Arnold Oscar Wolfers (June 14, 1892, St. GallenJuly 16, 1968) was a Swiss-American lawyer, economist, historian, and international relations scholar, most known for his work at Yale University and for being a pioneer of classical international relations realism.
Educated in his native Switzerland and in Germany, Wolfers was a lecturer at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin in the late 1920s and then became its director in the early 1930s. Initially having some sympathies with the ideas of Nazi Germany, he left that country to become a visiting professor at Yale in 1933, stayed there, and became a U.S. citizen in 1939. In 1935 he was co-founder of the influential Yale Institute of International Studies. As master of Pierson College at Yale, he played a significant role during World War II by recruiting for the Office of Strategic Services. In 1957 he left Yale and became director of the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research at Johns Hopkins University, where he served in that role until his retirement in 1965.
Wolfers' two most known works are Britain and France Between Two Wars (1940), a study of two foreign policies during the interwar period, and Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (1962), a collection of papers on international relations theory.
Early life and education Arnold Oskar Wolfers (the spelling of the middle name later changed to Oscar) was born on June 14, 1892, in St. Gallen, Switzerland, to parents Otto Gustav Wolfers (1860–1945) and the former Clara Eugenie Hirschfeld (1869–1950). His father was a New York merchantSee for instance who emigrated and became a naturalized Swiss citizen in 1905, while his mother was from a Jewish family in St. Gallen. English option. Arnold grew up in St. Gallen and attended the gymnasium secondary school there, gaining his Abitur qualification. Abbreviations used are listed here.
Wolfers studied law at the University of Lausanne, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin beginning in 1912, gaining a certificate (Zeugnis) from the last of these. He served as a first lieutenant in the infantry of the Swiss Army, with some of the service taking place from May 1914 to March 1915, part of which included Switzerland's maintaining a state of armed neutrality during World War I. He first began studying at the University of Zurich in the summer of 1915. He graduated summa cum laude from there with a J.U.D. degree, in both civil and church law,Who's Who in America 1966–1967, p. 2339. in April 1917.
Admitted to the bar in Switzerland in 1917, Wolfers practiced law in St. Gallen from 1917 to 1919. His observing of the war, and of the difficulties the Geneva-based League of Nations faced in the aftermath of the war, enhanced his natural Swiss skepticism and led him towards a conservative view regarding the ability of countries to avoid armed conflict.Stuart, "Discord and Collaboration", p. 4. On the other hand, his Swiss background did provide to him an example of how a multi-lingual federation of cantons could prosper.Stuart, "Discord and Collaboration", p. 6.
In 1918, Wolfers married Doris Emmy Forrer. She was the daughter of the Swiss politician Robert Forrer, who as a member of the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland from St. Gallen had been elected to the National Council in the 1908 Swiss federal election, retaining that seat until 1924 and chairing the radical-democratic group (1918–1924). She studied art, attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva as well as the University of Geneva, and spent a year at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich during the early stages of World War I.
Wolfers studied economics and political science at the Universities of Zurich and Berlin from 1920 to 1924, with his study at the University of Zurich concluding with a certificate in April 1920. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Giessen in Germany in 1924. During this time, Wolfers' abilities with languages allowed him to act as an interpreter in some situations. He first traveled to the United States in 1924 and delivered lectures to various audiences.
Academic career in Germany By one later account, Wolfers emigrated to Germany following the conclusion of World War I,Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, p. 19. while another had him living in Germany starting in 1921. Contemporary newspaper stories published in the United States portray Wolfers as a Swiss citizen through at least 1926. In 1933, stories describe him as Swiss-German or a native Swiss and naturalized German. But in 1940 he is described as having been a Swiss before being naturalized as an American, something that a later historical account also states.
From 1924 to 1930, Wolfers was a lecturer in political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik (Institute of Politics) in Berlin. Headed by Ernst Jaeckh, it was considered Berlin's best school for the study of political behavior. In 1927, he took on the additional duties of being studies supervisor.Eisfeld, "Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations", p. 113. Wolfers was one of the early people in the circle around Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich, with he and Doris giving much-needed economic support to Tillich in Berlin during the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic period. As such Wolfers might have been considered a religious socialist.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", p. 402. The Hochschule attracted many religious socialists, who were interested in combining spiritual development with social reform in an effort to provide an attractive alternative to Marxism.
Wolfers became the director of the Hochschule für Politik from 1930 until 1933, with Jaeckh as president and chair. Wolfers and Jaeckh both gave lecture tours in America, made contacts there, and secured funding for the Hochschule's library and publications from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. Two endowed visiting lectureships were sponsored by Carnegie, one of which would be held by Hajo Holborn. In a period where there was considerable student unrest, Wolfers led popular classroom discussion sessions regarding the state of world affairs.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", p. 426.
Between 1929 and 1933, Wolfers was a privatdozent (roughly, assistant professor) in economics at the University of Berlin. He was active in the International Student Service and presided over their annual conference in 1931, held in the midst of the Great Depression, at Mount Holyoke College in the United States. In his address before them, Wolfers urged more financial help from Great Britain and the United States to Continental Europe: "What Europe needs is not general declarations for peace and cooperation – people are getting sick of them. We need proposals to help overcome concrete pressing difficulties."
Wolfers, like other German academics, witnessed first-hand the demise of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of the Nazi Party.Eisfeld, "Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations", p. 114.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", p. 413. While some of the academics perceived immediately the reality of the Nazis, Wolfers, along with Jaeckh, did not. Wolfers had a belief in the great man theory, extended to the role of great nations, and was drawn to the notion of spectacular actions in international relations; as such he found some Nazi rhetoric appealing.Stuart, "Discord and Collaboration", pp. 4–5. In this manner Wolfers tended to be in agreement with some of the foreign policy objectives of the Nazi regime, especially in the East, thinking that those objectives could play a part in restoring the European balance of power.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", pp. 414, 429. As for other aspects of the Nazis, Wolfers failed to comprehend the amount of racism and authoritarianism essential to Nazi ideology. In a November 1932 article in the journal International Affairs, Wolfers prophesied that "Hitler, with all his anti-democratic tendencies, is caught by the fact that he leads a mass movement... He may therefore become, against his own original programme, a force making for democracy. ... The further we go, the more this character of his movement as a safeguard against social reaction is likely to come to the fore."Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", pp. 413–414.
Hitler seized control in the Machtergreifung in January 1933. At some point, Wolfers, a "half-Jew" (Halbjude) in the language of the Third Reich, was classified as "undesirable" (unerwünscht) by the new regime. In late April 1933, Wolfers was offered a position as a visiting professor of international relations at Yale University, and in late May, the appointment was publicly announced by Yale, with Wolfers being assigned to Yale's graduate school, where he was to lecture on world economics and European governments. Also in May, Wolfers served as general rapporteur to that year's International Studies Conference in London.
Master at Yale Wolfers traveled to the United States on the SS Albert Ballin, arriving on August 11, 1933. He commented that Europeans generally felt threatened by U.S. monetary policy, but that people in Germany were sympathetic to U.S. leadership in trying to overcome the Depression.
In a November 1933 address at Yale, Wolfers described Hitler as saying that Germany would return to the League of Nations if reparations-based discrimination against her ended and that France and Germany could be allied against the Bolshevik threat from the east. Wolfers added, "Hitler's policy is not only an outgrowth of dire necessity. His party's emphasis is on domestic affairs. The 'militant' energies of Germany's soldier-like citizens are at last finding a field of action at home that satisfies all needs." In a February 1934 speech before the Foreign Policy Association in New York, Wolfers said, "The cause of present unrest is France's extravagant demands. ... Germany has lost her territorial cohesion; she has been forced to live in conflict with her Eastern neighbors, and is deprived of the most meager of self-defense." In 1934 the German embassy in Washington expressed satisfaction with the contents of Wolfers' lectures in the United States.
The contradictions inherent in the Nazi government's classification of Wolfers, compared to the Nazis' and Wolfers' somewhat complimentary views of each other at this time, have been noted by the German political scientist Rainer Eisfeld. Wolfers destroyed his personal and work files several times over the course of his career and thus it is difficult to know if his leaving Germany was for academic or political reasons or exactly what his thinking was at the time.
Intellectually, Wolfers' early work on international politics and economics was influenced by European conflicts and their effect upon the world and revealed something of a Realpolitik point of view.Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, p. 20. However he was not as heavily devoted to this perspective as was his colleague Nicholas J. Spykman.Hilsman and Good, "Introduction", pp. xi–xii. In terms of economics, Wolfers spoke somewhat favorably of New Deal initiatives such as the National Recovery Administration that sought to manage some competitive forces.
In 1935, Wolfers was named as professor of international relations at Yale. In taking the position, Wolfers was essentially proclaiming his lack of desire to return to Germany under Nazi rule.Haslam, No Virtue Like Necessity, p. 205. As part of gaining the position, Wolfers received an honorary A.M. from Yale in 1935, a standard practice at Yale when granting full professorships to scholars who did not previously have a Yale degree.Winks, Cloak & Gown, p. 27.