The magazine Der Monat, founded in 1948 on the initiative of the US military government, was an intellectual focal point of the young Federal Republic, where the political conflicts of interpretation of the time were debated, focusing on National Socialism, Soviet Communism, and the future of the Western world. Its reputation was enhanced by the fact that it brought together numerous prominent authors such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Hans Kohn, Herbert Lüthy, George F. Kennan, as well as former communists Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, and Richard Löwenthal. Joachim Gmehling illustrates the image of the National Socialist and Soviet Communist regimes that was portrayed in the magazine and how the comparison between the two dictatorships was made. He reconstructs not only the influence of contemporary theories of totalitarianism but also the imperatives of the American occupation.