This small volume offers a retrospective of the "origins" of Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism. The sections of text deleted by the author from the first English edition of the totalitarianism volume, her reply to Eric Voegelin's review and her correspondence with Voegelin from the year 1951 are helpful to anybody wishing to examine more closely and assess Arendt's concept of totalitarianism and its development. These documents and the related texts by Urusula Ludz, Ingeborg Nordmann and Michael Henkel contribute towards a clarification of Hannah Arendt's notions of totalitarianism as a singular form of rule that is today still exposed to misunderstandings in the German debate.
