitarian governments and through his predictions of the threat that fascist regimes posed to the international order. In the course of the 1930s Niebuhr also refined his doctrine of Christian realism, which both influenced yet differed from the evolution of realism as a theory of international relations. Niebuhr's development over this decade also marked his transition from the margins to the center of American intellectual and political life.
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