The Nazi Denaturalization of German Emigrants: The Case of Wilhelm Reich

Abstract

In 1933 the Nazis began to denaturalize German citizens who had fled Germany. The controversial Austrian psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, was among the 40,000 emigrants who lost their German citizenship as a result of a denaturalization investigation—Reich had become German following the Anschluss . Shortly after he arrived in the United States, the FBI began a case against Reich, culminating in his arrest as a “German enemy alien,” and his imprisonment for nearly a month. The common features of these two investigations are explored, with an emphasis on the shared anticommunism of both the FBI and the Nazi regime.