Hans Morgenthau

Hans Joachim Morgenthau (February 17, 1904 – July 19, 1980) was a pioneer in the field of international relations theory. He was born in Coburg, Germany, and educated at the universities of Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. He taught and practiced law in Frankfurt before fleeing to the United States in 1937 as the Nazis came to power in Germany. His experiences with Nazism seem to have influenced his later work in international relations theory, where he argued passionately in favor of a more scientific approach to politics, in contrast with the way the Nazi party came to imbue political science with a nationalist streak.

Morgenthau became professor at the University of Chicago. Along with E.H. Carr, he is one of the main authors of the realist school in the 20th century. This school of thought holds that nation-states are the main actors in international relations, and that the main concern of the field is the study of power.

His book Politics Among Nations defined the field of international relations theory in 1948 as it heralded the post–World War II paradigm shift in American thinking about diplomacy. Politics Among Nations emphasized the power interests of states as the driver behind the relations between states. The period before WWII was on the other hand defined by idealism that focused on values.