Oswald Spengler

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (Blankenburg am Harz May 29, 1880 – May 8, 1936, Munich) was a German historian and philosopher, although his studies ranged throughout mathematics, science, philosophy, history, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West in which he puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations. After Decline was published in 1918, Spengler produced his Prussianism and Socialism in 1920, in which he argued for an organic version of socialism and authoritarianism. He wrote extensively throughout the World War I and interwar period supported of German hegemony in Europe. Spengler voted for the National Socialists in 1932 and hung a swastika flag outside his Munich home, and the National Socialists held Spengler as an intellectual precursor. But Spengler's pessimism about Germany and Europe's future, his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial superiority, and his anti-Nazi work the Hour of Decision won him ostracism after 1933.

Further reading

• Twilight of the Evening Lands: Oswald Spengler - A Half Century Later by John F. Fennelly (New York, Brookdale Press, 1972) ISBN 091265001X
• Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, 1991, ISBN 0130893013
• Prophet of Decline : Spengler on world history and politics by John Farrenkopf (Publisher: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 2001) ISBN 0807126535 ISBN 0807127272
• Hughes, H. Stuart. "Preface to the Present Edition." Preface. The Decline of the West: An Abridged Edition. By Oswald Spengler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-19-506751-7