The experience of exile, especially exile to the USA, formed part of the ‘Great Migration’ that H. Stuart Hughes has called the ‘the most important cultural event – or series of events – of the second quarter of the twentieth century’. Exile was far from being a purely German experience. It was a European-wide phenomenon, but Germans and Austrians accounted for about two-thirds of those who left Europe for America. Some of those who remained in continental Europe fell within the grip of National Socialism or its allies for a second time, and some of these did not survive. Others found refuge in the handful of countries that managed to remain neutral throughout the war, as did Wilhelm Röpke in Switzerland, or in England, as did Gerhard Leibholz, or even in New Zealand, as did Karl Popper.

That exile was a ‘series of events’ reflected the combination of external events – whether individuals were dismissed in the initial wave of persecution at the beginning of the Third Reich, or whether they sought refuge in France, as did Hannah Arendt, or in Spain, as did Hans Morgenthau, before being driven to seek refuge elsewhere – and their perceptions about the immediacy of the threat. Again, the difficulty of grasping the true nature of the Third Reich played a part in shaping decisions about whether, and when, to take the step of exile with all its attendant uncertainties in a world still in the grip of economic depression.