This study makes use not only of German documents captured during the Second World War but of personal accounts of major figures of the Third Reich and their testimony at the Nuremberg Trials. Organized into five chapters, this study surveys Nazi- Soviet relations from 1939 to 1941, from the German viewpoint, with emphasis on Adolf Hitler's assessment of Russian policies and Germany's wartime situation, both of which factors shaped his decision to invade the USSR. The conclusion is that Hitler saw his attack on the Soviet Union as a preventive war, carried out to destroy a growing threat to the Reich. He interpreted Russian activities during the period 1939-1941 as designed to strengthen the USSR strategically against Germany in preparation for intervention in the ongoing conflict with Britain.

This investigation deals with the underlying motivation of Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West. Sources include the published and translated works of Spengler: books, essays, and selected letters. Contingent areas of exploration, arranged in separate chapters, are the philosophy of history, using the works of Dilthey and Herder; philosophy, using the concepts of Husserl's Phenomenology, Bergson's Time and Free Will, and Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann; the contemporary human potential psychology of Abraham Mazlow and Rollo May, and the contemporary philosophy of Alan Watts and Ortega y Gasset. R. G. Collingwood as critic of Spengler is dealt with. The conclusion is drawn that Spengler did not attempt a system of history except as a vehicle for expressing a directive to live fully in the eternal now.