The White Rose or The Road to Serfdom

The White Rose

Author: Inge Scholl

In February 1943, three students from the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group in Munich, were beheaded by order of the People's Court of the Third Reich.

The White Rose is largely forgotten today. After all, the group was tiny, and it grew only a short while before being brutally extinguished. Yet obscure as it was, the White Rose continues to intrigue and inspire.

As the story of a group of young people who courageously refused to swim with the stream, it gains a relevance that is of utmost significance for our time.

"The existence of an organized resistance in Germany during the Third Reich has often been glossed over or ignored . . . Now for the first time this fascinating story, told by the surviving sister of two of the students, is available in accurate and readable English"

Book review: The Coming of the Third Reich or Long Road Home

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--the Definitive Edition

Author: Bruce Caldwell

An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.

With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek.  The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history andassessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought.  Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes.  Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.

Table of Contents:

Editorial Foreword     ix
Introduction     1
The Road to Serfdom
Preface to the Original Editions     37
Foreword to the 1956 American Paperback Edition     39
Preface to the 1976 Edition     53
Introduction     57
The Abandoned Road     65
The Great Utopia     76
Individualism and Collectivism     83
The "Inevitability" of Planning     91
Planning and Democracy     100
Planning and the Rule of Law     112
Economic Control and Totalitarianism     124
Who, Whom?     134
Security and Freedom     147
Why the Worst Get on Top     157
The End of Truth     171
The Socialist Roots of Naziism     181
The Totalitarians in Our Midst     193
Material Conditions and Ideal Ends     210
The Prospects of International Order     223
Conclusion     237
Bibliographical Note     239
Related Documents
Nazi-Socialism (1933)     245
Reader's Report   Frank Knight (1943)     249
Reader's Report   Jacob Marschak (1943)     251
Foreword to the 1944 AmericanEdition   John Chamberlain     253
Letter from John Scoon to C. Hartley Grattan (1945)     255
Introduction to the 1994 Edition   Milton Friedman     259
Acknowledgments     267
Index     269