Psychohistory before Hitler: early military analyses of German national psychology.

As part of a grandiose post-World War I psychological project to predict the behavior of nations, the U.S. Military Intelligence Division (MID) utilized racial and social psychological theories to explain an alleged problematic German national character. Though unsuccessful, this project has major significance in the history of psychohistory. For the newly discovered MID files reveal that ideas, attitudes, and biases many psychohistorians subsequently identified as manifestations of a peculiar German national character had previously been held by American officers and reputable psychologists. What American analysts would, in 1940, view as symptoms of a maladjusted German mind, their predecessors had, in 1920, considered valid scientific concepts.