Introduction
Karl Otto Paetel (1907–1975) was a German journalist, intellectual, and revolutionary nationalist whose The National Bolshevik Manifesto articulated a radical synthesis of socialism and nationalism amid the chaotic disintegration of the Weimar Republic. Born in Berlin to a petit-bourgeois family, Paetel’s early life unfolded against the backdrop of post-World War I upheaval. He pursued formal education at the University of Berlin, where he studied history under luminaries like Friedrich Meinecke, immersing himself in Germany’s tumultuous past, and sociology under emerging scholars of the discipline, sharpening his grasp of social dynamics. His academic path extended briefly to the University of Heidelberg, a hub of nationalist intellectual ferment, where he engaged with philosophical currents — likely encountering the works of Hegel and Spengler — that would later inform his manifesto’s idealist bent. Expelled from Berlin’s Humboldt University student rolls in the mid-1920…
