Major A. M. Meerloo - Total War and the Human Mind - 1944

"Total War and the Human Mind – A psychologist's experiences in occupied Holland" is a study of 78–80 pages that first appeared in London in May 1944, in the thick of the war, published for the Netherlands Government Information Bureau by the renowned publisher George Allen & Unwin Ltd. The copy in this auction concerns the second edition of November 1944, in the original red cloth hardcover with dust jacket — a rather unusual combination, as many war copies have survived without a dust jacket.

The book was written by Major A. M. Meerloo, who at the time headed the Psychological Service of the Netherlands Armed Forces in exile in England. It is thus effectively a semi-official Dutch wartime publication: intended to make the Allied reader in England and the United States aware of what the German occupation did to an entire nation psychologically. The book combines eyewitness testimony, clinical observation, and an early analysis of what Meerloo would later call "menticide" — the murder of the mind.

The author: Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo (1903–1976)
On the title page the author is listed as "Major A. M. Meerloo", but behind that military name lies one of the best-known Dutch-American psychiatrists of the twentieth century: Joost Abraham Maurits "Bram" Meerloo, born in The Hague on 14 March 1903 and died in Amsterdam on 17 November 1976. He studied medicine in Leiden (medical degree 1927), specialized in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and opened his own practice in 1934.

Meerloo was of Jewish-Dutch descent. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, he served as a doctor in the Dutch army. During the occupation he initially worked as a general practitioner and psychiatrist, sheltered Jews and underground resistance workers, and treated victims of German interrogations. In 1942 — as the hunt for Jewish Dutch and resistance members intensified — he adopted the alias "Joost", escaped near-arrest, and reached England via Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal. He was the only one of six children in his family to survive the Holocaust.

In London he was appointed head of the Psychological Service of the Dutch armed forces in exile, with the rank of major (later colonel). In that role he questioned and treated escaped resistance members, prisoners of war, escaped concentration camp inmates, and collaborators — a unique clinical dataset that laid the foundation for this book. After the war he became High Commissioner for Welfare in the Netherlands and an adviser to UNRRA and SHAEF. In 1946 he emigrated to the United States, was naturalized in 1950, and taught at Columbia University and the New York School of Psychiatry. In 1972 he resumed his Dutch nationality.

Internationally Meerloo became best known for his book "The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing" (1956), which became a classic in the literature on brainwashing, totalitarianism, and thought control during the Cold War. He coined the term "menticide" (murder of the mind) himself and testified as an expert in the case of U.S. Navy Colonel Frank Schwable, who made a false confession under duress in North Korea. "Total War and the Human Mind" is the direct precursor to that opus: the first time he organized his experiences under occupation psychologically.

Content and themes
The book is not a memoir in the strict sense, but a psychological essay built around a central proposition: modern warfare is no longer only military, but “total” — aimed at breaking the spirit of the entire population. Meerloo combines personal observation with case material from his practice in occupied Netherlands and his work in England.

The main threads running through the text:
• Psychological warfare as a weapon. Meerloo shows how the occupier systematically uses fear, humiliation, uncertainty, and isolation to undermine will and morale — propaganda, arbitrary raids, hostage-taking, rationing, nocturnal arrests, and public executions work together as one psychological apparatus.
• Reactions of the population. He describes typical responses: initial astonishment and denial, then collective fear and apathy, then various forms of adaptation — resistance, passive endurance, opportunistic collaboration, or psychological breakdown. He analyzes why some people stay upright and others break.
• War neuroses and trauma. Based on patients, he describes clinical pictures we would now call PTSD: sleep disturbances, panic attacks, depersonalization, survivors’ guilt, and the specific consequences of interrogation and abuse by the Sicherheitsdienst.
• Interrogation, coercion, and false confessions. A central, forward-looking section deals with how interrogators extract confessions through exhaustion, isolation, humiliation, and intimidation. This forms the embryonic version of his later theory of menticide and brainwashing.
• The child and the family in war. Meerloo explicitly pays attention to the consequences for children growing up under occupation, bombardment, and hunger — a theme that was hardly systematically studied in 1944.
• Resistance, morality, and resilience. He sketches the psychological factors that help people maintain moral integrity: meaning-making, solidarity, humor, faith, an inner value system. The book is thus simultaneously a warning and a manual for mental resilience.
• Toward a psychology of peace. In the final chapters Meerloo looks forward to what a postwar society would need to heal psychological damage — a theme that would later be fully developed in his work on collective madness and totalitarianism.

Historical significance
Three things make this little book historically interesting. First, it appeared in May 1944 — before D-Day, before the liberation of the Netherlands, and long before official Allied studies on psychological warfare. It is thus one of the very first clinically psychological eyewitness accounts of life under Nazi occupation, written while that occupation was still ongoing. Second, it is the direct seed of Meerloo’s later influential work on brainwashing and menticide; many terms that would become world-famous in The Rape of the Mind (1956) already appear here in embryonic form. Third, it is a Dutch voice in the international war discussion: published by the Netherlands Government Information Bureau in exile, aimed at the English-speaking public, and thus part of the Dutch propaganda and information effort in wartime.

Rarity
The book is rare, and for several reinforcing reasons:
• Edition and context. It was printed in London in 1944 during the war, at the height of paper shortages and with a limited edition for a specific (English-speaking, semi-official) audience. It was not a commercial publication with mass distribution.
• Only two British editions. First edition May 1944, second edition November 1944. An American edition appeared in 1945 by International Universities Press, but the British Allen & Unwin editions of 1944 — like this copy — are considerably rarer.
• With dust jacket. The red cloth hardcover is still found in libraries and at antiquarian booksellers, but copies with the original dust jacket are considerably rarer. Dust jackets for war-time editions often disappeared or were discarded; booksellers explicitly note that this is an important feature for value.
• Small, fragile format. 19 × 13 cm, only about 78–80 pages, thin and light (the listed weight of 120 grams matches the physical description). This kind of thin war pamphlet is often damaged or discarded; well-preserved copies are a minority.
• Content appeal. Because Meerloo became internationally famous, this first booklet is actively collected by WWII literature enthusiasts, historians of psychology and psychiatry, Holocaust and occupation studies, and the history of propaganda and brainwashing. The demand is structurally higher than the supply.
On common antiquarian platforms (AbeBooks, Biblio, WorldCat) only a few copies usually appear at any given time, and copies with dust jackets in good condition are increasingly rare.

Condition of this copy
According to the description, this is the second edition from November 1944, in the original red cloth hardcover with dust jacket. The dust jacket is lightly damaged, the paper somewhat browned (normal for acid paper from wartime), with a name and a few notes on the flyleaf. The overall condition is described as "good / very good." For a war edition over 80 years old, that is above average — especially because the dust jacket is present.
Two factors negatively affect value slightly: (1) it is not the first but the second edition (May vs. November 1944), and (2) there are ownership marks on the flyleaf. Both are mild and not a deal-breaker for collectors of war-era editions.

Conclusion
This is a small but substantively important war book: one of the earliest psychological analyses of life under Nazi occupation, written by a Dutch psychiatrist who would later become world-famous as the author of The Rape of the Mind. The combination of an early publication date (May/November 1944), a London war edition for the Netherlands Government Information Bureau, the original red cloth hardcover and the presence of a dust jacket, and the author’s historical status, makes it a true collector’s item — rare, well situated in both WWII and psychology history, and with a stable to rising value trajectory on the antiquarian market.