Karl Otto Paetel

Karl Otto Paetel (23 November 1906 – 4 May 1975) was a German political journalist. During the 1920s, he was a prominent exponent of National Bolshevism. During the 1930s, he became a member of the anti-Nazi German resistance.

Biography Paetel was born on 23 November 1906 in Berlin. He attended the Siemens-Oberrealschule where he got involved in the youth group. He later studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin. The latter group was established in 1930 due to his disillusionment with the Nazi Party, a group he had hitherto been well disposed towards, as he felt that their revolutionary rhetoric was insincere and that their essential nature was conservative. Nonetheless, he felt that the Nazi Party still contained "useful" revolutionary elements and was particularly active in attempting to win over members of the Hitler Youth to his side. In 1930 he became co-editor of Die Kommenden with prominent nationalist Ernst Jünger.

After escaping from internment by the French police in May 1940, he fled via southern France to Spain, and then to New York. There, he resumed his journalistic activities and worked as a correspondent. In 1943, he married his fiancée Elisabeth Zerner. After the war, he edited the magazine Deutsche Gegenwart and wrote about Jünger. In 1975, he died in Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City.

Publications Sozialrevolutionärer Nationalismus, , 1930 Das nationalbolschewistische Manifest, Die Sozialistische Nation, 1933; re-published by Haag + Herchen, 2012, Unofficial English translation: The National Bolshevist Manifesto, ARPLAN, 2019 Ernst Jünger: die Wandlung eines deutschen Dichters und Patrioten, , 1946, re-published by Fölbach, 1995, Das Bild vom Menschen in der deutschen Jugendführung, Voggenreiter Verlag, 1954 Jugend in der Entscheidung: 1913, 1933, 1945, Voggenreiter Verlag, 1963 Versuchung oder Chance?: Zur Geschichte des deutschen Nationalbolschewismus, , 1965 Re-published as: Nationalbolschewismus und nationalrevolutionäre Bewegungen in Deutschland, , 1997, Reise ohne Uhrzeit: Autobiographie, re-published by World of Books, 1982, Ein Deutsches Tagebuch, re-published by Peter Lang Publishing, 1995,