Tristan Thomas Mann

During World War I, Mann supported the conservatism of Kaiser Wilhelm II, attacked liberalism, and supported the war effort, calling the Great War "a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope". In his 600-page-long work Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), Mann presented his conservative, anti-modernist philosophy: spiritual tradition over material progress, German patriotism over egalitarian internationalism, and rooted culture over rootless civilisation.[42][43]

In "On the German Republic" (Von Deutscher Republik, 1922), Mann called upon German intellectuals to support the new Weimar Republic. The work was delivered at the Beethovensaal in Berlin on 13 October 1922, and published in Die neue Rundschau in November 1922. In the work, Mann developed his eccentric defence of the Republic based on extensive close readings of Novalis and Walt Whitman. Thereafter, his political views gradually shifted toward liberal-left and democratic principles.[44][45]

Mann initially gave his support to the left-liberal German Democratic Party before shifting further left and urging unity behind the Social Democrats.[46][47] In 1930, he gave a public address in Berlin titled "An Appeal to Reason", in which he strongly denounced Nazism and encouraged resistance by the working class. This was followed by numerous essays and lectures in which he attacked the Nazis. At the same time, he expressed increasing sympathy for socialist ideas. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Mann and his wife were on holiday in Switzerland. Due to his strident denunciations of Nazi policies, his son Klaus advised him not to return. In contrast to those of his brother Heinrich and his son Klaus, Mann's books were not among those burnt publicly by Hitler's regime in May 1933, possibly since he had been the Nobel laureate in literature for 1929. In 1936, the Nazi government officially revoked his German citizenship.

During the war, Mann made a series of anti-Nazi radio-speeches, published as Listen, Germany! in 1943. They were recorded on tape in the United States and then sent to the United Kingdom, where the British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted them, hoping to reach German listeners.

Views on Soviet communism and Nazi-fascism

Mann expressed his belief in the collection of letters written in exile, Listen, Germany! (Deutsche Hörer!), that equating Soviet communism with Nazi-fascism on the basis that both are totalitarian systems was either superficial or insincere in showing a preference for fascism.[48] He clarified this view during a German press interview in July 1949, declaring that he was not a communist but that communism at least had some relation to ideals of humanity and of a better future. He said that the transition of the communist revolution into an autocratic regime was a tragedy while Nazism was only "devilish nihilism".[49][50]